August Bloom Day

It's high summer here, and in the Chicago area we've been getting some welcome, and much needed relief from this year's record heat and drought.  The garden is grateful, and so am I.  

Salvia x sylvestris 'Blue Hill' has been oblivious to the weather, maintained its clean foliage as usual, and as long as it's deadheaded regularly, it keeps blooming all season.

Here in a small corner in front where lava rock has been pushed away and the ongoing battle with a neighbor's ivy is waged, an unnamed phlox, Sedum 'Matrona' , a seedling baptisia, and young native grasses grown with seeds from Monica this spring have done well with little rain.  

These are the delicate seedheads of petite purple love grass.

 Here's the whole little plant, along with a couple of flopping phlox stems. This, along with four other kinds of grasses, are my first forays into native grasses.  They were  all easy to start from seeds, and didn't need much coddling in spite of the hot, dry weather.  I kept them in gallon pots until mid-July.  Now in the garden, they're all growing and thriving.  I'm loving this little native grass and hoping the other larger grasses will bloom this year too.

Thank you for the seeds, Monica!

'Happy Returns' daylilies were sheared to the ground about a month ago to clean up the yellow and brown foliage.  Within a week they were back up, and blooming again a few days later.  Still blooming now, they're looking a lot better with clean foliage.

 I wait for angel's trumpet blooms all summer.  They're exquisitely fragrant,

 and beautiful too, don't you think?

Combined with the fragrance from Hosta plantaginea, 

Hosta plantaginea 'Aphrodite' (fully-open bloom further down, below,) and Sambac jasmine (not pictured,) the evening through early morning scents on our patio and floating on light breezes through open windows are simply divine.

Double impatiens are staples in a couple of hanging baskets almost every year here.  I like them with the airy blooms of Diamond Frost euphorbia.  Is there anything Diamond Frost doesn't go well with?

 We like impatiens in multiple colors.

Purple coneflowers are still looking fresh.  So far this season, the goldfinches haven't pulled off all the petals.

Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm' is about a foot shorter, with fewer blooms than usual.  Pollinators ignore these cultivars.  I'm thinking we need the natives.  Starting native plants from seed takes patience, but it's rewarding, cheap thrills. 

Here's Hosta plantaginea 'Aphrodite,' the morning after the first-ever bloom opened.  They open at night.  They're notoriously slow to bloom after planting.  It took seven years for this one. Unlike most other hostas, The scapes barely rise above the foliage. The foliage is solid, deep green. I love the texture, elegance, substance, shade, and shape of it.  The flowers make lovely icing.

Hibiscus 'Midnight Marvel' is a new introduction this year.  All of us who attended Walters Gardens' Media Day last week got to bring one home.  How thoughtful it was to obligingly open its first bloom just in time for Bloom Day.  

I've made peace with Agastache 'Blue Fortune's' grey-blue foliage.  It performs well in our garden, returns faithfully each year, and while it's not as full as usual, it's tolerated the heat and drought here well.  Although they're cultivars, pollinators are all over them.

Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne' is a cross between two native rudbeckias.  Pollinators love them in our garden, but they haven't performed nearly as well as they usually do in more normal summer weather.  The plants are severely stunted and not blooming as much as usual.  The two smallest plants have powdery mildew.

Hummingbirds visit this fuchsia multiple times every day.

Cardinal flowers are another hummingbird favorite here.  They look better most years.  I'm glad they survived the hottest summer here on record.

Here's 'Midnight Marvel' fully open a few hours later.

Late summer is one of my favorite times in our garden.  This month, with it's milder temperatures and good rains so far, has been beautiful here.  I hope you're enjoying beautiful weather, enough rain, and lots of blooms in your garden this month.

Happy Bloom Day, and to see what's blooming in gardens everywhere today, please visit our host, Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Peppers in a Grow Box

We grow lots of veggies in our two side-yard raised beds.  The beds are relatively small, but since the soil is rich, we use succession planting, and we plant our veggies intensively, we're able to get a lot out of those beds even though they each get only part sun.

We extend our veggie-growing space using containers.  This year we're trying out Grow Bags and Grow Boxes, compliments of the companies that make them.  I'll show you what we did with the Grow Bags in a future post.

Last May, we were lucky enough to attend Garden2Blog 2012, hosted by P. Allen Smith and sponsored by a number of garden industry companies he partners with.  After the event several of those partners shipped us free products to trial.  The Grow Box, along with Black Gold organic soil we received from event sponsors were used to grow these peppers.  

For the second year, our peppers are growing in our front foundation landscape where we actually have full sun.  We've grown peppers successfully in our part-sun veggie beds, but they ripen quicker and are more productive out in front.  

We had a bumper crop of all sorts of colorful peppers in individual pots last year.  The downsides of individual pots were how much time it took to water them, how much water it took, and the amount of space needed for all those pots.  All the downsides are solved with the Grow Box.  

As unbelievable as it seems, there are eight pepper plants jammed into this planter, and they are easily as productive, if not more so, than they were last year in individual pots.  Thanks to the unique design of the Grow Box with it's very efficient use of water, they've needed a lot less water a lot less often.

today's harvest

After trialing our Grow Box with peppers this year. I'm sold.  They're a fantastic option for small-space veggie gardeners.  They'd also be great for gardening with children, an easy-care option for patio and balcony gardeners, and wonderful for older folks who find traditional vegetable gardening too physically taxing.  For me, they add precious space to our veggie-growing real estate and are attractive enough to plunk down amidst the flowers growing in full sun in our front foundation landscape.

Our veggies are grown organically, so naturally we use organic soil in containers.  I've been pleased with the quality and performance of Black Gold.  I love that Grow Boxes offer organic fertilizer as an option for their kits.  New fertilizer and organic jute covers can be ordered separately, and the box and soil can be re-used in future gardening years.  

Many thanks to the nice folks at Black Gold for the soil, and Garden Patch who makes the Grow Box for letting us test their products.

Wildflower Wednesday

Monarda fistulosa

This summer's been rough on humans and wildlife, crops and livestock, lawns and gardens.  Still, with a little extra help from the end of a hose, our garden is weathering Mother Nature's and climate change's challenges.

With our early hot weather, plants bloomed early. Now, in July, that seems to have mostly leveled out, with most  bloom times pretty normal. What has been off is height.   A lot of stuff is shorter than usual - in some cases several feet shorter.

Lobelia cardinalis have their share of challenges this summer. One disappeared, one got smashed by a fallen branch during a recent storm, and this one . . . well, at least it's blooming.

They like moist soil, and live in an area of our swale that stays moist all year, normally . . .


This summer  has been lots of things, and normal isn't one of them.

Most of the purple coneflowers are two feet tall and under.  Most of the phlox, and everything in this part of the garden is shorter than usual.

Joe Pye Weed is a few feet shorter than usual, along with way-shorter-than-usual  Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne.'   Besides being shorter, lots of stuff is less full too.

Nodding onions, Allium cernuum, seem oblivious of the heat and drought.

Culver's root, about finished blooming, is weathering the weather well.

A volunteer eupatorium (or do you say eutotrichum?) seems unfazed by the weather.  It's one of few July bloomers, whether native or  cultivar, that's its usual size.

Our small corner of the world has been hot and dry most of the summer along with much of the country.  Lately, there's been welcome relief with a few mid-80-degree days, and a few good deluges.  The occasional breaks from lugging hoses feel luxurious.

 

Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain. ~ Unknown

To see more Wildflower Wednesday posts, please visit Gail at Clay and Limestone.

July Bloom Day

Since the ballast shorted out for the light in our basement greenhouse late last winter and it took awhile to replace it, most of the overwintered plants looked pretty crummy this spring.  Turning misfortune to opportunity, it's been pretty nice having a fresh crop of plants for many of our containers.  The spindly, even leafless basement victims recovered in a sunny spot in the meantime, and now fill in pots and other spots in the garden.  Purple fountain grass and the chartreuse-leaved pelargonium  'Crystal Palace Gem'  are among the fresh faces this year.  

Geranium 'Rozanne' sprawls over early-spring bloomers like bergenia and hellebores, churning out blooms from late May through frost, even in part sun.  That's double impatiens in the hanging basket.  

Watering has been a chore during this hot, dry summer.  Most of the pots not directly in the garden have saucers to save water - especially the thirsty impatiens in little pots along this short path between patio and lawn.

The mini-rose has been blooming all season.

Hosta 'Fujibotan' has lavender-pink double blossoms on tall scapes.  It's just starting to bloom, and will keep going for almost a month.   This year it has twenty-one flower scapes!  

I love this combo of  Dragon Wing begonias and Diamond Frost Euphorbia.  

The peachy pelargonium and petunia in the pot on the left are basement survivors.  The geranium is five years old, and amazingly, Supertunia Vista Silverberry, fondly nicknamed Spring Fling Petunia, (gift from Proven Winners for participants at Garden Bloggers' Spring Fling Chicago 2009,) has survived three winters in the basement.

Cardinal flower, Lobelia cardinalis, a native hummingbird magnet, just started blooming.

Rudbeckia 'Herbstsonne' hasn't much liked our hot, dry summer.  They're two feet shorter, and not nearly as full as they normally are by the time they start blooming.  The first flowers are smaller too.   Behind the rudbeckias and coneflowers, Joe Pye weed is shorter than usual too.

'Sunday Gloves' daylily seems oblivious to the heat.

This brunnera was a volunteer seedling that popped up over here from a neighbor's plants.  It's the first time I've seen a brunnera rebloom.

We have heirloom potatoes from Landreth Seed growing in two of  the samples the nice folks at  Smart Pots gave me last August at the Independent Garden Center Show at Navy Pier.  Potatoes have nice foliage, pretty blooms, and they're fun to grow.  We're looking forward to harvesting our first home-grown potatoes in a few weeks.

Culver's Root, moved last fall,  seems to be thriving in its new, slightly sunnier spot along with a coneflower.  In the background, 'Blue Paradise' phlox, new last year and still small, just started blooming.  Geranium 'Biokovo' is reblooming for the first time, and barely peeking out from behind the tree, 'Jacob Cline' monarda is very popular with hummingbirds.  

Here's a different perspective where you can see the phlox and monarda a little better.  Heuchera villosa 'Mocha' shows up in this shot too.  Besides the nice foliage, this heuchera blooms all season long.

Bloom Day posts here tend to include a lot of closeups, so it seemed fun to change it up with some long shots this time.  Hope you enjoyed them.  To see more Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts that will surely include closeups and long shots of what's blooming in gardens around the world today, please visit our host, Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Garden2Blog12 - The Garden Home Retreat

This spring I was honored to be invited to attend P. Allen Smith's Garden 2 Blog 2012, when a couple dozen garden bloggers gathered in Little Rock, Arkansas for a rollicking good time that included a day at his Garden Home Retreat.  

It was wonderful being able to visit the farm for a second time, in a different season.  Last fall after being one of three winners of a photo contest sponsored by Garden Safe, the Lawn Man and I were treated to an all-expenses-paid trip to the farm for an event called A Tale of Two Farms.  Like this time, I did a slideshow of the event so I could cram as many pictures as possible into one post.  If you missed it, you can see the slideshow from last fall here.  

This isn't a wordy post, and without further ado, hope you enjoy this photo visit to the Garden Home Retreat at Moss Mountain.

Attendees at Garden2Blog 2012 received transportation, hotel accommodations, and meals at no cost. Event sponsors provided samples and product giveaways with no cost or obligation.  All opinions in this post are mine.