13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

When I say died back, I mean when the plant normally go dormant in the fall. I thought these guys were suppose to be fairly reliable as a perennial as long as it gets enough water.

Paul

To make it bushier, simply pinch the tips. It will respond by getting bushier.

APPARENTLY ... lol

ken

pbl - :) I need a relatively fast-growing, thick evergreen plant that will stay leafy on a trellis year round. The goal is to block my neighbor's view into my yard, as they enjoy banging on their window and yelling at me when they see me outside. I know ivy can get out of hand and I intend to keep a very close eye on it.

Ken - I'm not really sure what ivy would work best in this situation, which is why I haven't looked at specific cultivars yet. I can get common English ivy from my local nursery, though I'm not adverse to ordering something else via mail.

So, if I wanted to grow common English ivy in a container, what size container and what type of media would give them plant the best chance of surviving the winter?

The Profusion Zinnias are wonderful. I bought just a few of them this year, but the darn critters ate them all. Now I can't find them except at Steins, and too expensive for a tiny 3-pack. They really ARE blooming machines. Has anyone seen them at the discount chains? I want to replace them.

There is a shorter Verbena bonariensis though I love the tall one. Buenos Aires and Lollipop are shorter.

I'm in 2b and it's an aggressive spreader here, so the cold won't stop it. I find that you can control it to a certain degree, but it's when you want to totally eradicate it where you will run into trouble. It's almost impossible to do unless you go after it for YEARS.

I agree that it is pretty but I will never, ever plant it again nor advise anyone else to.

Here in the PNW it is very invasive, I've seen it jump from cement containers (retaining wall built in planter) at my brother's, take over a friends entire back yard smothering hostas and ferns and also it jumped a sidewalk by sending runners under it at the house I rented before buying our current house.

I thought it was pretty and introduced it to friends and relatives as I had just moved here from Arizona and wasn't familiar with it's habit. Twenty years later they are still fighting it. I moved....

I was thinking of heuchera too :) I can't make the bed any bigger than it is, but I can go with smaller heuchera like Obsidian or something. BTW, any heucheras, like obsidian, that are darker leafed can take more sun than the lighter colored ones like Citronelle.

This are dark leaf Heucheras excellent performers and grow on full sun for me: 'Midnight Rose', 'Black Out', 'Stormy Seas'. Everyone says that 'Palace Purple' is bulletproof, but it is too plain to my taste...

Orange 'Caramel' is also in full sun, but its leaves do get burned sometimes. Not a real problem though - it is easy just pulling those burned leaves off.

Just to clarify, the ribbon grass is in an old clay chimney tile set set slightly above grade so its foliage can mingle with other plants, but it doesn't escape.

Heliopsis: blooms last a long time.

Betty

Woo hoo, so glad to hear that it won't revolt and die the instant it comes into contact with clay. :)

Incidentally, how would one improve drainage in a bed of clay soil? It's not a raised bed, it's on the ground though I do work compost into it pretty well.

There is sort of a short answer and a long answer to the "how to improve drainage in clay soil" question. The short answer, ie, the quick fix, is to work in as much sand and organic matter (peat, compost) as possible. The more complex, long term would include doing the above, but also fixing the bigger issues such as making raised beds, installing drains or even making a swale or raingarden at the low end to channel and collect water away.

Great ideas...thank you!

Just wanted to share that I bought a package of pest netting...very thin and almost invisible when you are standing away and looking at it. We guided the vines (talk about intertwined and messy) along and around this netting. Hoping that it will stay up for the season!

They also love Yews, even more than Arborvitae. I have 3 Taxus cuspidata (Japanese Yew) that are growing in tree form - they look lovely and interesting, although it takes decades for a Yew to grow into a tree since they grow very slowly at about 2-3 inches per year. And it's probably not a coincidence that most of foliage starts at just above deer-browsing height.

My neighbors have many Yews that are sheared into meatballs or meat loaves or other weird shapes. There have been hit hard by deer browsing during a couple winters, but they filled in again during the growing season.

Deer have eaten juniper in my garden during the winter.
The juniper was under the snow,but, they pawed away until the upper branches were exposed and feasted away. Severe pruning in spring brought them back, but,these are 5 foot spreading plants,not tall uprights.

Congrats on your seedlings! You must have good conditions for the seeds to germinate. Are they blooming this year or did they just sprout?

I have transplanted Foxgloves many times. They are tolerant of transplanting, even in the Spring. If your are small then they should transplant just fine. I would try to get a large rootball and disturb it as little as possible, and move them to a spot that's on the shady side. Then water well all summer.

My biggest concern about growing Foxglove is that it seems the crown can easily rot over the winter.

This is assorted D. purpurea in my front garden - Camelot Cream, Apricot Beauty, and some Excelsior hybrids. It was all started from seed last year. The ones in the foreground of this pic were transplanted there in April as fairly large clumps, to fill in some empty spots where the voles wiped out my perennials.

This is Digitalis 'Camelot Cream' -

I've got about 6-8 blooming stalks and many non-blooming leaf rosettes around them. I took a close look today (it was raining before) and realized I have 2 colors: the typical pink spotted, and a pale yellow/ivory, much like the one in the center of your second photo, terrene. I don't know whether it crossed or (If I did get these in a swap), there was more than one plant in the pot.
I had a bloom stalk last year, but only pink, and I only recall there being one. I usually keep records of what I plant, but drop the ball on that concept frequently.
Though it is one of the sunnier parts of my yard, it does get some shade, and it tends to be moist there.

Jennypat, I too have tried many times! That's what make me think it was from a swap, as I don't see myself buying a foxglove when I have never gotten more than a year or two out of them. But I'm always willing to try someone's seedling: I seem to have much better luck with a garden grown seeding than a full grown nursery perennial. I'm guessing they are just more adaptable when small.

True Nina, I was in the nursery during April, and they were unloading some Foxglove that was sending up blooming stalks. That was about 6 weeks before they would normally bloom in this zone. I asked an employee about that and she said that customers won't buy plants unless they're blooming.

It may be instant gratification, but it's a brief gratification to spend big money buying a short-lived bloomer like the biennial Foxglove! Sometimes you can get another year out of it if you deadhead diligently. And it's SO easy and cheap to start from seed.

Although I grow my plants hard, it is worth the reminder that plants grown in containers are a completely different proposition to plants raised in a living garden. There are some definate issues involved with the artifical pushing of containerised, greenhouse grown plants (and yes, added gibberellins and such) which I think is fair for Mosswitch to comment on. However, I have found plants to be supremely adaptable and well able to make the transition from total pampering to the frugal (some would say brutal) treatment at my hands where the only fertiliser is coming from soil and sunlightand compost, and water is a rare treat. It may even take a season of floppy lush growth before they harden off to become smaller, tougher specimens with little need for staking. It may be that they are like husbands - treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen, but mine go through a sort of trial of hardship and those which survive (a remarkably high percentage) generally continue to thrive. It is also true that watering is as much of a contentious issue as nutrients since it is far worse to offer regular watering unless you are able to continue with the same regime all season - those poor little roots, loitering near the surface in the hopes of a reviving shower compared to the deeply foraging roots which have had to work hard for a living....
My home garden, as opposed to my allotment, is almost totally pot bound - and here, I absolutely have to offer additional food and no matter how deep roots might delve, they are never going to get much further than the hard terracotta pot bottom (although there are always those which make a break for freedom through the drainage holes). Horses for courses then, with generalisations being useful if only to stimulate a wider debate.
FWIW, I would never resort to Miracle-Gro as I detest the Scott corporation and really do believe that it is the plant food equivalent of fast food - a truly junky Big Mac feast of cheap carbs and sugars.

So, do you know what kind of milkweed it is? Has it flowered for you?

Nope I have no idea what kind of milkweed, I just planted it last fall, and it has not flowered yet. I DO know it is not swamp milkweed, I have that growing wild all over the place.

I have Homestead Verbena and Nepeta growing in area that I was considering using preen. Afraid it may damage the verbena since it trails. May try something organic. Thanks for the posts!

In areas where I don't encourage self-seeding of valuable plants, I use mulch to both control weeds and feed the soil.

Preen does nothing for soil quality, obviously, has to keep being applied (the cost is not insignificant) and last I checked there was some question about its possible deleterious effect on amphibians (i.e. toads, which I encourage in the garden to keep down pests). As to whether there might be an unknown long-term health effect on humans from using a broad-spectrum herbicide, that's one more thing I don't have to think about by not using Preen.