13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

Planted some first year plants and flowering now. Too early to tell though

tiny and some blooms. Not the greatest picture but this was from a tiny 3 inch pot sent to me in spring.

By miclino at 2012-07-08

I am a sucker for the purple (or blue to some)/yellow-orange combo as well, so platycodon grandiflorus (balloon flower) makes a nice combo. I also like the combo of bee balm with heliopsis. Caryopteris, Sea Holly (eryngium), Joe Pye Weed(eupatorium maculatum), and Jupiter's Beard (centranthus ruber) would all look nice with 'Summer Sun.'

There are dwarf cultivars of most of the companion plants mentioned above so you can easily find something that will work in front of 'Summer Sun.' Good luck!

I have summer sun with blue salvia on one side and orange lilies and red orange daylilies on the other side. In front is silver lambs ears which I think looks nice together as well.

Its too funny, I thought the same thing last nite that it got down right chilly. Luckily we got about 1/2" rain last nite so it was pretty easy to pull weeds today. It actually felt like a perfect july day! and I was a happy gardener :-)

Jodi

The cool front is supposed to be on its way to me and it can't get here soon enough- I need rain like I have NEVER needed it before.
I just hope it doesn't bring the heavy winds with it.
I have four giant oaks down already that it has been too hot to deal with.

I actually have planted several plants in this heat. Some I've grown from seed and others I bought on sale. I still have quite a few to plant. The key is to keep them watered which I do every other day. The ones in the pot get watered everyday. Some will make it others won't, but for what I paid I'm okay with that. Next week its suppose to be in the low 90s so I'll probably start planting again.

Carl,
Its Kansas bedrock for me, nothing like seeing fossils embedded in rock among the garden plants.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I'll look for a couple of those black cement âÂÂwateringâ pans. I do have foil pans from the food service store, the annuals that dry out too much are in those. But something stronger would be great. I use a litter box the cat rejected (who knows why :) ) for mixing soil. But the cement pans sound better.

Buying too much, and then running out of the right weather to get them in, is just âÂÂwhat I doâÂÂ. That, and the temptation of passing by an out of state nursery that has things I couldn't hope to get here. At least this year, I didn't go to a plant swap! Of course, every time I see something I have been wanting, and it's marked down, I cave in.

The form is actually attractive, it just grew so much this year it is covering other plants, and the raised walkway I use to walk inside my terraced bed.

i know nothing about it..

but if you dont start pruning it back.. you arent going to have any bloom in october..

and then the name would just be stupid

and stupidity.. is usually not a good thing in the garden.. lol..

as usual.. if you have more than one.. experiment

havent seen you since early spring.. been up to anything interesting.. jewelrywise???

ken

I've never tried planting more than one layer of tulips, Mindy. I also wonder how they would do if they were put shoulder to shoulder in two layers. I have a feeling that not all would make it to the surface. Maybe if you're set on two layers you could plant fewer bulbs in each layer?

I haven't had great luck with the tulips I've used coming back and blooming the following year, but I've wondered about storing them out of the ground for the summer - I know that some public gardens and estates dig their tulips after bloom, dry and store over the summer and then replant in fall. One day I'll research that more and try it. My daffodils and grape hyacinths reliably return, of course.

I will try to post a couple of pictures. Wish me luck- I haven't tried this in a few years. I'll also try to post a link to an article from fine gardening on layering bulbs. There were lots of results when I googled "layering bulbs in pots".

Tulip 'Apricot Impression' and muscari - just starting to really bloom.

Red tulips (Greigii?), grape hyacinths and lamium

Tulips and daffodils

Tulips, anemone, heuchera, creeping phlox and alyssum. I forgot about how lovely the anemone was in a pot! Have to do this again. It came back strong the next spring after being planted in the ground.

Adona

Sorry if the photo size is too large. I'll have to figure out how to resize for next time.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fine Gardening article

Here is another bulb-layering article. It is written by Sarah Raven, a gardener I always find original and inspiring. While the description of how deep and far apart to plant the bulbs is sound, this is written for gardeners in England, so the watering advice and instructions on how to insulate the pots may not be something to follow.

But, oh, don't those bulb combinations sound fantastic?!?

Adona

Here is a link that might be useful: bulb lasagna

I think it's one of the plants I consider a must have.

These two were at least five years old before they started suckering. It was also after I started shearing them off halfway to encourage fuller more upright growth and flowers....

I have a dwarf 'Little Spire' and it IS smaller and has not suckered....yet....

No seedlings just suckers.

Yeah, like all those photos of Purple Prince orienpet lily, showing a deep saturated purple. Hah! Try a washed out wimpy lavender. Should be called, "Effete Heir," not Purple Prince. An reputable sellers are showing these photos, too.

Maybe it's time to bring back the old-fashioned printed catalog? To me at least, it's always very obvious if a photo has been enhanced in any way when you see it on paper. There are some really terrible catalogs out there, but also some marvelous ones where I trust the photos I'm seeing.

'The Lily Source' catalog comes to mind as one of the better ones. The lilies I ordered from them did actually look like the photos printed in the catalog.

Kevin

I do not know exactly when they are ready. But I know that if you do not deadhead the flowers, you will have hundreds of seedlings without doing anything.

Thanks, wieslaw59. I'm going to throw the heads a little to the side (opposite side of the lily) and let them spread a little further that way. When the leaves started sprouting up it looked like lunaria/moneyplant to me. Then it didn't anymore. I was thinking they were sunflowers but they were too small. I love sun flowers so I love that these are "perennial sunflowers" (or close enough to it!)

Follow up - read online when the seeds are loose they're ready for collecting :)

Those coreopsis have always made me wonder. The tag said Moonbeam but I do not believe they are as Zagreb are more commonly purchased around here. Also arn't Moonbeam a more dainty yellow? softer?

The orange center is probably do to the Shasta Daisy really blowing out the sensors on the camera and compensating.

Let me look for the tags on the cone flowers and Shastas - the daylilies are an unknown. We grabed them before we moved. My wife's grandmother was the grand pooba of a daylillie organization and had fields and fields of different ones. However they do seem common around southern Wisconsin.

Here is a better shot of the three

Just lovely! I've been wondering about my Shasta's too. they're close to 5 feet tall this year - usually only 3-4 ft. Maybe it was the mild winter and early Spring?

I also look for that new basal foliage, but trim stems by hand doing a cut I call the pony tail because I grab stems in left hand using right hand to help pull them altogether, then snip with pruners.

corrine, i am TAKING that Pony Tail name; exACTly how i 'whack' everything! thx so much; perfect moniker!
best,
mindy
www.cottonarboretum.com/

Thanks for the info. I went to the site and found it to be not user-friendly. I couldn't understand the amounts - grams or portions? and the price was in euros and the minimum order was 25 euros. sigh....

I agree with you that it is not user friendly, it took me a while to find the plants. One gram costs 6,8 euro, and one portion 3,4 euro. One portion is enough for 50-100 plants(if you keep your 'arrow' over the signs it will show what the signs means. I think you can pay in dollars, as they have their office in US(It will be approximately the same amount, a little more in dollars).

There is also a firm called B and T World Seeds, they are more expensive, but not minimum order as far as I know.