13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

Hi KSimS,

Very attractive.
Love the colours.

That business about blue/purple and the camera:

I don't know much about photography, but got a new camera a while back. Started using it this spring and had a fit when the purple crocuses appeared blue in the pictures.

A friend pointed me to the "white balance" function on the camera. Turning it from White Balance Automatical to Daylight, for garden pictures, is currently solving the problem.

Thanks SunnyBorders! That is very helpful concerning the camera and purple blue issue. I will definitely have to check the settings.

Thank you to everybody for your messages and for your help.

I them you that around here in my residential have more plumbagos planted but are with white flowers and not very attractives for me, I prefer the sky blue flowers.

But her I will place photos of the all plumbagos for that you can look.

Hi
Is a very common landscape plant in s. florida (U S) Comes in red white and at least 3 shades of blue .
Can't imag ine how it would grow in Colombia !!lol Very rampant I have 3 patches over 10 feet in both directions with constant pruning. IT does stay in flower year around
no pests and I love blue flowers!! lol
Have never tried to propagate it as it's very common in nurseries here .. Pick an area where the is enough area to expand against a fence is good. gary

After the late season freeze (Feb) and record breaking March rainfall the PNW experienced. I am not surprised that many plants have taken a big hit. In my role as a garden consultant, I have seen all manner of even very hardy plants bite the dust this season. The combination of a pretty mild winter and the early end of dormancy for a lot of plants followed by a 1-2 weird weather punch was just more than they could handle. Couple that with hollyhocks' typical short lifespan and I'd think it was time to replant with fresh plants :-))

Yes, I was surprised to see that they had a thin tuber..Shaped kind of like a dahlia. I believe, but would not swear, that I bought the double mixture from Costco. I am going to be patient, and maybe dig up around in there and see if there is any sign of life. They got to be 8' or so tall, and very impressive. I used Bayer Advanced disease care when they got RUST. They were gorgeous. Will keep you updated.

And let me add that my Hesperaloe parviflora, which I've had for 10 years, looks mostly dead with no sign of new growth to replace the dead leaves.

laceyvail, I wouldn't dig them up just yet, just cut back if you can't stand looking at it. 10 yrs is very established. The cluster of tubers underground are probably OK, some of mine got quite a bit of winter scald so the leaves aren't what they usually are but they are just now putting out new blooms -- no new leaves of yet here a bit further south, they do that later.

If they got too wet however, they might have rotted. You can sometimes tell by your nose with a bit of probing if thats the case.

You are so welcome Bonnie :)

How did your other blanketflower die?

I asked the same question last year.... And Ken gave me a very similar response then, too. I followed what he said and was not disappointed at all!

Well I cut them all back to about 6-8" so now just so watch and wait. We just had a ton of rain over the earlier part of this week so my beds are pretty wet, but no standing water in them at least.
TexasRanger thanks for the sand suggestion, but I think I'll wait and see how it all goes. I've heard conflicting stuff about sand and clay soil so for now I'm just making sure we till some composted manure in any new beds although it probably wouldn't hurt to use it as a yearly addition to the top of the beds too. Hopefully they'll be as big as yours someday.
Thanks again for all of your advice, everyone!

Floral....re: posting pics....I sent her the way I was taught few years back, using the direct link code and adding in an "img src" code. But if there's an easier way, please share :)

bonnie

Hi Bonnie. I don't know about 'img src' code. I only know you can copy the html code which is beside the pic on Photobucket and paste direct into your post. Or if it's only one picture use the tab called 'choose file' on Post a Follow -Up.

Plant them now.

K

Do NOT wait until Fall. It's tricky to store bulbs that long without killing them, particularly lily.

The Daffodils may have a papery covering. The lilies will be scaly. The two of them can probably cohabit fine. (The daffodil blooms early and goes to sleep). The monkey grass is the thing you have to be careful to get rid of if you want the lilies to survive.

though it is only marginally perennial in my area (zone 6), I have been using Verbena canadensis as an annual here. They are typically sold at a nominal price....they are perfect for the cascading wall effect.. they bloom heavily but aren't a single blanket of blooms... a single plant can spread nicely within a single year.. blooming continually until the fall... and they don't need to be tended at all.

They will root down where the stems touch the soil, but are very easily to pull up after the fall or in the spring. And they come in a few color varieties.

lacyvail,

A bit late! Last year I planted a couple of Rozannes, which I believe are Geranium Sanguineum. I thought they spread by rhizomes and the seeds were sterile? I didn't expect them to shoot seeds all over. Guess I will have to keep my eyes open for that.

My other geraniums are Biokovo, and I love the fragrance of the leaves!

An unusually cold winter + Ruellia could well mean no plants this year in zone 6.

If whatever species/hybrid it is is marginal in z. 6, it still might be worth trying again.

I never found Ruellia hybrids to be especially thuggy in the Gulf Coast region, but maybe that was because I was battling other thugs (like Passiflora "Incense", which was capable of submarining under sidewalks to pop up in new places).

I love this plant, but am about to give up on it because it has to be confined to a container due to a lack of garden space and its running tendencies. If it didn't get so huge, I'd just let it run. Container growing is fine for year one, then it gets so pot bound that it requires watering every day, even though the base sits in a saucer of water. The real difficulty is that splitting and repotting mean all of the old soil and roots need to be disposed of in the trash. :( I hate the waste. But I can understand your wanting to have this plant growing in your garden, njdevil. There is something special about those flowers.

No. Spring fever hasn't hit me yet, although I did buy seeds; my annual, vegetable, and herb seedlings are coming along quite nicely. I've also been busy fixing up the inside of the house - definitely in the buying mood for the house :0) Plus, I'm so overwhelmed with cr@p to do in the yard (since I left a big mess in the fall), I have all that to deal with - part of me is looking forward to getting to work out there while another part of me is dreading it. I plan on starting to tackle the clean-up this weekend.

I'm sure when the weather finally warms up and it's time to hit the nurseries for the yearly annual-buying binge, I'll be all gung-ho :0p

Over the winter, I didn't get to look over catalogs or update my journal or think a lot about what I needed to do this year. And so I've been playing catch up for the past month.

Last Fall, I decided to redo a few areas and put in an order for roses. The nursery sells out quickly so I had to put the order in early. I'm still trying to find disease resistant roses and keep trying a few. And that was the extent of my ordering until March when I had to order vegetable seeds.

When you order roses you have to choose a shipping date and you're supposed to get the barefoot roses in as early as possible, so I chose the last week in March for a shipping date. They came the day we had a week of freezing temperatures and I still had snow on the ground. [g] So I had to keep them in the refrigerator for 10 days before I could plant them. But they are doing great and I'm amazed. I thought for sure they were not going to make it. So that's exciting.

I did go shopping last weekend in that dreary cold rain we had, and had the nurseries all to ourselves. Brought home a few shrubs and native plants. One of the fruiting Sambucus which I am also excited about and have been trying to find one for a couple of years. And tomato plants that I didn't get started in time, that are now sitting under lights until the weather warms up. What about July maybe? :-)

Seriously, this weather has to change soon, right? Every week, I say to myself, this is the last week and the week after that it's finally going to warm up. As soon as we get a sunny week with temperatures in the 70s, we'll all be a lot more excited and motivated!

Hmm, don't recall what variety of globe allium I plant years ago up at my folks' place, but have never had that issue. The allium foliage always dies off long before it causes an issue.

Anemone Robustissima has spread all throughout my perennial bed and gravel paths. The first year it looked so grand, clear pink flowers swaying in the breeze. Now I am constantly trying to pull it out, but it conveniently breaks off at the root and re-grows. I have a few of the others people have mentioned but they have not gone crazy yet. YET. I am trying to get crocosmia to put on a show, but the place it is in gets dry and hot, and I don't baby it. The other one I have is Major Wheeler Honeysuckle and some other red/orange honeysuckle that was popular last year - the name escapes me now. Both were vigorous growers but I just kept pruning them to the space I have allotted for them. They are playing nicely (for now) with a purple clematis and a deep pink John Cabot rose, all trained on the fence that is a backdrop to a driveway bed/hellstrip. The things I do for those cute hummingbirds!!