Brother Tim came over today and we planted all the spring bulbs that arrived this week from John Scheepers. I highly recommend this bulb retailer–I’ve never been disappointed with their bulbs. All of the below photos were borrowed from their website. Hopefully, I’ll have my own photos come spring to share here.
I planted the below bulbs into the easternmost edge of the memory garden. It was over 200 bulbs–and only planted a small area with no leftovers for pots/forcing. I’m going to have to order some clearance bulbs for my pots.
Here are some photos of the process.
We planted species tulips along the edges and hybrids down the middle.
Snowdrops were planted between tulip groups and Corydalis “Beth Evans” was worked in, as well.
My brother and sister were kind enough to help out in the garden last weekend. We pruned some roses, trimmed back the dame’s rockets, raked, shredded and mulched with some leaves, and mowed the lawn!
I had spent time loading all the pots into the greenhouse the day before which worked out perfectly since we had two nights below freezing last week. The greenhouse is stuffed really full. I’ve committed to organizing it better next year so there is more room for clivias under the shelving, which will leave a lot more room for a path in the cold months and a functioning workstation for potting and checking things out.
Today, I cleaned the orchard garden up a bit, pruning back some roses and berry canes. I noticed that the old camellia shrub along the fenceline has tripled in size in the last few years and is stretching out into the main garden and towards the street, as well. My Felco pruners clipped back a bunch of it but there is a LOT more to prune to get it back to a comfortable size. I’ll tackle some more of it tomorrow.
My other project today was to clean up the potting bench area. I emptied a bunch of pots with soil left after the resident plants had moved on to their next lives. Then I took the time to organize all the empty pots, stacking them by size. For the clay pots, I put some soil in them in preparation for the bulb delivery slated for Monday or Tuesday next week. There are a few more things I can do to straighten up the area, but it already looks better than it has for years! More work tomorrow will include sawing down the bitter cherry suckers that have sprung up all over the yard.
Lastly, I wandered around the yard to see what dared to be blooming in early November. The witch hazel that I have near the street in front of the orchard bed is in full bloom. This is the shrub that grew up from below the graft of the cultivar I had originally purchased. IT so graceful and actually very beautiful when it is in bloom, so I’m glad I’ve never cut it back.
Witch Hazel
More Witch Hazel
Geranium nodosum
Mixed-up rhody
Abutilon
Verbena bonariensis
Coreopsis
Chaenorhinum
Geranium
Geranium
Geranium
Erigeron
Geranium
Geranium
Oregnaum
Kniphofia
Fuchsia
There were a few items blooming that I didn’t get decent photos of: two kinds of salvia are blooming in the memory garden, along with a few of the catmints. The asters just a very few flowers left on them, but they have some great seed heads that I hope the birds take advantage of.
Leon and I spent a few days in Arizona last week, mostly in the Prescott area. We also visited the Grand Canyon–my first time seeing it! Here are some photos from the trip.
Here are some random photos from the past week or so:
I think these are Nerine bowdenii growing on King Street near the I-5 overpass. Very strange place for these rare-ish bulbs to be blooming.
I have a few gesneriads growing in my window at work. including the Deinostigma tamiana in the rear, the miniature African violet, and the Sinningia seedling with a large bud in the foreground.
I’m anxious to see what this flower looks like when it unfolds–it is from a seedling I started early in the year.
The bud looked white when for a few days, then colored up to a deep reddish pink.
Autumn leaves are extremely colorful this year–here are some of my favorites from my walk home from the bus.
Close-up of maple leaves.
This Japanese maple in a neighbor’s yard has unusually colored autumn foliage.
This is one of the big maple street trees starting to show color.
This Scheflerra tree was donated to my workplace by a for-profit corporation. It came in much bigger than this and bushier, but with a hideous case of scale. I pruned every leave off and scrubbed the branches. It is just now leafing out and starting to look pretty good. I haven’t seen any scale yet, but I know it will be back!
Two weekends ago I was able to pot on some of the Chiltern’s perennial seedlings. I ended up with about a dozen pots of what I believe are Silene californica seedlings. These are strong, fast-growers. If they survive the winter in the greenhouse, I’ll plant them out in the spring, and hopefully they will end up looking like THIS.
I also potted on a bunch of Digitalis “Species and Hybrids Mixed”. I think I ended up with 40 seedlings planted in 8 pots. My hope is that I’ll end up with a nice mix of hybrids and species in these seedlings, but even if they all end up being the common foxglove, I’ll be happy.
The Digitalis seedlings are in the front on the left and in the middle on the right. Behind them on the left are the silene seedlings. Also on the far left are the seedling Acacia dealbata plants started this year. In the back of the middle tray, you can see other Acacia seedlings–Acacia redolens “prostrata.” They have adult leaves that are flat pads, rather than the delicate leaflets they held as juvenile plants. In the middle left is a Sinningia tubiflora cutting that I struck on a lark–I was pruning the mother plant and just stuck this in. It has rooted and is spreading. In the front on the right are more seedlings from Chiltern’s perennial seeds.More autumn seedlings–I dropped a handful of Hippeastrum seeds from my hardiest red/white-flowered hybrid into a pot with regular potting mix. It appears that virtually every seed will germinate. These take a few years to get to blooming age. While I certainly don’t need a bunch more Hippeastrums, I can’t help but imagine how wonderful it would be to have a dozen pots of these sturdy bulbs blooming all together on their own shelf in the greenhouse. They could be hybrids, as well, since other Hippeastrums were blooming in the greenhouse this year, too, but likely they will look like the below.Big, gorgeous blooms on this Hippeastrum hybrid. I believe it was purchased online, maybe ten+ years ago, and it has self-sown around the greenhouse. I probably have seven bulbs of this already.
I’m anxious to come up with a system for getting my Hippeastrum’s to bloom consistently. I have about half of them outside this year for the spring/summer and part of autumn, and the rest are in the greenhouse. I’ll mark them and see which ones bloom better.
In the center are the Hakea drupacea seedlings that I started early this year. They are over a foot tall and are getting more adult foliage. They seem pretty happy. I will leave them in these pots through the winter in the greenhouse and then pot them into gallons to see how big they might get next year.
Another seedling–this it a Sinningia seedling from seeds planted early this spring in my office at TeamChild. I ended up with three seedlings that look similar to Sinningia speciosa. This is the only one with a flower bud, however. I can’t wait to see what it looks like. Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to grow Sinningia speciosa, or Gloxinia, and I even ordered a very expensive bulb once when I was a teenager, but it never grew! If these end up having big, velvety flowers, I will be thrilled! Regardless, though, they are proving to be simple to grow and happy in a north-facing window.My office seems to suit the Gesneriad clan. I had taken a few leaf cuttings of an African violet at home. Luckily, they rooted, as I neglected the mother plant and she transitioned to another realm. I moved the cuttings to one pot and then moved them to my office window at work. They sulked in the crowded pot. I finally got around to dividing them up and potting them in nice plastic pots and good soil. Immediately, they grew a few new leaves and are throwing flower spikes. The blooms open a chartreuse-cream and then fade to a creamy white. While I’m not a big African violet fan, I love this variety. I received the original plant mistakenly in an online order when I ordered something from Hirt’s gardens–an outdoor perennial plant, and they sent me an African violet! The plant looked a mess, but I gave it a chance and it rewarded me with hundreds of flowers and a very forgiving nature.I didn’t think I like pampas grass that much, but this particular one (actually, there were two of them) near Seattle Center, impressed me with graceful form and wonderful, subtle color. Our neighbors have a honeysuckle that usually looks pretty sad. It is planted in the corner of a fence and doesn’t get consistent irrigation. Since we’ve been having rainfall for the last month or so, the vines are perking up and blooming again. The flowers are amazing. These are not as fragrant as a similar vine across the street, but I imagine hummingbirds love them.
My gardens are weak on late summer and autumn flowers, but I do have a few asters around and they fill in perfectly at this time of year. Here is a gallery of the ones in the Memory Garden.
I am trying hard to find more garden time this month, knowing that I have a lot to do to get ready for autumn. There are dozens of bitter cherry tree suckers around the yard that I need to clip or saw down to try to control them. A couple of the ones in front of the orchard bed are over ten feet tall, so it is definitely time to cut them out. Yesterday, I managed to cut down all the ones in the driveway bed and some big leaf maples that have started near the driveway, too. When darkness fell, I had to give up for the night and an impressive thunderstorm came through with heavy rains. It lasted over two hours.
One thing that I’m doing differently this year is not using the yard waste container as much. Instead, I just chop up as much of the vegetation and branches as I easily can and drop them back around where they grew. This seems to make sense to me, rather than pulling all that growth and energy away from the bed and then supplementing with organic fertilizer, I can leave the energy there and let it break down and add organic matter to the soil. I can still fertilize, of course, but I’m hoping the plants will grow stronger in this system.
This weekend, I cleaned out one of the raised veggie beds and planted seeds in there–peas, spinach, and lettuce. It might be too late in the season for the peas but I wanted to give it a try.
Before I cleaned up the bed
Another view of the bed and trellis
After clean-up, from the front
After clean-up, from the side
The wet weather is expected to continue for another few days. I expect that will help the seeds get growing pretty quickly. There are other seeds waiting to grow in this bed always, including borage and calendula.
There was a brilliant surprise as I wandered the yard yesterday. Our friend Meredith gave us some Amaryllis beladonna bulbs about seven or so years ago. I have had them in the garden ever since, where they leaf out ever year and then disappear in the summer. And until now, they have never bloomed. But look what happened finally!
A few other things are blooming on the patio and in the greenhouse.
