13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

I wouldn't give up on them so soon considering the extraordinarily harsh winter that is finally (grudgingly) loosening its grip. According to my garden notes, this year we're nearly 6 weeks behind where the garden was in 2012. I have new growth on many perennials but much later than I've seen in recent years.

If the plants were well established and protected from extreme conditions by a sizeable blanket of snow cover, chances are most will survive whatever Ma Nature throws at them.

Gardening (hopefully) teaches patience. Give them more time.

Give em time. I thought mine were gone but are now greening up.

I agree with jayco, find out where it's happy (as cheaply as possible), then add as needed.

I just grow the annual kinds like that one above growing in beach sand. They are just getting ready to open right now, they have naturalized but not invasively so, They come up in fall, winter over, are very early bloom & they keep it up consistently until fall. It doesn't get easier, cheaper or more reliable than that. Sometimes I get solid yellow but others are various amounts of yellow on red.

I should add, I grow them dry, mean & lean, not moist, rich or pampered.

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Sun, Apr 20, 14 at 21:57

In my experience, 'Early Sunrise' does stay at around 18 inches or less.

Kevin

My 'Early Sunrise' plants were grown from seed via the winter sowing method which likely accounts for their additional height. My winter sown Siberian iris plants grow a full foot taller than those from a hothouse/garden nursery.

sara82lee - since Kevin confirmed the height of 'Early Sunrise' in his garden, please disregard the information I posted above regarding height. I'm glad the color and bloom time information was helpful.

Kevin - I wish my winter sown plants grew to less than 2 ft. since where I planted them (at the base of an oak tree) they sure look odd growing so tall!

Gee, you mean you don't live in the nice flat part of West Virginia? ;)

Ha, the nice flat part of WV. But even in the mountains there are open areas and then there are frost pockets--in a holler at the foot of a mountain that cold air just streams down on you. And as for that 20 degree night--I didn't cover the peas, up a couple of inches--who covers peas!!?? And they got bit pretty bad. Never, ever seen or heard of that.

I just love people who give a ⢠name to a wild plant. They even gave a Northwestern mountain name to a Texas southwestern plant. Way to go. I know it by O. speciosa var berlandierii. It grows wild around me and I like to place it on walls and let it roam in my grass (what wild grass that I have). I let it wander at will. Yes it gets into my garden , but , hey, I am not a neat gardener. If you are, rip it out now. It is a thug for a small garden and it will cover an area and look best when it is bloom and then , in Texas, it disappears after awhile. Google it up in DG and there are lots of comments evenly decided between positive and negative.

This plants home ground is some pretty rangy thin soil. Some semi arid wildflowers when given good fertile ground and ample moisture will quickly die from such rich environments. This guy, on the otherhand does not die. it probably thinks it has died and gone to heaven. It has entered the land of milk and honey as far as it is concerned and morphed into a thug.

Mine normally stay somewhat contained, but I starve it. It gets nothing from me. It does go for the deeper dirt. It does not like my thin rocky gravelly dirt but likes the ground that has been effected by leaf litter and the deeper clay of the adobe soils over the thin rocky Brakett soils.

shade it somehow ...

i would have dont this on a rainy day ...

actually i cant even tell if this is indoors or outdoors... crikey ..

bag it to raise humidity if indoors..

ken

I'll add my vote to the "leave it alone and see what happens" suggestion. Plants generally adjust themselves to the conditions in which they're grown.

I would think thats the reason. It's really sad since usually the nicest plants are the ones most likely to rot. Maybe the stems are too thick and juicy and when they freeze all that moisture causes the stems to burst open.... They always seem to die from the center out, not from the edges in as you might think from too much cold.
My best plants usually self seed around August, depending on when they get enough rain to germinate.

I just took off the thick but loose layer of shredded dry leaves I used to cover plants in my cold frame and I was surprised to see that all of the 'Red Skin' digitalis survived our unusually bitter winter. Now, whether I can plant them out and bring them into bloom is another matter, but I'm optimistic.

Being something of a foxglove fanatic, I'm constantly trying them. Many is the time I've had the experience of others up North, that the overwintered plants either don't make it or rot during the first weeks of spring, even when overwintered in a cold frame. This year, I kept the covers on, onto which I'd piled evergreen boughs, and just now got around to removing the boughs and the mulch. I suspect my momentary success has to do with the careful watering in fall (not too much) and holding them until now.

We'll see.

Thank you for your responses last year.

Gary

"Barrington Belle" was developed by Carl G. Klehm so I would trust the images found at Klehm's Song Sparrow website. Have you considered returning the plant to the garden center?

Here is a link that might be useful: Carl G. Klehm

Yeah, I do trust the images at Klehm's, that's what concerns me. I sent the garden center an email asking if I could return it after it blooms if it is not close to the picture. No response as yet.

I think I probably will return it anyhow and just be patient til bloom time and then go shopping. Seems to be much more evidence it is red than pink.

there are two types of H ... the bush/shrub.. and the vine ..

the vine should do fine.. with some selective pruning thru the years.. to keep it on the fence. ...

i would NEVER plant a monoculture ... so put other things along the 30 feet ...

i like autumn clematis... but it can seed somewhat aggressively in some zones ... it doenst in my MI ...figure that out for yourself ...

i have that fence on my split rail... who knew it was called hog wire fence.. lol .. well.. apparently you and google knew...lol

if it were me.. i would.. given the space.. double the bed to 8 feet.. and leave at least 2 feet at the fence.. to walk back there and tend the garden from the other side ... at least you dont need that space to paint a wood fence .... otherwise .. figure out how you reach into a 4 foot deep bed ... presuming you dont have 4 foot monkey like arms .... w/o walking in your flower beds ...

ken

I like the idea of having the vines, either the clematis and/or the honeysuckle as a backdrop, but as others have said, they will need two or three feet added depth to the bed since they don't grow absolutely flat. Since your fence is only 4' high, the vines will reach the top and then spill over unless you train them to grow sideways or you have selected some of the shortest clematis. The spilling over will take depth as well.

I also like the looks of a deeper bed because you can have layers of plants allowing for something to be in bloom or have ornamental foliage for most of the season. In my beds, almost all of which are deeper than 4', I place stepping stones or some type of path in the middle of the bed where I can walk without compacting the soil around the plants when I do maintenance such as weeding or cutting plants back at season's end.

There's also a Shrubs Forum where you might get good ideas.

I am in Central texas, so I don't know your soil and water situation. There a couple of south texans that check in at the Texas forum. Here's a guess, Mexican olive can take part shade, Jasmine,salvia regla, mexican salvias, phlox, iron plant, greek pattern plant, mexican turkscap or sleeping hibiscus is much larger with hanging larger blooms than the texas variety and blooms in fall into winter and is gorgeous but less cold hardy that the normal turkscap but good for you., sago palms and other palms,You can grow many of the dioons that I can not. Mexican or Texan mock orange (harder to find), oak leaf hydrangea ,texas mountain laurel will grow in part shade, it just won't bloom as much. Abutilon, Barbados cherry,Yellow necklace pod, Clethra maybe, rio grande bee bush can take some shade.

This post was edited by wantonamara on Fri, Apr 18, 14 at 23:09

I just picked this plant up today - a six-pack. Didn't say what the specific variety was. Just "Purple" at the top of the tag, and described 18 inches tall, space 10 inches apart. Of course the first thing I did after I bought it was search for it here :)

Any way, it sounds like they are super - easy to collect seed from, so even though I don't have any now, I should have some this fall.

The ones that I thought were dead in the last freeze are coming up from the roots YEA!!!.