13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

You may also wish to consider that lavender are most comfortable when slightly root-bound. Planting them in such a large container increases water retention around the roots. I would start them in a much smaller container (only a couple inches larger than the root ball), then gradually move them up to those pictured as the plant grows. It does not necessarily indicate overwatering if water runs out of the bottom -- in fact, it should do so pretty quickly if the soil is well-drained.

As you may have gathered, lavender are somewhat fussy plants. However, the PNW climate (as I understand it, though I know there is a lot of variation from the west to east) has some Mediterranean characteristics (namely, relatively dry summers) so you may have more luck than us poor souls who deal with ridiculous humidity on the east coast.

If I have to transplant anything in mid summer I cut down all flowers. Right now the plant is putting energy into bloom & seed instead of establishing roots.

& yes, you are watering it too much.

If anyone thinks lavenders are fussy then you've never grown Munsteads. They are pretty much bulletproof.

I dig the entire plant, evaluate how large it is and what the root system looks like and then cut into sections. I rarely cut a plant into more than 4 divisions unless it's really huge.

Kevin

For some reason I have never had luck in dividing or moving this grass. I have one plant that I know has been in the same spot well over 10 years. Do tell...what is the secret.

Thoroughly enjoyed my virtual visit, thanks so much!

An old tale from Quarryhill: (quote) The first time that I collected seed of Magnolia wilsonii was in the fall of 1992 on Niba Shan in western Sichuan. Hans Fliegner and Martin Staniforth from Kew, and Charles Howick and I were on our way to Muli in southwestern Sichuan. Our guide from the Chengdu Institute of Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences had told us that it occurred on Niba Shan, so we stopped on our way to take a look. We hunted for hours through dense forest and finally came upon one good sized 10 meter high tree. After a thorough search of the tree, we found only one fruit with six good seeds. We divided these three ways and found out later that Kew successfully germinated one seed, Howick one, and Quarryhill only one. I went over the same mountain two years later in the fall of 1994, this time with Charles Erskine and Hans Fliegner from Kew, and Charles Howick. We were all shocked to see the area where we had found the magnolia two years previously completely denuded and being planted with a monoculture of spruce. We did manage to make a seed collection of Magnolia wilsonii later during that expedition in 1994. On our return to Chengdu, we decided to stop at Luoji Shan. Unlike my recent visit there, this time we were on the other side of the picturesque range. This was long before Luoji Shan was made a Nature Reserve. Now there is a cable car and stone steps bringing thousands of tourists up into this botanical paradise. I first visited Luoji Shan with Charles Howick in 1990 and hadn't noticed any magnolias then. On that first visit we had started from a small Yi village and climbed for days with porters and horses carrying our gear over the rugged steep mountains. However, on our second visit, despite torrential rain, we spotted an area that we had overlooked before just above the village. Here, there were several Magnolia wilsonii, though few had seed. Our frustration with the lack of seeds was further exacerbated by their failure afterward to germinate. That one seed that germinated from our 1992 expedition is now a healthy three meter high tree at Quarryhill, as wide as it is tall. Growing in Sonoma Valley in our rocky acidic soil, in mostly sun with a little light shade from a Toona sinensis, it flowers heavily and consistently year after year. I frequently bring visitors to see it, not just for its beauty and delightful fragrance, but more importantly to tell the story of how it is disappearing from the wild.

For the life of me I cannot figure out how to put pictures into my message. Other than the one I can upload using the browse button on the message form here. I took some pictures of my affected coneflowers. I really hope I don't have to destroy them, as it seems that ALL my coneflowers are affected.
Why is it that my friend about 20 miles away has coneflowers in abundance, she is constantly thinning them out and giving them away. While I have to struggle and fight to keep mine alive, THEN when I finally have some nice looking plants, all of a sudden they look like this.....
I added a link to my flicker site showing the pictures I took.

Jenny p

Here is a link that might be useful: Echinecea photos

The tell-tell sign your plant has asters yellow is the deformed double flower. You are best to take the plant out immediately.

linlily, he was right about them moving to the next house. My neighbor had not had her house inspected or treated after she purchased it 30 years ago. She was in front of her fridge and her foot went through the floor.

She called me for my exterminator's number. That cost her a couple thou for extermination and floor replacement. I know we will always have a problem because of the woods. I get all the trees that fall down cut up and removed immediately. Anytime I find a log and break it open it is filled with termite. I have a big, big, big problem.

hudsonriverbug: Fire ants in Virginia? Say it ain't so! What part of the state are you in?

Would be nice to see an update on how these survived for everyone.

My SC and CE did survive the winter. Here is a recent picture of....one of them i.e. I am not sure which.

It is in much less than full sun and so it is a bit leggy but is a worthwhile member of this area of the garden.

Let any pile of dirt/compost/manure sit and weeds will grow on top and roots will grow into it as well..

Its a friable medium with nutrients.. hence why you want it in your garden. Its not like any manure has to age for two years or something to use it.. I find 5-6 months works just as well.

Ive used about 40 truckloads of horse manure here.. most of it was less then a year old when placed in the gardens..

Of course, Ive used about the same # of compost as well, both are great.

a2zmom - I plant through the cardboard after it has gotten wet, so you can either water the bed well and then cut an X into the cardboard and tuck the flaps under, or most often I just wait a few days or weeks (depending on weather) until the cardboard softens enough to tear with my hands and then plant.

My "Splendide" is over 6 feet tall in its first year and for sure needs staking so surrounding plants that might aid in its support would need to be quite tall. I am hoping that in subsequent years my "Thalictrum" might be a stronger plant and may not need support (a 6 foot tall bamboo pole) but I doubt it.

No, it will keep flopping over. I've had this plant growing in my garden for many years, and no matter how big the base gets, the flower stalks still flop. I just let them go, and trim them back if they're in the way.

Of course anyone has the right to use whatever terminology they prefer but mistascott is correct - ALL fertilizers, organic or not, synthetically fabricated or not, are chemical-based. We might want to check our definitions, but anything listed on the periodic table is a chemical element and the standard definition of 'chemical' is "of or relating to chemistry or of or relating to the properties or actions of chemicals." There is nothing in this definition that limits this to synthetically derived fertilizers.

Heck, since humans are carbon life forms (and carbon is a chemical element), not to mention containing some 60 other chemical elements, we are pretty much walking chemical compounds! To disparage this terminology or to unnecessarily restrict it to synthesized or manufactured materials is to ignore an entire aspect of our scientific make-up, namely organic chemistry.

And I really object to calling fertilizers plant food! It tends to anthropomorphize plants and gardening, which is totally inappropriate (hear, hear, Ken!) as well as misleads one about the actual botanical processes involved with how plants grow. Plants make their own food - it is called autotrophism and is the purpose behind photosynthesis. All fertilizers do is provide access to nutrients that may be deficient or missing in the soil. Outside of container gardening, they are never a requirement and as noted, with a good organic mulch, can often be eliminated from use altogether.

Aside from this semantic clarification, I tend to agree with the majority of the posters. We tend to get brainwashed by the big fert manufacturers into believing we cannot garden successfuly without frequent applications of their latest and greatest. That is simply not so. Most plants established in the landscape are able to draw all the nutrients they need for healthy growth from the soil. There can be limits however and this where the advantage of soil testing comes into play. But generally, replenishing your soil with organic matter via mulch/compost is all the "fertilizer" you will ever need.

ninamarie, a chemical is defined as "a substance with a distinct molecular composition that is produced by or used in a chemical process." Oxygen has a distinct molecular composition and it is produced by or used in chemical processes. It is a chemical element. The word "chemical" in this context is an adjective meaning it describes the type of element. Therefore, oxygen is indeed a chemical. It is a specific type of chemical -- the simplest type -- a chemical element. A chemical compound (perhaps what you think of as a chemical) is formed when atoms of more than one chemical element combine.

Here are the bunnies! Two years ago, I went out to my raised beds, in which I had planted a winter cover crop of vetch. Me being me, I never turned it under when I should have, and so it was well over 18 inches tall when I finally got around to tending to it.

There was a big indentation in one part of the vetch, and lots of fur. These beds are cinder block, two levels high, so I was kind of confused as to what caused the big indentation - did a deer fall over into the bed? LOL, it was odd, to say the least.

So I just happened to show my husband to see if he could figure it out. So he picked up a stick and poked at the fur, not wanting to touch it with his fingers. Well, we got the shock of our lives when the fur poked back, lol! We must have both jumped back a few feet in surprise!

Then it dawned on us that this was a nest! But a nest of what? These teeny tiny little heads poked out and they were so small we couldn't figure out what they were. I thought perhaps chipmunks, my DH thought squirrels, mostly because of the grey fur. It wasn't till a few days later that the little critters morphed enough to tell that they were rabbits!

While I was over the moon with how friggin cute they were, I also groaned because I had visions of my destroyed garden (even though it wasn't even planted yet!) What luck - a nest of goodness knows how many rabbits smack in the middle of my veggie garden.

DH says, "You want me to take care of them?" I laughed and asked who he was, Tony Soprano? But I couldn't harm these little things. How could I? And luckily for me, they grew up and moved away. Never had a bit of damage... thank goodness!

A few days after we found the nest:

Another few days later:

And still another few days:

As cute as these little guys were, I'm content to look at the pictures and hope that I don't find anymore in my vegetable garden!

Dee

Our usuals are skunks-opossums-raccoons. It's the suburbs here, and I have no idea how the poor things survive, but they do. No deer, no rabbits.

Birds: jays, doves, hummers, black phoebes, finches, sparrows, hawks, murders of crows, and flocks of screeching parrots. Occasional flyover of Canada geese.

We have had a bumper crop of lizards the past few years. Saw a little 1-incher recently, so cute.

Did you try the name that plant forum?
It's another forum on gardenweb btw.

I think the last picture might be Ajuga ovalifolia

Flowers similar to all three of your unknowns appear on this blog, but I can't read any of it.

wait.....gardenweb won't let me link it.... it's IDed as a spam source.

The last one may be Ajuga ovalifolia var. calantha. The middle one may be the same or a close relative.

The flowers on the first one look knocked down by rain, which distorts the picture.

Thanks for your input. I decided to put them in a window box that only gets a few hours of morning sun--I figure if the are close to the house, I might remember to water them. We'll see. They are not to-die-for, so I figure it's an interesting experiment, anyway.

I do what the video shows to my heuchera every spring and it works great to propagate many new baby plants. They generally need a year or two before they are mature size. I leave the mother plant in place and it resprouts and looks better than ever again that summer. Also every spring I generally feed them with organic nitrogen rich fert (free used coffee grounds from Starbucks).

I wouldn't recommend doing either in August, though. It's too late in the growing season to be fertilizing perennials and even the PNW is bone dry this time of year; we average less than 1" of rain for the month. If you can't just ignore them until next spring, plant the pieces in pots in good potting soil, keep them well watered and under plastic and cross your fingers. :)

I just planted some Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldstrum' which were sold to me as a perennial, with a common name of Black Eyed Susan's. I planted them where they get lots of afternoon sum. I enhanced the soil with one part peat moss to two parts soil, with some compost thrown in. Now they are wilting in the late afternoon, but perky in the AM. Wondering if this is normal? I hate to water them every day, for fear of over watering.

Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldstrum' is a perennial. It is one of the toughest perennials in my experience, and one of my favorites summer/late summer long bloomers. And they do self seed so you may see a few more plants next year, and so on. So give it some space if you want to have more of them. And they add so much color and life to the late summer garden.They do like afternoon sun!

If they are perky in the AM, you do not need to water them. For the first 4-6 weeks after planting, give it a good watering ~ once or twice/week (depending upon temp, rain, etc). If they do not perk up if the AM, water them. After first year, you typically do not need water any more. This year during the long, hot and dry late June and July, I watered them a couple times, that is all I did for the entire summer.
Best of luck!
Vivian from Northwest Subs of Chicago

The deeper the shade the longer they hang around before going dormant. That you have had yours this long says it as great roots for next year!!

I've had really good luck with my Bleeding Hearts by cutting them WAY back after they're done blooming. I cut them back to the first or second node. This produces a spurt of second growth, and mine are still looking good in almost mid-August. Before I started doing this, they would get all yellow and die off by this time. It took a bit of courage the first time I tried it a couple of years ago, but it worked so well I've been doing it ever since.