yarrow2

July in the garden!!

Hi pottiepam: many thanks for your response to my grass query a few posts back.  Fabulous!  Yes it is indeed Briza and I've since managed to get a couple of young plants which are labelled 'Briza Media'.  Thanks to you (and my laziness not looking it up anywhere) I was able to go get what I was looking for.

deanlovett:  I'm drooling over your spuds and cabbage. 

leggi:  love your photos and lovely plants.  Can I ask - is your Monarda  (Bergamot) 'Cambridge Scarlet'?  It's a stunning plant.  And what is the lovely smaller red behind your marigolds?   It looks lovely and a nice size but I can't see it too clearly in the photo and can't tell if it's attached to the darker foliage or growing through and around it.

lilylouise:  I'm wondering if it was in one of your past photos that I saw the cream plant in this photo below.  I know someone on this forum had a photo of this gorgeous plant (is it a poppy?) and apologies if I'm not remembering who in fact it was.  Saw this in a garden yesterday and was really taken with it and would like to know more about it.  Although it doesn't look as if it would be joyful in my clay soil but maybe someone can advise on this gorgeous little thing.

July in the garden!!

Thanks for comment 'Gary Hobson'.  Ooooh Pam and everyone - how great it is to see your photos.  Inspiring stuff!  So very cheering during prolonged wet wet wet periods.  Gardening is a pretty new world for me and as you all know it hits the soul spot, runs the gamut of every emotion (including wonderment) known to man - is fun fun fun to the point of hilarity sometimes when things go wrong - and this forum confirms a feeling of community which seems to be quite rare these days.

A little off-topic digression here.  Took trip round the Botanics (in Edinburgh) the other day where they have undertaken massive plantings of perennials this year - I'm talking thousands.  Quite a sight.  I'd meant to visit more regularly to see how things were coming into bloom but the usual 'time' contricts means I keep missing some plants at their best.  I was pottering around an area where several plants were dying back and what remained was a fairylike area of interplanted grasses.  One of these grasses I was really taken with.  I tried to get a good photograph but the dangly bits were so small and grouped together that my little camera could not focus.  I'd love to know what this is.  It was amazingly effective planted between many types of plants, especially tall stemmed delicate flowers.  I missed the label but it has a very short name and begins with a 'B' - like Bria or something.  Anyone know what it is.  I'll put these pics in - but I couldn't isolate the detail of this little grass.

It really looked like a fountain of grasses leftover where the plants had now gone to seed.  Lovely.

 And this is as much as my camera could do to focus on this tiny grass.  For all the world it looks like little ladybirds or beasties are delicately dangling from the stalks.  It's lovely when you see it 'in focus' but I couldn't do it.

July in the garden!!

Seems to me that all you gardeners South of the Border are doing better with your plants and veg. than we are here in Central Scotland.  It's fun and games in my garden and weather forecaster said today that in the whole of July we'd had an hour and a half of sun.

This little lavender patch is being propped up from constant flooding at it's bottom.

 My beetroot is going the same way as the cabbage I had to pull up which had white mould.

 But there's a little beet at the bottom and I don't know whether I should just pull them all up now or whether they have to be binned.

 The rain and humid spells are going for most things.  So I decided to cut down dense foliage, part of a tree and a privet hedge which was wild.  I'm merrily sawing away the privet when in the middle I find it's produced flowers for the first time.

 My young hydrangea has had infected (or something) leaves for 2 months and now it's worse.

 BUT - everything 'yellow' seems to be loving this continual rain - especially the tubs which have Nonstop Mocca begonias.  They just keep blooming and blooming.

'Wargraves Pink' and other geraniums seem to be in their element.

 And - my little Hebe 'Caledonia' has flower buds for the very first time which I'm really chuffed about.  Makes splashing about in puddles all worthwhile.

 And we've had a day today where it didn't rain.  Hurrah!  Celebration time.

Sweet Pea Queries

Thanks David.  I don't mind which year the blooms are from.  It's a real help to see photos and 'names' to get ideas for colour combinations.  It's much clearer than depending on the seed packet photographs where the bane of the photographer is often demonstrated i.e. it's difficult to get a photograph of the true colour when the pics have been printed.

I'm determined to make a real go of Sweet Peas next year so will be thinking of planning colours and type, paying more attention to ground preparation from the end of this year and starting my seeds off this autumn as opposed to next spring.   With that in mind, I will look forward with particular interest to your intention to kick things off here on a forum thread in the autumn.  I think it will be a timely popular discussion and support to many of us who want to improve our techniques and results.

More plants to identify - Stachys or not ??!!

First one - Salvia 'Purple Rain'?

Sweet Pea Queries

Thanks for the names David.  They really are stunning - and it's lovely to see fresh vibrant blooms which haven't been ruined with rain. 

It's torrential here and there are greenfly absolutely everywhere on the buds.  It's a slippery paddle to get to them at the moment.

Can I ask how you support  yours - cordon or other?  You have probably gone over this on this forum already so apologies if I'm covering old ground.  I have never mastered supporting them well.  In this small garden I have about an 8foot length of a very thin section at the back  of a  border so have only room for 8 8ft high canes.  All I've ever done (other than an obelisk in a big wooden tub with sweet peas) is have the canes upright supported by horizontal wiring to keep them straight with two substantial wooden pillars either side sunk into the ground to keep them all taught.  I plant 2 sweet peas at the foot of each cane and just let them climb straight up.  I have to keep removing the tendrils every few days otherwise they get very tangled and it gets messy.  I have substantial (but thin) wire netting attached across these canes and I tie them in (every few days at the moment) with plant ties which hold well but allow a little expansion.

I'm not sure how to explain what advice I'm asking for here..  Basically, they always grow up the canes really well and bloom very high.  But when I see lovely sweet peas on tv or in people's photographs, they seem to really bush out even forward away from the canes (don't know how to describe this) and look lovely and natural.  The way I do mine they just shoot up the canes like stiff soldiers and it's all leaves and stalks until very high - and then that's it. 

I'm thinking that I maybe ought to plant more than 2 at the foot of each cane or do it some other way to achieve the lovely 'look' that others seem to get.  Or - maybe I just don't prepare the soil well enough or feed them correctly to produce a better abundance of blooms other than right at the top.

I wish I'd been more attentive of gardening when I was a child and my dad used to produce lovely Sweet Peas - but by that time it was the 70's and teenage years and the attention span for such things was far too short!

Sorry for such long and tedious posts everyone.  Yawn at leisure

Identify these anyone?

Hi jude5.  You might get an extra reply here.  Typed a response, leaned on something and my answer disappeared.  So I'm back again.

No, no news.  Been torrential rain for days and on quick paddle round the garden there's no sign of them.  Imagine the rain would have sluiced them off if they were continuing their crawling forays.  But - there are some small rust marks on some of the leaves and a some torn holes of irregular (not round) shape - so it may be that they did some work and disappeared off when the showers really hit.  Slugs and snails everywhere but no sign of the little black beasties.

If only the rain would stop, everything is floppy but foliage verdant with little blooming going on - other than some begonias which have held up amazingly well.  Will get back if the opportunity for the experiment arises. Thanks. 

Sweet Pea Queries

David K:  this is a really good thread and it's good to be able to pick your brains

Can you tell us the name of that absolutely stunning deep pink in the photo?  Would love to see other photos and also photos from everyone else to see the amazing range of sweet peas. 

Torrential rain here in Central Scotland and although mine are stretching out now to nice long stems with  buds only beginning to colour-up - but with continuing rain it doesn't look as if they're going to have much of a chance to put on a show.

Talkback: How to water hanging baskets

Rainjustlearning:  I love your basket and particularly like the red coloured petunia.  I sowed a load of mixed Rapide F1 mix petunias which are growing well but not at the flowering stage yet - and until they do flower, I haven't a clue what colours I have.  I'd love to know what your red is.  I have one other than the Rapide F1 mix and I think it's a red Saguna - or some name like that.  What's the name of your red?  And - your basket is growing so lovely and evenly balanced.  Mine always seem to just straggle down all shapes and sizes and because I hate cutting anything I tend to let them just get messy.  Do you trim yours or just let them do their own thing?

Strayed from the topic - sorry.  I cut lengths of slim old vacuum cleaner hoses and stick them in my baskets and water into them - but they're usually at a height I can reach with a little effort with ye olde watering can.   Because the hoses are so 'bendy' I can pull the end of the hose down, fill it (sometimes at an awkward angle) and just let it ping up again to let the water run into the basket. 

My baskets this year are all seedlings so none are at the flowering stage yet here in rainy Scotland.  Lots of green and not much colour so far.  But getting there.

Identify these anyone?

Hi jude5.  Wouldn't mind trying your suggested experiment - only thing stopping me trying it is that this particular crocosmia is a division from last year and it's grown so well that I'm hopeful it will flower this year.  The parent plant which I took the divisions from isn't looking hopeful for any flowers and had been failing for years so I don't want to go cutting pieces of leaves off if I can avoid it.  However, will see how things go.  It's a very tempting idea though.   We're scheduled to have forecast warning downpours tomorrow so if the little blighters appear any day after that I might just delve into the jam jar stock and do a little wildlife science!

Can anyone identify?

Zaluzianskya 'Orange Eye'

Can any confirm identification please?

Skimmia japonica 'Thereza'

Fear of messing with old roses

Ice-cream Penstemons - 'Melting Candy'

Geraniums (not Pelargoniums)

Identify bug?

Identify these anyone?

Aruncus

Identify plant

Hydrangea macrophylla

Geum rivale 'Leonard's Variety'

Cabbage 'Greyhound'

Cistus Snowfire