Summer 2024
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The weather here has been super nice as well, but it looks we're going to have a hot spell starting this weekend.
We have some large daisy-type flower bush thing
at the new house that's starting to bloom. And there are two even larger, massive really, bushes in the backyard that have flowers. I need to get a photo and figure out what it is because it might need trimming, not sure.We also have a hydrangea, it looks like it may the be kind where the flowers are cone shaped rather than round. (If so, too bad because I love the round hydrangea but don't really like the other kind...)
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Funny, I'm the other way around re hydrangeas. I like the cone shaped ones like the oakleaf and the tardiva.
The round ones here are the Annabelle variety, an arborescens. They're usually cut down to the ground in spring, grow like mad, and bloom on the new wood. Problem is the stems aren't hardened off so the weight of those huge round flowers makes them keel over and touch the ground. They have to be supported, kind of like peonies do. Too much maintenance! They also don't go through the white to pink to brown cycle of flower color. It's just white to brown. And the fall color is unremarkable.
There are the pink/blue varieties that have round flowers, too. Those colors don't really fit in well in my yard.
Post pics of the shrubs!
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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@wtg said in Summer 2024:
The round ones here are the Annabelle variety, an arborescens. They're usually cut down to the ground in spring, grow like mad, and bloom on the new wood. Problem is the stems aren't hardened off so the weight of those huge round flowers makes them keel over and touch the ground. They have to be supported, kind of like peonies do. Too much maintenance! They also don't go through the white to pink to brown cycle of flower color. It's just white to brown. And the fall color is unremarkable.
And those are hydrangea?? Hmmm...
There are pink and blue ones on campus, they don't droop like that. And they are all over Japan of course, also no drooping. Maybe it's a different variety, or else better suited to the climate there?
But I agree, I'm not interested in something that requires the maintenance of peonies!
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No, the pink and blue ones don't typically droop. I think they're called bigleaf hydrangeas and I don't have as much experience with them.
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Ahh ok.
So with the cone ones, oakleaf? You're not supposed to cut off the blooms? The ones in Japan, you just leave them. and they bloom every year. But I read somewhere that some varieties you need to ... what is that called, dead heading? to get them to bloom every year.
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I just cut off the spent blooms from the oakleaf when this year's flowers started to form. They would fall off eventually but they looked a bit unsightly.
Pruning depends on the type of shrub. Some bloom on old wood, some on new, and some on both. Always best to identify the shrub and then get pruning instructions for that type. All hydrangeas, for instance, aren't created equal.
(I know, not a hydrangea) -
Good to know, thanks!
Mr Sk did cut off the blooms there (at the new house) when he was weeding, bc they do look bad. I'll take a look when I'm there today and see what it looks like. -
If he just nipped off the flower portion with the flower stalk and didn't touch the branch, you're OK. If he cut into the branch, he might have cut off the part that would have formed the flower later this summer. I'm guessing he did the former.
I looked at my oakleaf and saw one spent flower that I neglected to take off. You can see there's a partially broken flower stem with the spent flower head on it. That stem can be nipped. But not the branch that it's attached to.
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Hmm... interesting. Thanks for the photo! I will take a look later today.
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First day of summer!
Days get shorter starting tomorrow....fall will be here in no time...
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First year in a long time that I grew peas. They were absolutely delicious, but the yields weren't great.
Tomatoes are going great guns, as are the eggplants and beans.
The cukes keep getting dug up by the damn rodents.
Took out three large Techny arborvitaes that had gotten much too big for the area that they were in and were a source of major maintenance to keep them in bounds. Digging out the stumps in the heat was an interesting undertaking. But they're out!
Bumper crops of red currants and red gooseberries. Black currants and jostaberries, not so much. Those may find a new home next year.
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The yellow daylilies are coming in now. Pretty!
There are two more colors planted here and they should flower in a week or two.
Meanwhile I found two of these bugs on my yellow roses. I had to look them to figure out what they are. Japanese beetles - and the reason I’ve never seen them as they live East of the Mississippi only.
Farmers Almanac says the best way to deal with them is to pick/knock them off of the bush and dump them in soapy water. If you leave them they’ll attract hundreds more.
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Felt something crawling on my back on the inside of my shirt this morning. Japanese beetle. They like the raspberries, which are in the rose family. I I also have roses for the first time this year, but didn't see any there. Yet.
I have a small jar with water and a squirt of dishwashing soap. I just hold the jar under a leaf with a beetle, tap the leaf and most of the time the beetle drops in and can't get out of the soapy water.
Whatever you do, don't get a Japanese beetle trap. They put an attractant in it to catch the beetles. Problem is that it attracts beetles, and only a small number actually get caught. The entomologist who taught that segment of the Master Gardener class said that the trick is to get someone about a quarter mile away to put a trap in their yard.
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Also planted this little fellow. It’s a Bay Laurel tree - source of bay leaves. With any luck I’ll be able to keep it alive over winter.
The leaves are delicious. Much more flavor than the dried kind.
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@Steve-Miller we have a bay laurel tree and have kept it alive for two winters! It is growing INCREDIBLY slowly but does provide enough leaves for us to cook with and is hanging in there!
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Is this thread just for gardening talk? Hope not - I’d like to post summer activities too.
First a gardening picture. This is my neighbor’s yard across the street. He had a landscape architect lay out this flower garden a few years back and this year it’s really filled in!
If you embiggen it you can see all of the flowers! I’m really happy the garden is doing so well. Not just because it’s cool but my neighbor is a really nice guy, he works hard on it and I’m glad it’s finally working out.
I think I posted last year about getting a new RV for our retirement travels. We didn’t get to use it a lot last year before the cold hit but this year we’ve used it 3 times already.
Grandson Jack has a school friend Colton, and Colton's family keeps an RV at a nice little low-key RV park about 45 minutes from our house. Here are the two boys at a balloon thing this weekend:
Park features this pond where I enjoyed watching any number of kids pulling out fish - and releasing them - at a furious pace. You’d think the fish would have figured it out by now but there must be 1000s of them in this pond and at least some of them have not.
Sam was very interested in the pond but the edge is all mud and after the first time I wouldn’t let him near it.
According to Jack I’m ”Grampy”. I’ve been called worse.
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My Japanese garden project starts Friday and I’m stoked! I think I’ll start a new thread for it. I’ve never been part of anything like it before.
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According to Jack I’m ”Grampy”. I’ve been called worse.
Picture of the Day.
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Not a good year in my garden for a lot of the veggies despite decent weather. Lots of squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks are hanging out in my yard wreaking their special brand of havoc.
A July recap:
Ended up having a decent crop of peas. Actually two crops, the second being a surprise in the heat of summer.
The cukes are blooming, getting pollinated, and forming baby pickles. They aren't growing, but neither are they dying and turning yellow. They sit there in suspended animation. I don't know what's going on.
Squirrels are eating the eggplant and tomatoes. And digging in the onion bed. They don't eat the onions, they just unearth them.
Beans I have in planters on the deck are getting chewed off at the base by rabbits that jump up on the deck in the middle of the night. The surviving plants are just starting to flower and we found our first one inch long Roma bean today.
OTOH, the potato plants seem to be doing well. I grow them in pots and noticed that all the plants in one pot had pretty much died back while the others are growing gangbusters. Seemed kinda early and I thought that when I dumped out the pot to see what's there that I would find a bunch of rotting spuds.
But no!
Harvest from the first bucket of Red Norland spuds:
What's up in your garden?
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Since the hydrangeas portion of this thread was posted, I have moved into a house with two big hydrangea bushes. They're both bigleaf, I believe, and they're both blue. (At the moment.)
The one in front of the house is a lacecap, and our soil pH must be right at 7, because a few of the flowers are purple, and I've seen an old photo of the house where that bush was blooming pink.
The one in back of the house, but on the side and visible from the street, is what I think you call a mophead. The flowers are a deep purplish blue.
They're both starting to fade to a pinkish brown, but I like the look of the dried brown heads and plan to leave them. This town seems to be really well-suited to hydrangeas, because lots of people have yards full of them, and I've seen all the varieties I know and some I don't--mophead, lacecap, Annabelle, peewee, climbing, oakleaf, and probably more--and in all the colors hydrangeas come in. The old, established yards of some of the houses near us are really remarkable.
