new yard plants

Fall is the best time to plant shrubs. And plants are often discounted at the nurseries which are trying to move stock before winter. So for my birthday (last month) I splurged on a bunch of plants for the yard. Some I had always wanted to get- others were a bit of an impulse buy. We've seen how well that goes in the past! haha.

I always wanted to put some rhododendrons in front of the back fence. And now I did. I bought three specimens of 'roseum elegans' which is supposed to be a real tough variety, with pale lavender colored flowers.

Two of them had rather leggy spread, and were difficult to get out of their pots, the roots were so cramped in there.

But the third, to my surprise although it has nice-looking compact growth,

it practically fell out of the pot when I tipped it and gave a tug. The roots were very short, not even a fourth the depth of the pot. Ugh, I found the potting soil full of japanese beetle grubs. I bet they ate all the roots of this poor plant. I loosened all the soil off the roots in search of more, and gave it an extra helping of vermicompost in the ground. Then carefully sifted through all the potting dirt and squished to death every grub. There were over a dozen. Well the rhodies look natural, like they belong back there- but I am not sure if this last one will be healthy. I hope for it.

Summersweet- I don't know much about this plant but the leaves are pretty, it likes shade and dampness, and won't get too big. Well I have a shady spot that is continually damp in the spring and late fall- where our yard slopes down before a storm drain thing in the neighboring backyard. This one is the 'vanilla spice' variety and I am looking forward to its flowers (although they are white) because I love the scent of vanilla. Also, it is a native plant which is a plus.

I am not terribly fond of hydrangeas. I have never wanted to put one in my yard because honestly, I think their round masses of blooms look kinda silly, like giant colored poofballs on a shrub. But I discovered there are hydrangeas with 'panicle' style flowers, which I like better so I decided to try some. Plus their leaves looked nice and healthy with attractive reddish petioles, and they were on sale. The one in front here is 'pinky winky'

and this one is 'quick fire'.

I do think they will be nice- although these pictures were taken a month ago. Now they look rather sad with all the leaves turning color and falling off.

I bought two nandina, or 'heavenly bamboo'. I like the lacy foliage, and it's supposed to grow six feet which will help fill in some space on the side of the house I don't want to have to mow anymore. But it will take a bit of management- it can be invasive and I will have to cut off the berries each fall to prevent birds from spreading the seed around.

This is a plant I always wanted to have but never thought I'd find it sold as a perennial. It caught my eye at once outside the nursery greenhouse- these pots of winding vines with slightly sticky tendrils that were all grabbing onto each other. I read the label: sweet pea! I don't know if it will like the summer heat we get, but if I can see it flower in spring once, I'll be happy.

I got this aster free from the nursery lady because the bottom of it was all so dried-out, I think they were going to throw them away. It was a really tall one. The skippers zoomed in on it immediately, for the two weeks left that it flowered. I asked the nursery staff if it would come back next year for me, and she looked doubtful: "well, if you can get it to root out..." So I gave it a nice helping of vermicompost and have been watering it extra, to see if I can accomplish that.

I took this picture when the aster was in its spot, but I hadn't moved the joe pye weed 'chocolate' yet. You can see it sprawling at the base.

I found some mums I like- not yellows or orange, but pink hues. I got a few and lined them up in front of the house.

Its an area where eventually I want to take out a strip of sad lawn, anyway (I'm working on improving the lawn health, but that's another post entirely). There behind it you can see in a pot in front of the spigot, a new azalea which I didn't take an individual picture of yet. Between the bright green mound of nasturtium and the 'autumn sunset' coleus. The shrubs in front of the windows are boxwood that had never been pruned- I cut back where they were all crowded foreward overhanging the stone edging, but haven't decided what else to do with them yet. And on the left is the ubiquitous euonymus (I see it in lots of yards around here).

Here's a new plant I didn't buy. Someone in my neighborhood- a few blocks away- was digging out black-eyed-susans (rudbeckia hirta) and gave me a few clumps. I've planted them in the back bed. Foliage looks a lot like echinacea. Hope they both bloom for me next year.

salvia cuttings

I ended up with seven new salvia plants, when all done potting them up. They started growing new leaves, which had round shapes not the pointed wedges of the older foliage. Not sure if this is just a pattern for new growth, or a response to the different conditions inside.

I wanted to be able to plant them out before freezing weather, to establish them outside. Started putting them out on the deck to re-acclimated a week or two ago. Just planted them out the day before yesterday. Most of them had little white roots showing at the drain holes of the small pots.

They already look better in the ground than the ones I divided and replanted. I'll see how they do in spring (if they make it). If one or the other survives better, that's the method I'll use to propagate more.

sweet potato vine

Potted up cuttings of sweet potato vine:

Realized all the ones I had inside grow notched leaves, because I had two different varieties on the deck and only took cuttings from one planter. The smooth-leaved vine is also the one that flowered. So I made sure to get some cuttings of that as well:

My sunny winter window spot is getting crowded with plants now. Can see here behind the sweet potato vine, stevia I have cut back and brought indoors, and two second-generation aloe veras (one is growing pups now!).

There's also pepper leaves on the side, and under the sweet po vine, that little succulent that grows babies on its leaf margins, kalanchoe.

appearance

something new started growing in my tank a few weeks ago. Can you see it in the picture?

coleus cuttings

I think my 'kiwi fern' coleus suffered from heat, more than insects this summer. Once it quit being so terribly hot, the plant seemed to revive for a bit. I guess it's not a sun-tolerant variety.

It got rather thin looking, but I still liked its colors.

I have my standard coleus and the kiwi one growing as cuttings in jars now. When I went to cut down the main plants because cold night had killed them, noticed at the base of some pink coleus there were still a few green leaves.

So I tried potting a couple up- in case I could save those through winter. I think I recall doing this before without much success, though.

I also tried to take cuttings of the lime-green orange-centered one, that had such nice, big leaves. Twice. But each time the leaves develop black areas and then just drop off, and the cuttings don't grow roots. Shame.

dried herbs

End of summer I cut a bunch of herbs and hung them to dry. They're now all stripped off the stems and saved in jars. Parsley, thyme, stevia, oregano, sage, spearmint, thai (purple) basil, sweet basil and my favorite - chocolate mint.

the glorious celosia

I have found out what the common name of my crazy celosia plant is: cockscomb. Because the fuzzy, broad blooms

have a wavy edge seen from above.

These flowers got so heavy, the stalks started falling over. I finally got tired of staking them up over and over again, so I cut the broad main blooms off. It still looked pretty with the spiky secondary flowers remaining:

My favorites are the pinks ones.

So I started gathering seed from them. Once the fuzzy stuff starts to dry out and loose color, simply rubbing it with your fingers makes all these shiny black seeds drop out. Cutting the flower heads off the plants, it was really curious to find the flower itself is this flat, crinkle-edged thing that feels like dried leather with fur on it.

You can see from the edge here, how it is this flat plane with the fuzzy stuff growing on either side. I've never really seen another plant that makes a flower like this.

Seed chaff

and the seeds:

I scattered seed from the red ones around the back beds, when the plants starting withering from frost these last two weeks. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I saw that the direct-seeded plants came up late when it was very warm, not until early august. They remained tiny, spiky plants. All bloomed at the same time- the big ones that I started way early in the coldhouse, and the smaller ones that grew straight in the ground. So they must bloom in response to daylight hours, but the size of the bloom depends on how big the plant had a chance to get. If I want my plants to not be so crazy huge next season, I could start them a month later in the coldhouse.

I've also seen ones for sale at the grocery store, that have the blooms snugged close against shorter plants (a foot and a half or so high) with large leaves like my tall ones. I'm guessing those were started early too, but then cut back so the flowers would be on stout, thicker stalks (and maybe not fall over).

Here's how the mailbox spot looked in late september, after I cut off the biggest cockscombs:

You can see sunpatiens on the left really outdid themselves. I wasn't expecting to like this plant, but it lasted longer into the fall than even my coleus. It just got taller and flowered more. Probably will be a repeat in my garden, and maybe even I will take cuttings (though it's hard enough to find space to keep a few sample coleus cuttings going each winter).

failing

Other plants that seem to be dying on me. The lilac. I don't know what's wrong with it. The leaves all look sickly and start to fall off mid-summer. It grew a few more back while fall remained warm, but I don't know if it will continue.

Stonecrop, which I thought was so cute I bought it on a whim. It has not grown or spread much, and the leaves now drift over and cover it completely. I really ought to have put this one near the porch where its diminutive growth pattern could be admired... and I could have kept a better eye on it.

It's still alive though, so maybe I'll have a chance to move it next year.

echeveria and others

Echeveria got the neem oil treatment, too. It recovered better.

I separated out all the younger plants. This central one with the flowering stalk (I think of it as the 'mother plant') is the only one I saved indoors as safekeeping, in case the others don't make it overwintering outside.

Here it is regrown after I potted it up again alone, with its naked stalk buried again:

The young ones outside in the mailbox spot now. They've been there over two months, and are still doing fine! (Also in this picture: pink coleus, sunpatiens, dianthus and flowering purslane).

Others that I had put there in spring did a second and third round of flowering.

Pink crowns all.

loosing battle

I might loose my big jade plant. It was so nice just a few months ago:

Then I noticed tiny little bugs and sticky white residue.

I sprayed it twice with neem oil- the echeveria got this treatment also. Outside, because the smell is awful.

The bugs came back. I noticed they were only on new, smaller leaves on the top of the plant so I gave it a trim, and sprayed again for good measure.

The bugs came back.

I put the plant outside at night. There is a smaller piece of it growing in another pot, which had this infestation first- I think early summer I first saw it. That one I put outside, to keep it away from the other plants. I was going to throw it out, but just forgot about it. It was still outside when the temperatures started dropping at night. Then I noticed the pests on it were gone. I wondered if the cold had killed them.

So I put my big jade outside, too. That night it got a lot colder than I expected. I think I may have killed my plant. Its leaves are flattened and pock-marked now. When I brought it in and tried to rinse the dead insects off with spray in the sink, leaves started dropping off just from the plant getting bumped. In dismay I trimmed it further, cutting back to what seem healthier leaves nearer the base of the plant.

But it continues to drop foliage. I'm afraid it might be done for. It's also really off-center in the pot. I thought of knocking it out of the pot, giving it fresh soil with plenty of drainage, and replacing it more centered. However at the rate it is dropping leaves, the shock of being repotted might be too much. I'm not sure what else to do for it.

It's not much consolation that the younger, smaller jade seems to be doing fine. Also has a nice shape with thicker trunk and lower stems, but it will take a long time to reach the same size.

flowers to seed

Cosmos has finally all died off- from hard frosts this week. It was nice while it lasted.

I collected quite a bit of seed, and scattered more in the backyard bed.

I know they're viable, because quite a few seedlings came up on their own in the pot:

I did not get any from the pink-flowering plants though (which I like better). I thought I had just missed all the seeds when the flowers faded, but went out to look close one day and found that the plants were dying. Riddled with tiny little leaf bugs of some kind. Disappointing in loosing that.

Interestingly, I noticed that the leaf shape is different on the yellow-flowering cosmos and the pink ones. I sorted them by leaf shape when they were seedlings, just because I thought the plants with fuller leaves would look nicer on my deck. I planted all the ferny-looking ones with deeper notched lobes in the back bed. All the ones on the deck flowered orange and yellow, the ones in the back flowered pink.

So now I know if I grow from a mixed packet again, I can sort the seedlings by flower color from the leaf shape.

joe pye flowers

My joe pye weed 'chocolate' bloomed in september. I'm not really fond of fluffy white flowers but appreciate that these attracted lots of insects. Bees in particular:

and skipper butterflies.

But the plant fell over- this is looking down at it.

I found it gets too much sun in this spot. When the blooms faded, I dug it up and moved to the other side of the house, under a tree where it will have more shade.  I don't know if that will help it avoid collapsing next year, but at least it won't suffer from sun- I had to water it frequently this summer as it wilted in the heat a lot.

something different about my aquarium

this week, in an absolutely good way. I have been quite busy and not paying much attention to it, but paused yesterday walking past and noticed hey, it looks better! The plants look lush and healthy- crypt wendtii has that hammered texture in the leaves and a nice dark olive green hue, hygro and buces look glossy, bacopa leaves have doubled in size.

I just wish I knew what is the cause! Recently I changed three things- I switched out the filter pad from sponge to bonded Marineland cut-to-fit filter media. And finally, the intermittent flow clog has stopped. Even when I rinsed out prefilter sponge, it didn't cause the internal media to clog. So flow has been improved. Two: I have been very busy and missed feeding the fish a few times. So not as much nutrients have gone into the tank. Maybe that's a small plus. Three: I took some of the hornwort stems from the top of the tank, and anchored them with stones near substrate instead. So a bit more light is coming in from top (without the loss of nutrient uptake job those plants do).

I can't believe how gorgeous it suddenly looks. I'm afraid of being overwhelmed by some plants soon. And one of my aponogeton crispus is flowering!! I have let the water level drop a bit, even though the splashing sound annoys me, in order to let the flower stay above surface (can't prop the lid open, basement construction is going on and I'm concerned about dust/fumes getting into the tank). Last time I just oogled the thing, this time I'm attempting to get seed and maybe baby plants out of it. I gently brushed up and down the flower stalk with a feather. Crossing fingers.

Pics upcoming, when I'm not so insanely busy!