planted limelight

I got off work early yesterday and my three day holiday weekend started today. I had not been feeling well earlier this week and I ended up sleeping in until 10 AM. This was not entirely in the plan. Before we could go anywhere, I had watering 911 as my front hanging basket was badly wilted and I wanted to get the veggies off to a good start for the day.

Yesterday we got a sasanqua camellia to put in the foundation bed and while looking at other things, I realized at Limelight hydrangea might be the perfect thing to go between the small beautyberry and the pieris. So, it was off to a few stores today, as well as Sams Club for 2 bags of potting soil.

When we got back home, I spent some more time on the neverending project of pulling plantain weeds. I was working near where I planned to plant Limelight, then weeded out the area between the two plants. I was pretty hot while I was digging and it really took a lot out of me today, but I got the hole dug and Limelight put in. I think it looks great! I may put something small on either side of it to sort of finish out the bed a bit more.



My dog did a number on my Double Pink hydrangea, knocking a whole branch off. I cut the end and am going to try to root it in watering. In rooted cutting news, I potted up the Blushing Bride and Merritt's Supreme cuttings and will start transitioning them to the outside world. My one biggish Ponderosa tomato seedling finally seems to be growing and it may make it after all. I am going to start moving it out to full sun with no roof overhead. The other tomato seedlings seem to be coming along very slowly.

I still need to do something about the poison ivy. When we were running errands today, I forgot that I wanted to get a big box to use as a screen in some of the areas I am going to have to spray.

planting under the pecan tree

Yesterday was my day to go in late to work, so I was out in the yard early trying to get some things done. I got the whole place watered first, then set to work on a little planting. I planted hosta 'Orange Marmalade' back under the pecan tree between the Teller Red hydrangea and the astilbe. Then I planted the golden spiderwort kind of between the hosta and the hydrangea, but set back a little. The hope is that the spiderwort will spread out and fill in that area, kind of making a (20" tall) ground cover in this area. It has little blue/purple blooms and is supposed to bloom all summer.


I cut back some of the junk privet near where the 'Orange Dream' Japanese Maple is so that it shows up a lot better. It is still a tad close to the hydrangea, but until I can get the shack repaired/torn down/whatever I want to leave the junk privet in place to block the view of the falling down shack. Speaking of privet, several of the largest privets are in bloom right now. While it is pretty, blooms mean seeds and seeds mean more of that garbage in my yard. It is never ending...

Once the planting tasks were complete, I felt compelled to tackle the grass a bit more. My yard is being taken over by plantain weeds. I picked an area in the shady part near the fence and pulled as many plantain weeds as I could for about 2 hours. My fingers are still red and sore from this. Then, I spread Black Cow (my bag is sort of waterlogged, so I need a new bag) over the newly seeded area, spread shade grass seed and watered well. I really wanted to get this done yesterday as the forcast was for several days of rain and I figured that would help get the grass seed off to a good start. My *latest* plan for the grass is to pick fairly small area each month and weed it and seed it in the same fashion. I'm hoping by sticking to a pretty small area, I can maybe get it watered well enough with the hose while I'm doing my other watering and will be able to get grass to grow. I'm going to get some of the sod and seed soil to spread over the bare areas before seeding, as that seemed to work well in the two area where I used it last year.

Today (Thursday) it was supposed to rain all day, but was just cloudy until late afternoon, when it finally did rain for a few hours.


Hydrangea 'Together'

several busy annual planting days

My work schedule has been different this week, so I had Thursday morning off. I decided it was time to get rid of some of the pansies in pots that really were not doing well and start seeding in some other things. But, before I could do anything, disaster had struck my cilantro. Apparently my dog managed to not only knock over the pot the cilantro was in, but also break the terra cotta pot. Impressive...

I did my best to salvage the little cilantro seedlings and repot them in a new pot. I then planted out some patty pan squash seeds in the windowbox where I have been growing lettuce. I dumped two pots of pansies and one pot was planted with Bush Blue Lake 274 beans. I'm hoping they will not require trellising. I didn't soak the bean seeds, so I hope they germinate alright. The package didn't say to germinate and this is my first attempt at growing beans.

I saved seed last year off my 'Peppermint Stick' zinnias and the seed seems to be okay, not moldy or anything. I spread this seed behind the two salvias along the front fence. If they do come up, the zinnias should be tall enough to peek out over the salvias, which should look pretty.

My final seeding for Thursday was to seed the basil in the herb barrel. This year I'm not growing as many different herbs in the herb barrel. I still have curly leaf parsley in there, as well as a few chives and apparently one dill. I divided the remaining area in two and planted one half with 'Purple Ruffles' basil and the other half with 'Lime' basil. I did leave room around the outside edge to plant nasturtuims, which I can never remember to soak overnight, so I tend to get them in quite late. I need to plant out more basil as I'm afraid 'Early Girl' tomato is pretty much shading out the basil I planted around her. I may start a few pots just of basil. In other herb news, I finally decided that it was time to dump the stevia and bronze fennel. Neither has shown any signs of coming back this year. When I dumped the fennel, I could see that the roots were totally rotting. Guess it got too cold for it in the pot last winter.

Seeded on Thursday:
- zinnias with seed saved from last year
- lime basil
- purple ruffles basil
- bush blue lake beans
- patty pan squash

Friday I had to work, but had a few hours of light after work, so with a quick stop for a few plants on the way home, I was ready to tackle more annuals.

First up was the hanging basket (still need to get over to storage to get the other frames) now that I have new liners. I got pretty orangey million bells and black sweet potato vine to make my far full sun corner basket. I got this one planted and hung today. I also found two pots of New Guinea impatiens that I really liked. One is small 4" pot that I'm planning on putting in a hanging basket and the other is a big quart plant that I planted in one of the bronze plastic pots.

Next up was one of the hardest things, pulling out the pansies. In the fall it is easy to get rid of the summer annuals because the frost kills them, but in the spring you have to pull out your living cool season annuals. The pansies in the annual bed were looking pretty rough, so it was definitely time. I pulled out all except the back row, which are in the most shade and therefore look the best. I added some Black Cow to the areas where I pulled out the pansies. The main area was replanted with 'Blue Puffs' Ageratum around the outside edge, then seeded in with 'Peppermint Twist' zinnias behind that. For now the pansies are in place along the back, but they will probably be replaced with coleus in a few weeks. I planted a 4-pack of pink vinca in front of 'Masja' hydrangea. I still have some more areas where pansies need to be replaced. I am thinking I'll use the Ageratum in front of the camellias, as it is a pretty color and will grow in part shade.

so dry already, plus planted hydrangea and viburnum

For the last two days, when I've been outside in the evening, it has been SO dry. The tomatoes have all needed to be watered and today I saw 'Teller Red' hydrangea being wilty. I have watered portions of my yard both nights. The weather report had called for rain today, but it never showed up. Currently the forcast is for rain all weekend and right now that would be very welcome. I feel like I am back in last July already, with the heat and the drought and everything needing to be watered all the time.

The baby tomato plants continue their outside time and that seems to be going well. Right now they aren't putting out much in the way of new growth, but they also aren't getting a lot of sun. This weekend I'm going to try to leave them out in the sun longer, if we have any sun. Last night, I started another cup of the 'Ananas Noir' tomato seeds as I have yet to get a sprout. I'm not sure if they were quite ready to be started outside, so I brought those trays in a few days ago. I'm either going to have very few or a bumper crop as I've started almost 20 seeds.

Last night after yoga I came home and finally planted the viburnum. Last fall we set in in the spot where the yew had died and it has lived there ever since. I could never figure out where I was going with it and my mom said that it belonged on that corner and it does look good, so I've sacrificed matching for flowers on one side. I hope it will do well. The rootball was a little on the dry side when I planted it, so I tried to really soak the rootball while watering yesterday and today. The actual digging in was really easy as the yew had been there, so I didn't dig a very big hole, in part due to the lilies and heucheras planted around it. The soil seems to be great, so I'm hoping the roots will grow well. It was very root bound as well, so I was pretty aggressive about loosening up the roots. I'll keep my fingers crossed...


This evening, with no rain, I decided to finally plant the Forever and Ever Double Pink hydrangea I had bought at Lowes. The original ideas was to plant it in the front side yard where I ended up planting another Endless Summer. I decided against that plan, as I don't know how this plant will perform and I figured ES was a sure thing. After that decision was made, I waffled for a while on where to put the plant, then finally decided I would plant it between the 'Flying Dragon' and the Rose of Sharon, next to the annual bed. 'Masja' is in pretty much the same position on the other side of the annual bed and Rose of Sharon, so I figured this would balance well and my neighbor's chestnut tree should provide enough shade. The space I planted it in isn't big, but this plant is not supposed to get that big either, so I'm hoping it will work.

Another great ranunculus shot:


'Delta Fire' pansies still blooming:

planting and transplanting for 4/18

Planted out today in the perennial border:
Euphorbia
Wallflower
Blue Hill salvia
alyssum Easter Bonnet
lantana Bandana Cherry
Stargazer lily bulbs
Bearded Iris rhizomes
dahlia Lavender Perfection
hollyhock

Planted out:
Teller Red hydrangea
Night Before Christmas hosta
perilla
marigolds

Transplanted to the perennial border:
ginger lilies
Joe Pye weed moved from one side to the other
coneflowers moved from one side to the other


licorice plant icicles moved from the pot to the border

perennial bed and so much more

Today was one of those super productive days that you can only think of when it is cold or rainy. We are expecting rain over the weekend, so I'm glad I had today off to get a lot done.

I started at 8:30 AM by raking the mulch and pine needles from the left half of the perennial bed. I also moved all the plants that had been plopped down in and on the bed except the variegated iris, that has come up so well. Once I had all the mulch off, I realized I wanted to put the mulch somewhere, so that led to a brief time out while I weeded and pulled all the grass from around the daylilies and spread the mulch/pine needles there. Then it was back to digging in the bed. It actually went better than expected and I only ran into the rocks really in one area near where the viburnum is. I added almost a whole bag of Clay Buster and raked it into the loose dirt.



Then it was time to start planting the bed. First order of business was to dig up the ginger lilies, which I think planted on the outside back corner of the left and right side of the bed. In order to plant on the right hand side, I first had to dig up the 1 Joe Pye Weed, which I then moved the the left side. While I was digging in the bed, I discovered that the two dahlias that had bloomed last year appeared to have overwintered, plus I had a glad coming up, so I decided to leave them as the back row planting and get another bag of dahlias. Once I had the ginger lilies and joe pye weed in, I put the blue sage back in and dug two clumps of coneflower from the right side. I think dug the wallflower out of the herb barrel and planted it on the left side. The wood spurge (euphorbia) went on the right side where a coneflower had been and the licorice plant finally got out of a pot and into the right side of the perennial bed.

With all that done, it was time to tackle the next project... planting the 'Teller Red' hydrangea. Since there was already a hole in place it wasn't that bad. I also decided that I will plant a hosta near it between it and the astilbe. After that it was on the the next task, fertilizing the camellias. I raked back all the old mulch, then fertilized them and watered them in. I also fertilized my azaleas, which apparently was a mistake, as it will stimulate growth and cause the flowers to fall off. So, maybe the azalea show will be brief this year. I also fertilized the yew and the loropetulam.

It was about 2 PM at that point and I went off to Country Boys to pick up a few things. I got a flat of alyssum, a perilla, a hollyhock and a pack of coleus. I stopped off at Home Depot and got 2 packs of marigolds and a new water wand that I hope will be more gentle. I planted the alyssum along the entire front of the perennial bed, the hollyhock in the inner back corner of the right side of the perennial bed and the perilla in the center of the camellia bed. Hosta 'Night Before Christmas' finally got a home between the far left 'Miss Biloxi' and 'Debutante'. I'm going to put the new 'Christmas Tree' hosta on the other side of 'Debutante' when it comes. I planted up three small pots of marigolds and planted one marigold in each corner of the big pot the roma tomato is in.

At that point, after the watering, it was time to call it a day. I am still debating where I'm going to plant the double pink hydrangea.

Euphorbia in bloom: