Our Garden July/August 2006

July/ August this year (2006) was REALLY HOT and it was REALLY DRY…..Tried to water at least once a week if it didn’t rain much and it didn’t rain hardly at all……But still things looked pretty good…Some things I started to deadhead more often and a few things were cut back altogether for a later re-bloom hopefully. Weather like we had this July/ August is why its good to pick cultivars of perennials you like that will stand up to the heat and humidity…..Some varieties ‘melt’ down here in Alabama but there are plenty of good ones that stand up to the conditions our plants grow in.

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: Not at it’s best but we can’t all be at our best on picture day. This bloom of ‘Storm Cloud’ Agastache is waning but it’s still lovely and the color of the little flowers are the color of a summer Alabama ‘storm cloud’.

: I love this photo, it’s Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii, one of my favorites. Looks good when in bloom with little yellow bracts instead of ‘real’ flowers and after that you cut the bract-ed stems back and you got a lovely year round foliage plant with nice color and great form and growing habit.

: The back porch before we had a roof put on it. My first attempt at container design, up top, all Lantana ‘New Gold’, on the bottom, all Verbena ‘Homestead Purple’ As you can see I will try to design a container display NOMORE…..:-)

: What the Center Border looked like the first full year we planted it. We were happy, the plants were happy, the squirrels and birds were happy and all the plant nurseries within a 100 mile radius of us were really HAPPY……:-)

: Echinacea purpurea ‘Harvest Moon’ The colors on this plant are pretty much color fast even in full sun, unlike some cultivars that kinda color fade when the heats turns up.

: Black-Eyed Susans, Brown-Eyed Susans, Rudbeckia fulgida, ‘Goldstrum’, this plant has a name for every season….:-)

: The label on ‘Herbstonne’ Rudbeckia says 4 to 5 feet in height, well the label is wrong……:-) I can’t hardly reach to deadhead them and I’m 6′ 8″ ‘s tall. One plant got nearly 7 1/2 feet tall, it was lovely but oh so tall.

: Echinacea purpurea ‘Sundown’ Nice plant, nice branching, and if you think Mother Nature meant for us to have orange coneflowers, well you’ll like this one. If not, then take your complaints to Saul Brothers Nursery…:-)

: I like Verbena ‘Homestead Purple” but you gotta cut it back after it blooms really good. I mean after it blooms really good, you cut it back really good and then it’ll bloom again really good. Got it?……..:-)

: ‘Blue Fortune’ Agastache, needs little water, no fertilizer and plenty of room to grow and for only that you get something the bees & butterflies & all kinds of friendly insects just love. You will love it too.

: A Man (or Woman) Gotta Do What A Man (or Woman) Gotta Do and Me? I gotta spread 2 inches of Black Kow Composted Cow Manure around the crown of each and every plant I got in the early spring.