Getting Cheap and Dirty

Wow!  January 31 was my last post?? (And a kinda lame one at that.)  Time flies.  I can't say I didn't post because I haven't been in the garden.  Due to being laid-off, I've had the chance to spend a LOT of time in the garden, although the budget is a bit more restricted.  Since I've been able give it more attention, the garden is flourishing.  It is also the third year I've gardened organically, and it seems like the system has finally caught up with itself.  Thought I'd do a quick post on some of the blooms and a quick teaser for some upcoming posts I'm working on.

The irises in the front garden have gone gang-busters this year.  One day my daughter counted 27 blooms.  This may well be my favorite.  (If you are interested in how I "acquired" these irises, click here and here.)

I've been loving the daylilies this year, and a few days ago my favorite purple one came out.  I think it might be called Purple Grape but I don't know for sure, and, ( forgive me, Hemerocallis Society) I don't really care.  It is pretty.

My rainlily would not be out done.

As I've mentioned, money is tight, and since propogation is probably my favorite part of gardening, I've bought nothing that I couldn't make twenty more of in a week a or two.  The coleous above is included.  Yummm, those colors make me drool a little.

I have an abundance of some plants that for whatever reason I've not been able to reproduce, and this year I cracked the code on two, including the Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue' above.  I tried everything on this one.  I rooted some in water, some in soil with root hormone, and some I dug up.  Turns out this plant spreads via an underground tuber, and I dug up and planted some of them tuber and all.  I had about a 50% success rate, which was much better than previous years.  There's a ton of small plants in pots now and have been giving them away.  Digging the tuber up and potting it worked best of all (go figure.)

The other plant I've tried to propagate without success is the confederate jasmine.  It grows wildly on my daughter's playhouse, but up until now, I haven't been able to get it to to grow any where else.  The cuttings even have tiny dry roots at the base when I cut them, making it all the more frusterating. In early January I trimmed the plant back and tried to get some of the cuttings to take in soil, which didn't work.  I left the rest in a bucket that I forgot about until just a few weeks ago.  Rain had filled the bucket and new green leaves were coming out of it.  Duh!  Why hadn't I thought of rooting them in water?  Maybe the woody stems through me off.  Now that I know, I'll be doing more!

Finally, a peek at one of the projects I 've been working on:

You: Oh my!  Is that the Corner Garden?  With a stone border? 
Me: Why, yes it is!
You: But what happened to the tacky plastic border?
Me: I adiosed it. See-ya!
You: Wait a minute, didn't you say you were on a budget??
Me: Well, that is another post, my friend.

Happy gardening!!

In The Weeds

Wow - This summer really got away from me! I woke up one morning and all of the sudden the pool garden looked like this:There truly is a garden path in there somewhere. My husband and I looked each other and said "Ahh, a frost will come eventually and take care of this sticky little problem for us." All those weeds are just too much to think about without the aid of a machete.

Fortunately, there are little bits of joy to be had around the garden lately, if you look for them. This week the weather finally cooled and Floridians seemed to come out of their long air-conditioned hibernation to spend some time outdoors. Everyone was outside mowing their lawns, taking walks (I took two! Wha? Wha?) and putting up Halloween decorations. I took the opportunity to do a little gardening, or more accurately, pull a weed or two and look for plants that didn't croak on me after a long summer of neglect.

Ahh, my gingers. A few survived the squirrels and one even bloomed, although I couldn't get a good picture of it. I still love the leaves, especially at this angle from the bottom looking up.
Some coleus, hiding under the gingers. Both were taken as clippings from my Mother's house.
The camellias are really budding this year, and a few have started to bloom. YAY!!


The last hold out blossom on the crepe myrtle bush. Note about crepe myrtle: You can dig up some of those really annoying seedlings that always come up in the spring and replant them! I keep them in a pot in a shady area for the first summer and then replant them where I want them the following spring. It is a slow process, but I've had success with it. Nothing like a free plant.

I thought for sure the that the Globba Ginger were goners after our deep freezes this year, but sure enough I now have about 10 plants and they are all blooming nicely. I wish they were taller, but other than that I totally love them.
Knockout Rose, knocking me out.

A single vinca, grown back from last years planting. This time last year, the vinca looked like hell and I took them all out. This year, the seedlings I let live are gorgeous. Go figure.

The mighty attack cat, hunting her prey. She always looks at me like I'm intruding on her world when I work in the garden. It is very much her's most of the week.

The Best Thing You Can Put In Your Garden

Somewhere along the way I once read "The best thing you can put in your garden is you." Any good gardener knows the biggest part of gardening is being in the garden. Picking weeds, looking for bugs, dead-heading, whatever. Fortunately, I've put a lot of me in the garden in the last few weeks. I've got a ton summer cuttings started in the front yard, the butterfly and shed gardens are picking up and I planted a little itty-bitty veggie garden in the corner garden where I finally gave up on some of my gingers growing this year. This concept applies with a blog, too. I haven't put too much of myself here lately. Who wants to be stuck behind computer when there is a garden to garden? I did take pictures in the last few weeks of some of the best blooms. Hope this will hold you over until I get some legitimate update posts done. Enjoy!

I think this daylily was called 'purple grape'. I call it yummy!

African Iris

African Iris

Daylily - 'Clara'

One of the reasons I LOVE coleus is its diversity. On the right is one from the Aurora series. There was no name in the nursery for the one on the left, so it is now know by me as 'Big-honkin' Coleus.

Crinum Scabrum

Crinum Scabrum

Red Canna

Yellow Walking Iris

Hidden Ginger

'Black and Blue' Salvia and 'Happy Returns' Daylily

Summer on the Sill

In Florida, summer is an ending. Most of the plants that did beautifully through the frosts start to look something like this:

The bugs, the heat and the humidity prove to be too much. It gets to be a bit much for me too. Saturday morning I opened the door to go outside and walked straight into a brick wall of humidity. Sometimes you forget what summer in Florida can be like until you get a weekend like this one to remind you. I realized I needed to get the summer garden started. In the front yard I'll take out the snapdragons and petunias. In their place will go lime green coleus, silvery-purple Persian shield, pink pentas and pink vinca. These aren't by any means the only summer plants I could have chosen, but they all have one redeeming quality. In my garden at least, they are all free.

The vinca are starting to reseed themselves in the garden bed, and the pentas cuttings do best with a slightly different method. But coleus and Persian shield I am propagating by cuttings. The method is pretty basic and any seasoned gardener knows it well, but I'm always surprised by how few take advantage of DIYplants.

First step is to find a momma plant. In my case, momma is actually a collection of cuttings I took hastily right before our first freeze in November. I typically pinch off a stem about 3 to 4 inches long. I strip the leaves off, leaving a small pair at the top, and at least one leaf node below. Then stick in some water and wait for roots:

When the roots come, you could plant straight into the ground and the coleus would probably be just fine. The Persian shield on the right is a bit more finicky, so I put both plants in small containers of dirt:

For some reason, I kind love the little yogurt cups. I poked holes in the bottoms with a nail heated by a candle. They fit great on my window sill, but they will only hold the plants for a couple of weeks. At that time I put the cups outside to acclimate for about 24 hours and then it is planting time:

Above is a little coleus baby tucked behind a still peaking snapdragon. When I tear out the snapdragons in a few weeks, the coleus will be ready and raring to go. The nice thing about this method is that the volume increases exponentially. This little plant will soon be big enough to take clippings from it, and the whole process starts again.

Hope this post didn't bore you too much. I enjoy watching other people's methods, and it seems like every gardener has their own variation on the method above. What is yours?

Wicked Bad Gardener??

So, you ask, "What does a garden look like when its owner has totally ignored it for some lousy Olympics?" Well my friends, I'll show you:

There are weeds.

And there are more weeds.

The slugs are monsterous.

The spiders think they own the place. (The mosquitoes however know they own it.)

It's not all bad. Some coleus sprouted that I had forgotten about. And the other coleus are doing beautifully - with no help from me.

In the Garden This Evening

I am madly in love with the gingers right now. I want a bazillion more. In all the colors I can get my hands on. They are blooming early, and almost all of the plants have several small shoots. I'm wondering if I cut back some of the spent shoots I can coax another set of blooms.

The corner garden is thriving in all the rain.

This vinca isn't thriving. I've noticed in some of my patches of vinca one plant will suddenly wither and die. Does anyone know why this is happening?

Update of the Corner Garden

This is the corner garden as of today. Starting on the far left are: shampoo ginger, crinum, coleus, (above) shell ginger, white crinum and canna. In the circle are white vinca, a burgundy crinum, sweet potato vine, butterfly ginger, and two baby queen palms.

This bed has chocolate mint coleus, green sweet potato vine, purple queen, shell ginger, cannas, butterfly ginger and a queen palm.

Sometimes You Make the Plan, Sometimes the Garden Center Does

It was a soggy wet weekend and besides getting some weeding and maintenance work done around the yard, the major changes have centered around the corner garden:Here is what this area looked like one short month ago. In between the thunderstorms I planted variegated ginger(1.), multiple bulbs, and two queen palms(2.). "What?" you say. "I don't remember queen palms on Wicked's plan." Well, sometimes you make the plan, and sometimes the Garden Center does. Yesterday while shopping I found these palms on sale for $5.99 each!!!! When you find a deal like that, you re-evaluate your plan. I strongly considered a field of queen palms, but restrained myself with only two. As they get larger I think it will provide the more intimate feeling that my online inspiration had. Check out this Chocolate Mint coleus, which I also planted in the corner garden. I can't resist anything called chocolate mint. Yummy! I'd show you where I planted it, but is raining too hard, so this is a shot of some cuttings. I hope to get lots of babies from these plants.

Update of the Front Garden

Spent the day cleaning up and putting away the Halloween decorations.

The vinca, propagated from cuttings, is filling out.

Burgundy coleus, a cutting from my mom's garden.