13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials
Downloaded Adblock Plus onto my tablet and the REALLY ANNOYING, GETTING IRRITATINGLY MORE FREQUENT new popup that only shows up on my tablet is now toast. Yeah!!!!!!!! I will never, ever purchase that product, I can assure you. It's funny to me, though that this one ad is the only one that has ever gotten through my regular filter. They should know better than to make it that intrusive.
i doubt it will do any damage ...
perhaps its time to move the bird house.. after the brood is gone ... its a rather simple solution ....
it simply means mom and dad are cleaning out after the babes ...
what kind of birds are they ???
if you are using anything other than a real camera... hold it upright when you take the pix.. or so i am told ...
ken
Hi, Ken. Thanks. It was upright. But you (and others) seem to frequently have problems with my photos being right side up. No idea why.
They are sort if non-description black birds. I haven't been able to id them yet. Last year we had both grackles and blue birds in there and neither made such a mess.
Great info. As for adding perlite to garden soil, i don't add it intentionally to my garden or my compost, due to the fact that if used in my beds, it has a tendency to float to the surface and to me it looks unnatural. Some always gets in with transplanting, and that's fine. I think in my case i will add some coarse sand and compost. If anyone on here knows anyone who lives where heucherra are indigenous, I would love to hear about the soils they prefer. Pictures of wild heucherra might be worth a google.
Rodja, I did not like Blue Paradise because of its floppiness here(I live near the North Sea- very windy) I'm kind of "allergic" to floppiness. Phlox Blaue Morgen has an identical colour but stands up much better(although not perfect to begin with). The best standing of the "blue" ones is Boguslaw's Blaue(from Germany). This one is storm-proof.
The general rule here in Europe is , that English varieties of phloxes have bigger flowers, but German ones are more practical (healthier and less flopping). It applies also to Delphiniums, Heleniums and Asters.
This post was edited by wieslaw59 on Sun, May 19, 13 at 10:13
Marie - Have you considered Veronica 'Georgia Blue' under the skirts of your Full Moon Japanese maple? I love any combination of blue and gold, and the Veronica's small green leaves would be a nice foliage contrast all summer, especially if there's grass or hosta nearby. It doesn't root deeply and spreads in a friendly manner, spilling around the feet of other plants without overwhelming them. It seems fine in part to much shade, but I haven't tried it in sun.
nhbabs, those look very happy. Your primroses are Primula denticulata, a definite hardy perennial, which enjoys slightly different conditions to the hybrids of P vulgaris including tolerance of acidity and colder winters.
I had a quick look for 'Supernova' and they appear to be Polyanthus-type Primulas which are early spring bloomers even here and are going over by May. The site I found classified them culturally as annuals.
Thanks for clarifying that, Flora. I probably should have actually looked to see exactly what Kent had.
Ken, my soil in most of my beds is well aged manure spread on top of my native acid fine sandy loam. It makes the perfect moist, well-drained beds. I mulch with hardwood shavings.
Hmmm, I realise that nearly all my choices were early season perennials, ignoring some of the rampageous ones which arise later in the year....so to counter that oversight -
vernonia crinita (my susbstitute for Joe Pye Weed (I just don't like the muddiness of it)
Macleaya cordifolia (Yeah, not a late bloomer, but it is resident in the late summer borders so...)
Not a perennial but.......tithonia - i love the clear orange flowers.
miscanthus - obvious, i know, but so lovely (especially varieties with deep copper flowers such as Juli)
arundo donax (those gigantic cool green and white colours are a great backdrop to a group of taller heleniums in a froth of reds and orange.
OK, a bulb but still.......lilium speciosum 'Uchida'. I have many lilies, including some enormous orienpets and trumpets.....but I have a stand of speciosum which return every August, with huge thick trunks, leaves immune to lily-beetle, which reach 3m and arch over the shrubby salvias, stately, reliable and massively exhilarating at that time in the summer when I am heartily fed up with yellows.
And then there are the asters and aconitums for that essential hit of blue.
-Vera, nice to see another EW resident here ;-)
-Doug, too bad we didn't live closer. I have a feeling we would be doing a lot of over-the-fence plant swapping and enabling, LOL. ;-)
-campanula, lol! Yellow is a bit iffy for me in general- it really has to be the right shade (dislike the golden tones in some of them). Know exactly what you mean by getting sick of that color in later summer. If I have to look at one more 'Goldstrum'....GAG. ;-D
CMK
Don't know if anyone is still following this thread. But I've gotten some good ideas. I started organizing my gardening stuff about 3 years ago.....out of necessity. I am forgetful. And I got sick and tired of having to stop, go back in the house get on the computer and look up stuff. So now I have one notebook where I keep general info like instructions on pruning and dividing perennials, fertilizing lawns, and clever ideas I see in garden magazines, just anything rather general.
I have another notebook where there is a page for each plant that contains a picture and growing info, and a description of a location. In that notebook I also have a bar graph type chart of bloom times for the different plants in my yard. That let me see at a glance that I needed to plant something to bloom at a specific time of year. I also have started working on putting photos in there taking of different section of the garden on the first of each month. I also have made a rather detailed chart of actual locations of my plants that shows me how large the plant will eventually grow. It's not that I am organized, it's that I was driving myself crazy with forgetting information. I've also got a sheet in there to tell me what has to be pruned in the spring, summer, or deadheaded during the year, or cut back in the winter. I've also started a diagram to show where the shade/sun is in my yard during the year....again this is out of desperation because my tree is growing and I'm trying to figure out where it is a good idea to put another raised bed for veges.
Along with this I am keeping a very simple journal where I just jot down info like when did I fertilize, what did I use, where I had a problem develop and what I think caused it, I'll note what plant I might want to rip out and what I might want to replace it with, what needs to be moved, general info on the rain (lots or little) and if the temps were unusual, when the hummers showed up. I'm actually pretty surprised at how incredibly useful the info is to me the next year. And I really wish I had started this many years ago. The two notebooks are something that basically only I work on in the winter when I can't be outside gardening. It keeps my mind going! And by the way, I'm not normally a terribly organized person by any stretch of definition, so this all surprises me. I think every person has to find the method that works for their own unique way of thinking. I don't think I could buy something someone else had developed and have it work for me. If I did I would end up giving up on it pretty quickly.
dell
I think what might work well for you depends a lot on your moisture levels, soil and temperatures. There was an earlier thread, linked below, that started about new cultivars of coreopsis, but grew to include many not-so-new varieties. I went through it and made a list of ones that many folks liked and that should be hardy for my area, but the one from that list that I tried has limped along for two years, perhaps because it is borderline hardy for me.
I have been successful growing C. lanceolata and several different threadleaf varieties, but I am from a quite different hardiness zone than you and I don't know if your soil is like mine, so what grows for me may not work for you. If the forum for your more local area is active, this might be a good question to ask there as well. http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/regional/
Here is a link that might be useful: Coreopsis thread
i hope your plants are okay :-)
Any chance the soils been to moist for a while. A lot of mine were looking that way but are starting to do a little better now. Just don't water any of them even if the top looks dry without checking deeper down first. Good Luck!