more container planting

Last night I tried to get a bunch of work done, knowing I would be out of town all day today. I got some additional grass seed put down by the water heater, then covered all the grass seed with straw, which hopefully will cut down on the mud, but was not great for my allergies. Then, I FINALLY planted up the final hanging basket for the front of the house. Right now it doesn't look like that much, as I had to buy 2 new small sweet potato vines and the one trailing coleus is just a tiny cutting I had rooted, but I figure the sweet potato vine will start filling in soon and the big trailing colues should also start growing pretty quickly, if their relatives on the porch are any indication.

When I went to Country Boys to get the tomato and red bell pepper, I found a hollyhock that I got for my mom and a delphenium for myself. I planted those in the perennial bed and put in stakes for them last night, but I didn't attach them to the stakes yet. They are currently short enought that they don't need to be staked yet.

Then, it was time to plant the veggies. I had purchased 4 sweet basils to put around the roma tomato and was planning to put the whole thing in a 14" plastic pot I had bought. I did pot this all up, but trimmed off a bit of the basil to let more light in for the tomato. Hopefully the pot is not too crowded and I'm figured the tomato will start growing up soon. I also potted up the red bell pepper in its own pot. Both the new tomato and the red bell pepper will be living by the herb barrel.

This evening when I got home I had a little time to work and finally pulled some more pansies out of a pot and potted up my purple striped petunias. I also moved the one cell back big daddy petunia into a larger pot and put the remaining cell pack of the purple striped petunia into the little pot the big daddy had been in. The single big daddy is actually looking good enough to go on the porch right now, so I might even though the green pot it is in is not all that exciting (just a plastic hanging basket pot Bobbie gave me).

The newly planted hyrdangea is looking great today with more blooms coming and the color deepening on them. The old Endless Summer is not doing nearly as well. Its one leaf it did have now seems to be dried up and it felt really dry around it, even though it was just watered. So, I watered it tonight and guess I will have to give it some extra water. All the other shrubs seem to have survived being fertilized. My new watering schedule seems to be working pretty well, so hopefully things will continue to thrive. I potted up all the lemon balm cuttings I had made today and they should be ready to go to new homes soon.

I also learned a valuable lesson today: don't mess with leaning plants. I was looking at my snapdragons and one of the biggest was leaning over quite a bit. I was messing around with it, moving it back up to vertical and trying to think about how I might stake it (don't have an extra stake right now) and the vast majority of the stem snapped off at the soil line. So, I went from having a big beautiful blooming but quite leaning plant to have just one single stem left and a hole in my little bed. ARGHHHHH.