13,520 Garden Web Discussions | Perennials

Yea well, you live and learn,

in an average summer the temperatures rise to 100 F and slightly more, just not last August....

And I think it slowed down some plants.

So now we have durable, sturdy black stuff in place, areas around the apple tree or which are too stony get covered with cardbord/ newspaper, which I started collecting last winter.

Now I am pondering to buy some thermometer gimick thingy to really clock maximum soil temperatures (there is a sciences nerd slumbering inside me...).

We planed to keep it covered till September, could check occasionally and play with lay out ideas in the meantime. One surprisingly annoying weed or wildflower is pilewort (Ranunculus ficaria) which IME can smother freshly planted perennials and is a nightmare in a veggie plot. Hope we get that stuff removed, well or resort to plan B and plant really tall perennials. :-)

Well than thanks for your comments, bye Lin

I went out this weekend and began clearing last year's plant debris from garden that had been under the black plastic. I was pleasantly surprised that there were almost no weeds, even though it has been uncovered since winter, due to the plastic becoming brittle. All my other beds have a fair number of weeds popping up so I really think the black plastic helped.

The few perennials that I did not remove from the bed due to the bindweed infestation were peeking out - Daylillies, yarrow and a peony. I think this method would have been great if I could have kept the plastic on longer. In any case, I dug out what was left and plan to plant the grass seed tonight.

Good luck with the new method Lin!

Lupins will not grow well in alkaline soil - I can always get one decent year out of them but they just go chlorotic and fade away.

Slugs eat the emerging foliage to the ground if I don't bait them--reminds me to get some beer!
Beautiful Derek!

Thanks for coming back and updating, CMK.

Red Satin is coming back here as well. Now if she can stay healthy this well be great. Star Clusters are back for the fourth year now.

Yes catkin. The outer edges have shallow roots. The main root is much deeper but is easy to remove also, if necessary.

Thanks (although late) Peren!

In case anyone is interested the program i use is called Realtime Landscape Architect by Ideaspectrum I gave a link to their page where you can download the fully functional (yes you can save) trial version. Only difference between it and the full version is the amount of plants and materials available to you and its says trial all across it other than that its a pretty great program and you can import your own materials into the program and also googlesketchup files

Here is a link that might be useful: Realtime Landscape Architect Free Trial

I'm a bit stuck with Realtime Landscape and I can't find a dedicated forum. How do you create those raised flower beds? If I use Terrain / Area Grader I can't go any narrower than 1.52m. If I use Add / Landscape / Region then I get a hump with rounded sides attached to the base even with Height Taper at 100.
Thanks

I have always thought cardinalis preferred wet soil mine plenty wet but sunny dont do well is it just to hot near greenville nc

Lobelia cardinalis grows on banks and sandbars of rivers here. It certainly prefers wet. And yes, you should have an evergreen basal rosette all winter..and growth from that should be initiating upward now.

And another funny thread on Home Disasters:

Anyone remember the thread about DH's disasters?

I really love these old threads full of wisdom, common and not-so-common sense, and funny stories. I've been reading this forum (the GW forums) for years and I always get something new from the old threads. So thank you!

"with an open crawl space under the porch" . . . I would start by using wire mesh or latticework to cover this to keep critters out. Around here, it's common for skunks to want to move into dark areas like this, and I can't imagine that you'd like them as close neighbors.

You might want to do two or three photos of your home from across the road. Take one that looks at the whole front yard straight on, and one standing in the same place but rotated to the left of center a third from the same spot, but rotated right of center. That way anyone giving you advice has a feel for the entire yard you want to landscape.

we are imaginative but not that good! Get out there with yhour cell phone at take some shots.

Each situation is different and where I live it is very different than the two posters above. Here I grow xeric plants because I got tired of wasting water, besides its getting to the point that supplemental watering is not an option if a person has a conscience at all down here in the hotter and dryer Midwest and SW. Many xeric plants do not benefit from the addition of compost, it makes the soil too rich -- so what to do? It is advised to add Soil Mender (trademark) Expanded Shale, very coarse sand or chicken gravel. What I was after was raised beds with lean soil that drains fast. Thats what I got.

I brought in drainage material by the truckloads. Amount matters and people who have done this successfully will agree with that. Those who merely theorize, I don't listen to (obviously) especially if they live in a place so entirely different than mine.

I second Ken's statement in the original post ANYTHING BUT CLAY. Roots cannot breathe in it, its a sea of sticky mud after rain, it dries hard as a rock & forms large cracks in summer which harms foundations, its hard to water once it dries out which happens quickly here and it is unpleasant in every imaginable way.

Personally I hate gardening in clay, I refuse to garden in clay and I have definitely fixed that by getting drastic and not letting tales of doom influence me. My soil is now sandy. Most plants that are appealing to me require excellent drainage and are not conventional bedding plants & they do quite well in it and have for several years now but I also found the more conventional plants do very well too. I've read all the comments against doing this and how it makes concrete (false) but my experience in my particular case in this particular part of the country for my purposes has proved it to be very successful. I always wonder if all those people saying to never add sand have ever actually done it or are they all just quoting from the same source? I don't know but I do wonder.

"I second Ken's statement in the original post ANYTHING BUT CLAY. Roots cannot breathe in it, its a sea of sticky mud after rain, it dries hard as a rock & forms large cracks in summer which harms foundations, its hard to water once it dries out which happens quickly here and it is unpleasant in every imaginable way."
This is true of the "bad clays". There are better soils classified by USGS as "loamy clays" that are some cases considered excellent agricultural and agronomic assets.

"I always wonder if all those people saying to never add sand have ever actually done it"

Yes I've been gardening since I was a child and at some point in my teen years naively added a bag of play sand to an 5'X5' area because I'd read somewhere it would help me grow dwarf conifers. In fact it, yes, formed something that became, in places, even hardier than the native red clay of Virginia. There IS a way to do it: if it worked well for you, you found that way. But it's not always the best solution...just as adding organics is not always the best solution, either! I think we are all more or less agreeing there is not always a one-size-fits-all fix.

cf: http://puyallup.wsu.edu/~linda%20chalker-scott/horticultural%20myths_files/Myths/Amendments%202.pdf

Lovely, davids10z.

And we're only at this stage today!

thank you, thank you. i hope your spring will come with a rush. after months of unseasonable weather, 2 nights ago the tops of all the hosta pips and the aruncus froze at 28 degrees. one of the good points about having so many things is that there's always something to take our minds off little things like that.

Hi everyone! I am so grateful to all of you for your helpful comments. I will definitely go with S. Caradonna! You are all so responsive and generous with your knowledge. What a great group of 'gardeners' we have on this forum! Thank you all very much!

I love my salvia nemorosa Caradonna. This year I'm trying I'm trying S. nemorosa New Dimension Blue. It really looks nice. The nemorosas are one of the few that seem to be able to handle winter wet.

I also have incredible luck with veronica spicata varieties all except Border Blue. If dead headed they bloom all year. I mostly have the dark purple and blue varieties.

Thank you . I looked it up and that's it.

It is Delosperma, and it would like you to plant it in light, loose soil that drains well. It doesn't like to have it's feet wet.

"When I grew all of these (serious hardy euphorbia obsession!) in my old garden, they crossed readily with my big wulfenii and the seedlings had a lot of red coloring as well as being much more long lived."
Yeah, interesting you saw the same thing I did. My purple surviving one is obviously a hybrid with the nearby E. wulfenii/characias from Joy Creek. You wonder if those various commercial E. X martinii were tested at all for longevity. Maybe they were...with the goal being the opposite of longevity! I wonder the same thing about Digiplexus 'Illumination Flame', which died even in my sunny garage where various other fussy, tender rarities were perfectly happy, like Correa, Agapetes and Lapageria.

Yeah, my Digiplexis didn't make it either. And we had an exceedingly mild winter with temps well above normal. Although supposedly rated to z8, I think that one takes more of its hardiness (or lack thereof) from its Canary Island contributor, Isospslexis canariensis, which is only hardy to around 32F. Was hoping that hardiness rating was true but obviously not, as I had a Z9 winter for sure.

I bought a replacement, tho. I loved the color and hummers loved the flowers.

Yep David, mine came from Ellen (all of them) (lol).

Dbarron, I now see Edelweiss has the one I ordered a few years ago, it was definitely 'Red Sensation': Plant Group
I can't be certain but I wonder if the reason it grows well for me is it has some Alstroemeria psittacina genes in it. Which is one of the species known to tolerate southern heat & humidity. I tried A. psittacina many many years ago but it wasn't very vigorous for me. Broadly speaking, I find that hybrids of heat tolerant species sometimes are even better garden plants than the species themselves.
In any case after all but having given up on Alstroemerias, 'Red Sensation' has been a huge success, blooming on and off all summer. And surviving the past two winters, with snow cover though. (natural the first winter, Kubota front-end-loaded the second!)