13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

I don't see the harm in moving them now - you just moved them this season, so they're not settled in yet, you won't be doing much, if any, in the way of additional root damage if you dig them now. Fall is a great time to move plants, and it's only mid-September, plenty of time to let them grow roots in the nice warm soil. Hibiscus are fairly tough plants. I still have to replant mine, which have been in garbage bags out of the ground about a month due to the patio re-build. I expect them to be fine next season. :0)

If you start some from seed where you want them to be, very often they will bloom the first year.

Thanks for giving me the courage I needed! I moved them all (without cutting the tops which are pretty green) and they haven't skipped a beat! I watered them in and then we had a soaking rain. They haven't wilted at all and I think the tops will continue to feed the roots.

I missed some, I'm sure but will look for them in the spring.

My tops are green and the transplant did not shock anything. They still would live through it regardless.

Nice capture! Those speedsters are not the easiest to keep in a viewfinder. Unfortunately, I don't get to see them very often.

The one in your picture is called White Lined Sphinx moth, another common one is the Clearwing Spinx moth, both commonly called hummingbird moths.

Here's a picture of the cat of the WLS moth, feeding on gaura lindheimeri:

And a picture of a CW feeding on phlox Delta Snow. They love phlox and verbena:

Karen

While species Agastache have been reliable performers/reseeders in my zone, I've not found that any of the cultivars have returned after a season or two. I've grown any number of them from seed via winter sowing without seeing any success in their second year. Even the volunteer Verbena bonariensis that showed up in my garden a couple of years ago has disappeared.

Normally seed-grown winter sown perennials are hardier than nursery-grown plants but I haven't found Agastache particularly hardy compared to other perennials that are more zone-appropriate.

Wish I could be of more help. I love RS and have paired it with Gaura lindheimeri in my cottage garden bed but thanks to wet conditions it hasn't prospered. In my garden the RS either gets full sun + too much water or appropriate moisture + too little sun.

The zone thing may still be a problem but check out Tricyrtis hirta/toad lily. Mine are blooming now in both full shade and part sun--might work for you. Missouri Botanical Garden website rates it hardy to Z4. The flowers are speckled purple & white. Oh, and the bees love them.

I've seen many posts on this forum on how difficult it is to keep agastache going in cooler wetter climates. I have Black Adder and Blue Blazes and love them, but I live in the Southwest where agastaches are everywhere.

How about salvia? There are many beautiful deep purple/blues that would make a striking contrast with the heleniums and rudbeckia. I've grown East Friesland, Marcus, May Night. All are hardy to Z5.

Or lavender - Hidcote or Munstead are both striking deep blues. I grew Hidcote in Z5 and it came back reliably every year.

If a shrub would be acceptable, caryopteris Dark Knight is a vibrant deep blue.

None of these has as long a flowering season as RS, but all have deep color.

Cheryl

I do. I love my tumblers. I got one off of craigslist for a great price. The second one was found by the side of the road - can you believe it?! - by a friend of mine, who drove home to get some bungee cords to bring it home. I told her I would have stood next to it and called for help, lol. No way I would have left that spot. But she came back and it was still there, and she took it home and tried it for a year and didn't like it, so gave it to me. This one is even better than the first.

The first one I have is an older model - the basic drum high up on a stand that is cube-shaped, if you know what I mean. The second sits on two triangular shaped legs, which makes it much lower - the top of the tumbler is about waist level, as opposed to over my head with the older model. The newer one also has bars inside it, which help break things up when tumbling. And the turning mechanism is easier as well. It's a smaller gear inside a larger one - I think of spirograph even time I turn it, lol, which probably just dated me, lol - but it is easier to turn.

Anyway, neither of these came with a manual, and I don't use them to "get compost in two weeks!" like the ads say. I just like them because they are enclosed, are easy to turn, and keep things on the tidy side. I don't have open piles to begin with, composting in a few black bins and a few converted garbage cans, so the tumblers are much easier to turn and unload than the cans and bins.

They are slow, but that's okay (and yet they are faster than the cans and bins). Someday I'd love to have a three-bin system, with nice big bays, etc. I sometimes drool over photos on the soil & compost forum, lol, but for now, the bins, cans, and tumblers work well for me. Especially since I use a large amount of the compost before it's completely finished.

Sorry, bonniejean, didn't mean to get so far off topic, but maybe this has been of some help to you as well.

:)
Dee

Thanks Dee for your experiences with the tumblers. I hadn't thought of looking on Craig's List either. Yes, sorry if we have gotten off topic. :-)

I love your dark pink "child" hibiscus, woody. My hibiscus include a white with red eye, a dark burgundy, and a white all grown from traded seed and a Plum Crazy. Also planted a deep red, Fireball, this spring. Surprising I don't have any pink. There is a Pink Swirl that I have my eye on at a local nursery. May pick it up if it is still there in another week or two when they have their fall close out sale.

'Fireball' is my favorite red one now - the petals seem to be thicker than on others and I think that helps make the color more intense and saturated. It's been the one that gets the most comments from people walking by.

LOL re the song.... :-)

If you trim the Sedum back in June or July, it makes it shorter and bushier and will help with flopping (blooms may be a little smaller). Or grow in a super lean dry location.

My peony foliage looks pretty good except for Duchess de Nemours. She gets brown foliage and looks crappy while the ones growing 4 feet away are fine!

Asters are just coming in, and Alma Potschke has lots of buds this year, but the lower foliage looks terrible. Aster cordifolius has the nicest foliage of all my asters.

Many hostas look good. Geranium Rozanne is a workhorse. Blooms and foliage still look great. What a long bloomer.

PG79, it's a fast growing New England aster, of medium height, called 'Alma Pötschke', the cultivar name.

Agree with you. It's my favourite aster and one of my favourite perennials!

The full cultivar name could be taken as 'Andenken an Alma Pötschke' (Royal Horticultural Society). That translates from German as "Memory of Alma Pötschke".

As you point out Terrene, when a property owner doesn't realize the plants potential to travel and doesn't keep it under control it can be a problem. I have had this plant under a large Maple for over 20 years and have nothing but good things to say about it. It was here when we moved in. But it is in an area that limits it's ability to travel. Bordered on one side by the street, a second side by the driveway and a third side by a fence, and the fourth side has a rock edge with another 15 ft of mulch on the other side of it. It takes very little effort to keep it out of trouble. It looks good all year and provides a low maintenance area under a Maple that I've been adding tiarella, ferns, hosta and epimedium to the existing spring display of crocus.

I didn't realize it's potential to travel until I tried to take some from that area and plant it in a sunnier area of the back garden, where it quickly developed from 3 small plants to a 6ft patch in one season. So it was removed after one season there. I didn't find it much harder to remove than any other plant. We pulled it all by hand and I haven't had regrowth since. I have a weedy plant in the yard that may be a Campanula that gives me much more trouble than this plant did. One I have pulled and pulled and pulled and it always returns. And nowhere near as bad as Witchgrass, which caused me to shut down my vegetable garden for 2 years because I was so sick of dealing with it.

This is what it can do in full sun here. Synonyms for thick? Congested? Inundated? Looks like a rat habitat to me.

Thanks for posting those pictures, woodyoak. I'm really over wimpy plants and things that need to be babied.

For now, I've put Lamb's Ears (Stachys byzantina) in the spots. The leaf size and color worked well, and I had some I could move there, so I can give it a try for free and decide if I'd prefer something else.

Yikes Woody, I've been pining away over 'My Monet' and have never been able to find it locally. Maybe it's for the best..plants that get crispy or stay small in places with summer rain are definitely to be avoided here where summers are dry.

ruth--I agree with Thyme, I cut my Symphytum (Axminster Gold) back multiple times during the season and fresh new growth is forthcoming.

Kathy in Napa

Gardening isn't for wussies. It's been heavy rain here non-stop all season, to the point that after years of waiting, back in July I finally called my son and told him to come fix my leaky gutter NOW before the window frame rotted out!! My cellar has been flooded since May but he fixed the gutter so at least it hasn't been inundated since. I haven't even checked my rain gauge--it's been full since May. Numbers won't make it less.

Flash flood warnings have been frequent all season. I don't live near any large rivers but have seen the damage that extreme precipitation can wreak on my town. Not too long ago every road in town was closed due to storm damage & power was knocked out for 12 days.

Ginormous weeds have come up through more than a foot of mulch spread over two layers of corrugated cardboard. Hostas that normally grow to a modest size were twice that size this year and easily crowded other shade lovers growing in the same bed. So far there don't appear to be a significant number of casualties.

Those of you who're wishing for more rain, be careful what you wish for. The garden fairy just might grant your wish.

gardenweed - I'm one of those who wished for rain. We've been hit by the same storms that have deluged Colorado, though not to the same extent. We had 2" of rain since yesterday, most of it falling overnight. We live in a desert, with average annual rainfall normally below 10" a year. This past week it's been pouring. Our water storage tanks have been overflowing, even with the pumps running nonstop to try to keep the level down.

As a result of the abnormal rain, everything has turned green instead of the normal drab dusty brown. I discovered that the open space, normally a barren area of cactus, rock and sage, is actually a prairie! Native grasses (little bluestem, sideoats, Indian rice) are sprouting everywhere. The rabbits are in heaven. I spent most of today digging out the silverleaf nightshade which I only discovered this week is a very poisonous invasive weed. But I'm so happy for the rain I don't care about the weeds.

Cheryl

Now I'm glad I picked up 3 this year. I stumbled upon them in a nursery I had never been to before and they were only ten bucks each. Sound like I've done OK with placement based on what you've all said about sun.

Steve, would love to see a photo of the area you describe.
GG, pretty cool to get a pic in a catalog!

You can buy them online but not cheap. I'm chopping and changing stuff all the time but I have 4 of these established and they will not be moving any time soon for sure. Great plants. Have some paired with Ligularia

i potted the cuttings that i got yesterday. i'm shameless about begging cuttings or seeds when i spot something that i like. i originally wanted the darker varitey because honey bees seemed more attracted to it. being a beeker i'm always looking for plants that they like.
mulch mama ( or anyone else )- i'd gladly send you some postage for cuttings if you ever cut yours back.

a small lesson in nomenclature .... naming rules ...

sedum 'autumn joy' is a named culitvar..

there should be no variation in the plants ... other than perhaps size due to cultural conditions .... [hyper-fertilization being the root evil]

so ... according to nomenclature rules... there are no other varieties ... of autumn joy ....

so your question.. more properly.. is .. what if any other cultivars.. CULTIvated VARietieS .... are there ....

so when you say: i've seen autumn glory grow to different heights & bloom in different colors

the correct response is that you have NOT seen various colors of AUTUMN JOY ... because autumn joy only has one color ... [and i am a little more than confused at someone saying its brilliant pink flowers are dusty .. makes me wonder if the plant that mom has had for 50 years is mislabeled] ..

so we are now offering you other named culitvars... in a spectrum of colors... for you to track down.. because you know the PROPER NAMES of them ...

but alas.. they are not autumn joy ....

you will go far in the garden world.. if you start learning the proper .. full.. latin names.. because that is how you communicate with us.. and the nursery guy .... you dont go in.. and say i want the yellow autumn joy ... because his head wills start spinning .. lol ... oh.. he will take your money.. but who knows what you will get .... but it will not be AJ ....

i hope you enjoyed the learnin.. now back to our normally scheduled program ..

ken

ps: i know exactly what you were trying to ask ....

Perhaps we will see next year. My neighbor now says that she doesn't think she planted it - thinks it might have come from seeds from birds, which she feeds. I think that is unlikely because she is always weeding her beds.

But, hopefully it will bloom next year and then I can post the flower for an ID!

Linda

Perhaps we will see next year. My neighbor now says that she doesn't think she planted it - thinks it might have come from seeds from birds, which she feeds. I think that is unlikely because she is always weeding her beds.

But, hopefully it will bloom next year and then I can post the flower for an ID!

Linda