Mid-season Wrap-Up

  

Dead Week, otherwise known as the All Star break is upon us, and despite the numerous urgings and notifications on my cell phone, I’ve managed to resist place holders like the Futurity Game (a tie) and the Home Run Derby (like we need more!)  Rather, I’ve chosen to spend these several evenings strolling among the flower beds, snipping a mulberry here and pulling a strand of the noxious Honeyvine Milkweed there. In baseball, July is the Continental Divide of the season and soon the teams will divided like the sheep and goats, the contenders and tailenders, the buyers….and the sellers.

Similar categories can be applied to my garden. Some of the successes are by design; some attributed humbly to Mother Nature.  Some of the failures will be blamed post mortem on all kinds of factors...too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry...the usual suspects.  And some of the attempts are strictly bad judgement, otherwise known as operator error.

Unlike our floral posts from Hurst Greenery, where, like Lake Woebegone, all the women are strong, the men are good looking and all the children are above average, not every pot and planting at 502 Spruce is a winner.  In the interests of truth, justice and the American way, here’s my annotated photo album from this All Star Break, dishing the dirt on the losers and praising the winners as worthy of imitation and increase.

First up: an All Star lineup of winged wonders.  This July has outdone itself in volume of butterflies:  every foot step through the clover sends a cloud of Painted Ladies into the air. The representative photo of a Painted Lady as far as Google is concerned shows one delicately perched on a lantana.  At Hurst Greenery, the butterflies have upped their game, settling one, two, and even three at a time on a single bloom. It’s not much of a challenge to photograph a Painted Lady on a bloom! 

Lately the Swallowtails have taken over the spotlight. Their arrival coincides with the peak bloom of the purple coneflowers.  I know their caterpillars favor members of the carrot/dill/parsley family, but coneflowers seem to keep a flighty swallowtail’s attention longer than any other flower.  Fortunately, I have groves of free range echinacea so I occasionally will get a decent photo with my phone if I don’t get greedy.

 The Black Swallowtails found the Liatris in the front flower bed.  Liatris is a tricky plant: a hardy prairie flower that flourishes on hot roadsides in southwest Missouri during the summer, but is difficult to site on our better soils here.  At some point in time, I planted a couple of white ones in front; gradually, they reseeded and volunteered, reverting to the pinky lavender color I would characterize as Crayola ‘Thistle’ and making a cheery combination with the lemony Happy Returns daylilies.  Liatris blooms from the top down rather than the bottom up like other spiky flowers such as snapdragons or gladiolus.

I guess it’s all the spring moisture, but I have never seen so many tiny toads and frogs.  The guys in the garden pond are downright conversational at night in voices I can only describe in human terms.  One’s a shrieking soprano, another an inquiring alto while the odd guy out has taken up residence in my ceramic fountain on the back patio.

For those who don’t think amphibians can be cute, try this guy out….

That’s daylily ‘Prairie Moonlight’, one of the few daylilies in my garden whose name I remember!  Taking pictures of the daylilies is a temptation I don’t try to resist. If you have a summer garden with daylilies, you will never be cheated of color in July.  Any color. All colors. The bugs won’t eat them….and they will forgive you for overwatering, underwatering, lots of sun, too much shade. They’ll fight through the weeds and come back each spring as sure as the sun.  Can you tell I’m a fan? By the way, they go great with purple coneflowers…..

Thus far the beauty and success has all been Mother Nature’s doing.  So let’s take a look at the back patio..

For real garden impact for hot summer places, it never hurts to slip in a few tropicals.  I have palms and ginger for the south facing, but very shady, front porch and bananas and colocasias for the very hot back patio.  Sometimes I forget how big these plants can get when they are happy!

For instance, who put this huge plant in this tiny pot?  This 10”pot looked just fine back in May, but is totally overwhelmed and needs to be watered all the time now in July!  Note to self: tropicals start out slowly but catch up quickly when the weather warms up!

 These Sunpatiens baskets were planted back in February.  Why are they still pretty? Because I dutifully water them every single day.  And why are they still in their original 10”baskets? Because that’s the size that fits on my hanging basket tree.  Do what I say and not what I do….if you buy a 10”basket, bump it into a 12” basket or even a 14”basket. By the time you acquire your 10” blooming basket, it has been using up the soil mix and fertilizer in its container for a couple of months and needs a reboot in order to bloom to potential all summer long.  Don’t let your basket be a casualty of July! Don’t be that guy! I wish I had a picture to show you what a 10” sunpatiens basket looks like when transplanted into 14”....like Ben has done with his. So much flower power! And a great object lesson about giving your flowers plenty of room…..

Here’s another combo pot.  What? You don’t see the combo part of combo pot?  Well, there are a couple of ‘River Walk’ coleus peeking out from amid the vigorous stems of coleus ‘French Quarter’.  I really did read the tag on these two coleus and according to the labels, these two plants should have played nice with each other.  Wrong. French Quarter is a plant and a half and has totally overwhelmed the River Walk, normally a pretty potent plant itself. Live and Learn and pretend I intended this all along…..

Final exhibits in this mid season wrap up are two pots that prove I can learn from experience.  That purple plant is strobilanthus, a plant that sulks for the two months it lives in the greenhouse, barely growing and causing much consternation.  Then, magically, when June comes around, it turns into Cinderella, growing long iridescent silvery purple veined leaves that shine unfazed by heat, humidity, or sun.  You can see that it grows to match its companions: it matches up with the canna and big yellow coleus...and it is well mannered and contained with the pentas and white sunpatiens.  Don’t be afraid to ask for strobilanthus….you’ll be so glad you did….

Second half of the season is upon us.  Day games are brutal. But the hardy hibiscus are on deck with flower power to burn.  Enjoy! And we’ll catch you in the stretch run….