More Zinnias

A mixture of Persian Carpet and
Old Mexico Zinnias (Zinnia haageana).

The catalog says that these make good cut flowers. And they do... but you'd better have a short vase. Most of the stems are only 3 - 4 inches long (8 - 10 cm).

I like these two types together. I had both last year, but made the mistake of planting them too close to something taller. They ended up in the shade half the day, and didn't produce well.

The catalog says 2" flowers (5 cm) and 2' plants (61 cm), but so far mine are about half of that.

Finally

We planted the garden pretty late.



So all we're getting now, in the way of vegetables, are long, skinny things.



Japanese Eggplant, Zephyr Squash, Cucumbers. No tomatoes yet.



The little cucumber that could. We bought what turned out to be an amazingly good plant, I think from the local Ace Hardware. Never bitter, despite my horribly uneven watering. And really, really prolific! This amount is from one day. (One plant.) I see cucumber-pushing in my future.

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Don't forget the Friday Ark.

Peppermint Stick Zinnia

We were late in planting the garden, so even the quick-starters are just starting to be productive. Last year, I wasted a lot of money on exotic seeds that never germinated. Since I couldn't be sure if it was the seeds or it was me at fault, I decided to keep the flower experiments simple until I had a clue about what I was doing.

Zinnias are easy. Zinnias truly are "Flowers for Dummies". So I bought almost every Zinnia mix that Johnny's offers.



The Peppermint Stick is supposed to be a "fully double bloom".



They're not exactly turning out like that, though. (Compare with the image in that last link.)



Maybe they need more water. I kind of like them this way, though.



One of the "small percentage of solid colors" they warn you about.



This one's trying to go for "double" I guess. Sometimes one of the petals is a solid color like this. I found that if I cut them at this point, those inner petals never unfurl. They seem to stay frozen in time at the moment of cutting.

Like all the other Zinnias, they have excellent staying power as a cut flower.

How to make it rain

Install drip irrigation.

June Garden Tour

It's really too hot in June to be touring gardens in Alabama.



I didn't want to miss this one, though. I'd previously only seen it in the fall, and knew if would be great in full bloom.



Consider the lilies...



Consider the drumstick alliums too!



My calendula never looked this nice.



He said this was Brazilian verbena, but it must be a cultivated variety. The wild version here isn't nearly as full.



Still considering lilies...



I have no idea what most of these plants are called. Obviously this one is a hydrangea, but I don't know the type. (I can probably find out if you're curious about anything in particular.)



Love those coneflowers.

The gardener said he'd lost a lot during last year's drought, but the garden looked fantastic to me. We got a lot of good spring rain, but it has tapered off severely in the past month. I'm afraid we're in for another dry summer.

Hummingbird vine

My sister was sold this plant labeled as Hummingbird Vine.

I knew right away that it wasn't what most people call Hummingbird Vine. (That would be Cypress Vine, Ipomoea quamoclit, shown below.)



I suspect that what she bought was actually Campsis radicans, a.k.a. Trumpet Vine, Trumpet Creeper, or (my favorite) Cow Itch.

Looking around the internet, some people do apparently call the first plant Hummingbird Vine. But it's certainly not the preferred name. Not here, anyway.

I was all ready to blame Walmart or Lowe's for the mistake, and tell her to demand a refund. But it turns out she bought the plant from the Birmingham Botanical Garden's plant sale. (Whoops.)

Trumpet Vine is native here, but many people consider it invasive in the garden.

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Cypress vine photo by Janice Waltzer via Flickr.

Special care

My sister's miniature rose.



My sister, demonstrating the special care needed for the rose (nothing).

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I can't remember if she didn't know the name, or if I just forgot to ask. Maybe she will email or comment and let me know.

Holes in the story

At my sister's house, insects lined up for dinner in order of descending appetites.



At my sister's house, mice held a Scherenschnitte party, but it was interrupted at an early stage.



At my sister's house, pixies were unhappy with their needlework, and unthreaded all the leaves.

Felder Rushing

Yesterday some friends and I traveled to Tuscaloosa for a seminar called, "Gardening in Dry Times".



But really, we went to see Felder Rushing. That's him posing with his hanging salad garden ("I don't even have to bend over to eat it!").

He's one of the more entertaining people you'll ever hear speak. Whenever his name is mentioned, you'll notice that four or five folks will automatically chime in, "Oh he's such a hoot." And he is, but you learn a lot too.



His traveling truck garden. Seventy miles and hour, and everything is fine.



Not your grandfather's notion of truck farming.



Flamingo #1.



Flamingo #2.



The whole of it. Note the wind chimes on the right. "If you see whiteflies, just drive faster."



My favorite bumper sticker.

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Check out his website for more great unusual gardening ideas, photos of previous incarnations of the truck crop, articles, and more.

Double Dog Dare

Double Dogwood, Cornus florida.

The owner didn't know the specific variety name, but said that it came from Hanna's in Birmingham.

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The Circus of the Spineless is up!

And don't forget the Friday Ark.

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You can still register to win Susan Wittig Albert's newest book in the China Bayles herbal mystery series, Nightshade. But hurry, Rurality's drawing ends at noon today! Click here.

Of mud men and moss maids

I recently read on the Ellis Hollow blog about Craig's plans to build a Mudman.

He was inspired by photos of this sculpture called The Giant's Head at The Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall, England.



Then when I was searching for online information on Moss Maidens for my post last week, this photo popped up on Google images:



Two living garden sculptures in one week! Synchronicity started playing in my head. I had to learn more.

Clicking through, I found the Waterfall Cottage site, where I read that Australian sculptor Belinda Villani had created Lily (above), inspired by another sculpture at Heligan.

Here's the original Mud Maiden at Heligan:



The Heligan sculptures were crafted by Sue Hill and her brother Pete, who also have works at The Eden Project in Cornwall.



This one is called Eve. On this page that includes several photos of its construction, it's called the Apples sculpture, though.

The photo below resembles Eve, and was also created by Sue and Pete Hill. It was part of the "Garden of Dreams" in the 2006 Chelsea Flower show, and is called The Dreaming Girl.



One source says that after the show, the figure was bought by Olivia Harrison for her own garden. (Click the link for another view and more info on the plants.)

Then there's this.

It's at Bute Park in Cardiff, Wales, and been called a troll, a warthog, and a mudbeast. I can't find any information on the maker, but it seems a bit too rough-hewn to be by the Hills.



Still cute, though. Apparently it had to be fenced in, to prevent people from climbing on it.

Check here for a series of photos showing the creation of a garden scupture called Terra M Firma. The last the artist mentioned, it's not growing moss as well as she'd hoped.

I've been inspired by these living sculptures!

My idea though, is to find rocks with moss already growing on them, and then arrange them artfully to resemble, say, a turtle. Or a snail. Have to start small.

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additional links:
Heligan Gardens website.
The Eden Project website.
Search flickr for "Heligan head" to see how that sculpture changes over time and season.
Other views of the Mud Maiden at Heligan are here and here.
Another view of the Mudbeast.

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Photo credits:
The Giant's Head at Heligan by Ollie O'Brien.
Lily at Waterfall Cottage by Jeanne Villani.
Mud maid at Heligan by Liz Jones.
Eve at The Eden Project by Patricia Hamilton.
Dreaming Girl by Caroline, aka Elfleda.
Mudbeast at Bute Park by Mart, aka Late Night Movie.

Cut flowers

My gardening group was approached with a project: to grow cut flowers for Hospice.

At heart, I'm a fairly practical person. Whenever I take a personality test, the results always come back the same: Logical. A realist. Pragmatic. A huge skeptic. So why I tend to have such grandiose visions in the planning stages of all my own projects, I have no idea.

I really needn't have worried how many times a week I'd have to drive to town to deliver the multitude of stems I'd be producing. (A boundless bounty of beauteous bouquets, I was sure!)

Oh, the hours I spent, researching the intricacies of each possibility. Was it a good cut flower? (Did the bloom last?) Could I grow it from direct seeding? Did it fare well in the south? Did blooms emerge within a reasonable time frame? Did googling the botanical name produce pictures that looked even remotely like the glossy catalog photos?

Finally I had my list, and ordered 15 varieties that seemed the most promising. We were late planting everything this year, but since we have such a long growing season that's not a problem.

Apparently though, the only thing I can grow is Zinnias. And a sunflower or two.

Technically I did have one California poppy. And there are some African daisies and Cosmos plants that have lots of foliage on them, if no blossoms yet. But mainly, just Zinnias.

Gnome bug zapper

Why do so many people have garden gnomes? Because they allegedly help in the garden at night.

I was a skeptic, until one of ours started attracting and killing the faux lady bugs, a.k.a. Asian lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis).

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Visit the Friday Ark.

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Updated: See the comments, where the shallow depth of my bug knowledge is tragically revealed.

Strange weather, again

When I stepped outside Tuesday morning, it smelled as if a fire were burning nearby. I worried that the fire in the next county had spread. But that fire was 30 miles away, last I heard. Surely it wasn't that.

No, it wasn't... it was smoke from the south Georgia/north Florida fires... over 300 miles away!

Every air pollution monitor in two counties was in the danger zone. Unreal.

Wednesday a cold front came through and put an end to all that nonsense. We got a whole 1/8 inch of rain. Which was welcome, but... is that all we get? How are my eight types of squash going to thrive on that?

We did finally get most of the garden planted over the weekend. With every seed, I kept thinking, "I'll bet KFarmer has laid her garden by already. I'll bet KFarmer is eating ripe tomatoes by now!" (She's really not, but still I've placated myself by imagining that she is so far south in Georgia that she might as well be in Florida.)

But if I'd been on my toes and planted as early as KFarmer, it would all have frozen at Easter anyway. The county agent says we had the worst late freeze since 1955. Excepting strawberries, there are NO commercial fruits left in Blount county. All were destroyed.

And the people who tried to protect their strawberries by putting water on them lost everything too. Only the people who used row covers saved them.

Anyway. So we're really late getting the garden planted this year. Our healthiest looking plant is actually something that's coming up in the compost pile. I think it's a zuchhini.



Because of course I really needed nine types of squash!



It's a squash experimentation year, and natural forces are playing along.

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County agent also says that a lot of the damage done to larger plants and trees won't show up until later in the summer, when everything starts getting stressed by the heat.

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The nicest recent strange weather event though, the one that made me really smile? It was the rainbow in my sink just after the recent rain. Yep, in my sink!

ML8 ML8

Can you guess what kind of car I was once tempted to buy, just so I could get a license plate that read ML8 ML8?

I know what you did last summer

Nasturtium.

I've mentioned before that we grew some edible flowers, Sakata Sweet melons, and Tigger melons last year.

Here are a few of the other things we tried for the first time.


Plum Granny.
Supposed to be an heirloom "pocket" melon. (Somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a clementine.) I read that they were grown primarily for scent. They're so bland as to be inedible. They did smell great, but weren't as strong as I'd hoped. Nothing approaching the scent level of daffodils, say. It may vary with growing conditions but I doubt I'll try them again. Some little critters definitely like to eat them -- I think it was the most munched-on thing in the garden.


Japanese eggplant.
We liked these much better than traditional eggplants. They seemed less likely to grow bitter, and were more versatile for cooking just because of their size. We'll definitely grow these again.


Triamble squash.
A winter squash. I ordered these seeds purely based on the look of the pictures, which were idealized to say the least. Still, it's an interesting looking vegetable. But hard, hard, hard to cut. It tastes good, and keeps forever, but I really should have realized that ten-pound squashes were a little much for two people.


Top view.


Profile view.
These were really picked too soon. (The stem should be dry first.)

I couldn't find a picture, but we also grew lemon cucumbers. I was under the impression that they had a lemony taste, but the name just refers to the size (and color, somewhat). They tasted good enough, but did get bitter sometimes. Plus they have tiny hairs or spines that were difficult to rub off. And they didn't keep well at all -- one day, tops. So, back to white cucumbers for me.

If last year was the year of melon experimentation, this will be the year of the squash! More on that later.

Water features

From the same garden as the pictures of last week. Four views of a fountain:









A daisy bath among white iris.



Another fountain.



A small waterfall. I believe this was a new feature in the garden.



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I very brilliantly strained my back while lifting some 50-pound pails of soapmaking oils (without using my back brace). Sitting bothers it the most, so I may not post as much or visit other blogs as much as normal for a little while.

That purple wall

Jenn commented on the purple wall in yesterday's garden tour post.


It was my favorite focal point of the garden.


A bold choice of color, as they say.


As you get closer, you can see that there are several other colors mixed in with the purple.


Detail view.


I couldn't decide which angle I liked best.


I wondered how many people on the tour rushed home to build purple walls in their own gardens?

Spring break

I took a break from the recent gray days and worked on some pictures from last spring. This is the same garden from the Shoals Garden Tour that I posted about before. The "more pictures later" part only took me eight short months! Oh well.


I'd never been on a garden tour, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But this garden alone was worth the price of the tour. It's difficult to believe that all of this was on 3/4 acre.


Calla lily.


So much of what I love about this garden is the hardscaping. This purple wall was a favorite feature, and if I ever build a garden, I'm now convinced that I'd want to include a lot of statuary. (I think this is Apollo.)


Piney path.


Cherub planter.


Shady rest.


From the more traditional front of the house, you'd never guess that all that was going on in the back.

The garden has its own web site.

Watermelons 2006

It wasn't that we didn't plant watermelons early. We did. It's just that they were part of the straw-bale gardening experiment that went horribly wrong. And we didn't re-plant until the first of August. A race was on between the vines and the first hard frost.



This was our first attempt at growing watermelons.

My planting method went like this: "Oh, that was a good watermelon that we got from the farmer's market. I'll just toss some of these seeds onto the unplanted garden area and see what happens."

My husband's planting method was more sophisticated: "I'll plant some of these seeds that Aunt Polly gave us a few years ago. I'm even going to weed the area first, and plant in mounds. But I'm not going to use any fertilizer, because this dirt is so good. It's all a matter of mind control, anyway."



You might be surprised to learn that we did actually manage to grow a few excellent watermelons.

They were very tasty! We had a two or three week window between the first ripe melon and the first hard frost (around the first of November).



Did you know that melons can suffer from blossom end rot? It's a common problem with tomatoes, but for melons I get the impression that you really have to be trying. Oops. I blamed it on not fertilizing this end of the garden at all. Hubby blamed it on not watering enough (and improper mind control). It was probably the result of both. (I don't subscribe to the mind control theory of gardening.)