My Half Acre of Paradise

OK, since I gave an MVP award a few weeks ago, I thought it good to give an MVA to the Most Valuable Annual flower in my garden this year.

I’ve been growing Rudbeckias for a long time, and they seldom disappoint. There is a perennial variety (Rudbeckia fulgida), but it’s too orange for my tastes. I like the pure yellow of these annual ones. I think they might be Rudbeckia hirta, but I’m really not sure. I’ve often thought they seemed perennial, but I think now that they just reseed really well. They get a little tall and sometimes need staking or they’ll fall over. My favorite thing about them is that they bloom so long — from June till frost.

Runner Up: As I thought about my Most Valuable Annual, I almost said California Poppies. These are also a star performer in my garden, but they are earlier than the Rudbeckias, flowering from April to July, mostly. I still have some scattered blooms in my garden. I also have a lot of tiny seedlings that are sprouting and will survive the winter to flower in the spring. These do reseed quite well.

I checked my gaillardia (Blanket flower) and oenothera (Missouri evening primrose) cuttings today for roots. I planted them in clear plastic cups so it would be easy to see the roots when they develop. One of the gaillardias has already produced extensive roots, starting to wrap around the bottom of the cup! Another has one little root showing at the bottom of the cup. None of the oenotheras has produced any roots I can see, but I suspect some roots are developing, because some of them have vigorous-looking leaves.

I took the cover off of them this morning, and I’ll monitor them through the day to see if they can handle it without wilting. They’re still in a shady place on my deck.

I’m excited about these gaillardias — they’re from a unique specimen that produced solid yellow flowers, unlike the typical yellow and red patterns usually produced by these. If I can get enough to grow, I’m going to mass them together in a group in my front flowerbed. My goal is to get them ready to plant this fall so they’ll get a head start on growth next spring.

Today, I noticed that two of my fall-blooming plants are just beginning to blossom. One is Japanese Anemone (Honorine Jobert variety), a tall plant with large leaves and large white simple poppy-like flowers. Here’s a photo from a few years back when they were in full bloom.

I also noticed the first blooms a few days ago on my Wood’s Blue Aster. Here’s a photo from a few years ago, too, with some Chrysanthemums joining the show (they’re not blooming yet this year).

This Saturday, I’m going to make nectarine cobbler, and this is the recipe I used last year. I found it with epicurious.com, and it’s originally from Bon Apetit magazine:

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I found a useful website from Washington State University describing when to pick nectarines and apples and how to store them. Here’s the link: Fruit Harvest & Storage.

I haven’t had much time to post lately, but my nectarines started coming ripe within the past week. I still have a bunch on the tree, and some are getting a little overdone, because I haven’t had time to pick them. But I’m going to pick them all tonight, unless there are still some green ones. I already picked two bowls of them and gave most away to friends.

I’ll be making a nectarine cobbler this Saturday for a BBQ party we’re hosting. Mmmmm… Sounds so good!

I did find a small worm in one of the ones I ate. I hope there aren’t many others. I haven’t been spraying these since probably a month ago, since I wanted to be sure they didn’t have a lot of malathion on them when we picked them and since I’ve heard that they don’t get too many pests.

This summer, I have been extremely impressed with Lavatera tauricensis. This plant was not supposed to be hardy in my Zone 6 garden. I think it’s listed as a Zone 7 minimum. I had grown some in California, from seeds bought from Thompson & Morgan. The ones in California produced some seed, which I brought with me and planted two years ago. The young plants didn’t do much last year, but this year, they’ve gotten about two feet tall and have been absolutely smothered with blooms for a long season.

There is a slight variation in the flower shapes on some of these plants. That first photo above shows a flower that doesn’t have gaps between the petals, but the second photo here shows a more divided flower. Either shape looks pretty cool to me.

Catalogs often describe perennials that will flower “all summer” or “June to frost” but most of these descriptions are optimistic. It’s a rare perennial that will actually keep flowering all summer, even after it has started producing seed. These babies are producing plenty of seed but they just keep flowering on and on! They’re great!

Here are a few more shots, showing the whole plants:

Now, I just wish they came in some other colors, too…

So, like I posted earlier today, I went and got some clear plastic cups for planting some cuttings. I drilled a hole in the bottom of each one for drainage and filled each halfway with peat moss and perlite. Probably about 30% perlite. I took cuttings from a very nice looking yellow specimen of Gaillardia grandiflora, or Indian Blanket Flower. These come out pretty variable from seed, and this one has no red on the petals — just yellow. I like it a lot!

I took these cups with the cuttings and placed them in a makeshift little mini-greenhouse made from a box with a large rectangular hole in the top just big enough for one of the clear lids from my seed starting trays to cover the hole. The lid is taped to the box. The whole thing is sitting in the shade on my back deck now. Hopefully, that open shade will give enough light to do better than the fluorescents lights in the basement were for the previous batch of cuttings.

Oh yeah! I spoke a little too soon about failure on the first round of cuttings — it turns out that three of the Missouri Evening Primroses are alive and rooted, and three of the yellow Gaillardias are also rooted and alive. Their leaves are a bit hammered, but I’m hopeful they’ll survive. I did confirm, however, that the clematis cuttings did not produce any roots, just like the Japanese maples.

I think I will try again on the Japanese maple — just the red one in the front of the house, since it seems the strongest, with the least leaf burn and no signs of chlorosis.

Today I was at Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, seeing all the flowers that are still blooming well at this time of summer. I’m thinking of replanting my flowerbeds next spring, perhaps with more summer annuals, especially in the backyard. Here are some good flowers to consider for next year, from what I saw still blooming at the church gardens:

• Geraniums
• African daisies
• Blue salvia (annual kind)
• Verbena
• Vinca (the annual kind in white, purples, and pinks)
• Petunias
• Lantana
• Zinnias
• Marigolds
• Nicotiana
• Delphiniums
• Rudbeckia
• Gazanias

These really make up the bulk of what’s there and still blooming. I’ve always had a distaste for petunias and geraniums, but I’m coming around on some of them. Especially the geraniums — they can make up a good bulk of a flowerbed, with more interesting things in and around them.

I’m having some troubles trying to grow some flowers and trees from cuttings. I have succeeded before in getting cuttings of flowers and shrubs to grow by putting them in one-gallon pots with a plastic bag over them to keep the moisture in. I dipped the stems in rooting hormone and planted them in peat moss mixed with vermiculite or perlite. That’s what I did in the past.

This time, I thought I would do more in less space by planting the cuttings in those little six-pack cells I use for seed growing and put them under the plastic lid that comes with the seed trays and place the trays under the fluorescent lights in my basement. That didn’t work too well. The flower cuttings that came from plants in full sun got pale and weak being under such low light. The Japanese maple cuttings stayed alive-looking, but none grew roots. I had them in place for probably two months, with no growth (at least on the tree cuttings). The flower cuttings have been there maybe three or four weeks. I tried rooting some Missouri evening primrose and a cool yellow Gaillardia specimen. It looks like one of the primroses worked, but not the others. I also tried some cuttings off my clematis, and I’m not sure if they’re working yet.

Here’s an idea: next time I try to grow cuttings, I’m going to plant them in clear plastic cups, with a hole punched in the bottom for drainage. That way, I can see if roots are growing in the cup and really know if they’re working. Don’t see any downside, unless roots get harmed by sunlight coming through the clear plastic. Also, I will place them outside under the shade of a tree, so they’ll get more light than under the fluorescents.  I just might try this method this week, because I really want to reproduce that yellow Gaillardia in time to plant the young plants out this fall for a head start on next year’s growth.