Category: Garden

What about the sedum?

I have mixed feelings about moving the sedum. They are such a resilient plant, and super easy to propagate if they do get damaged. Literally if a stem gets broken, I stick it in dirt, it roots, and I have a new sedum plant.

I really like the fall color sedum provide as well as the 12 month interest. The pollinators LOVE them and the bunnies eat the unbroken stems all winter. When the bunnies do that, it also makes my spring cleanup easier. But for some reason, once the stems are broken, the bunnies don’t seem to have as much of an appetite for them. Very different from the sunflower!

I have already brought sedum plants and sedum cuttings up north and they are doing well with the mulch around them. I suppose where I’ll land is that if any of the Autumn Joy sedum get severely broken this fall, I’ll move those plants up north right away and let them sleep there. Then next summer I can take cuttings and start building a row to make a hedge – maybe on the farthest long gutter downspout.

Careful!

I am being cautious about bringing up plants that are under the Linden tree. There are tree roots, yes. But more concerning are the Japaese beetle bugs. They lay eggs in the soil. I don’t know if the eggs would survive the move, but I really don’t want to give them the opportunity.

So unfortunately, the Marque Moon daylilies, many of the hostas, the pink Asian lilies… Will all stay.

But the hostas outside of that area, and maybe a PurpleD’Oro need dividing and will go up north.

Maybe yet this fall, but more likely next spring.

It’s a lot.

That’s a lots of digging

So that’s the plants, so far, that are going up north in the next wave. That’s enough digging for me. It’s a lot of work to dig them out, but that’s only the first part. They have to be protected for transport, the holes have to be dug in the new garden to accommodate divisions, not just plopping in the whole existing plant, next there’s soil amendment, cardboard, mulch, and then watering.

That may be enough for this fall. I’m already having a realization that I will fill more space than I planned, but hey! If I plant along the long downspouts and put in mulch, then my husband doesn’t have to remove the downspouts anymore to mow – right?

Could be this whole area, or 2/3, with a grass area in the middle for lawn chairs. It’s bigger than it looks …

We’ll see.

Fun story

I had a sunflower seed germinate in my pot of daylily seedlings this year. Whether or not it was from birdseed I cannot say.

It grew to be a full sunflower plant with 4 mature flowers, and it looked like a 5th on the way. The birds were digging it. I was digging it. Then the squirrels dug it. Actually they probably swung on it. It started to bend. Then the next morning it was broken.

Since I had put zero effort into it except watering the pot, I was not too sad. I cut the stalk and brought the pot of of daylily seedlings up north to plant. The next time I saw the sunflower (now just the stalk) it was under the pine tree. The next morning it was totally gone.

Nothing from that sunflower went to waste. A cooperative effort between the birds, the squirrels, and the bunnies I suspect.

  • birds digging it

  • birds digging it

That’s not a weed

It might be time to move some more things if your association landscape maintenance company repeatedly blows the daylilies so hard the petals come off,

and even sometimes the flowers break off the stem,

and you watch one of the workers try to pull a mature daylily up as if it’s a weed.

This is what it looked like before – mature enough to bloom.

This is what it looks like now

  • leaves ripped to the ground

This is what the coneflower looks like now – stems broken, petals sheared off.

No question about what happened. I watched from inside as it happened.

I had planned to leave a bunch of the plants I have bought and raised from seed here, as they have thrived here and many people have enjoyed them, but they are just getting destroyed.

It is very sad. I may need a bigger garden up north.

Catch Up Time

It was a season of daylily abundance here. Day after day there were 30+ daylilies blooming everywhere I looked. An incredible treat coming out of a now mature daylily garden.

Up north at the little reno house, success! It doesn’t look like much in pictures, the front porch needs love, and the old shed needs paint, but the deer are now staying away from the new plantings. What worked? It could be that our dog likes to “leave his calling card” right outside the “entrance” to the two areas, or it could be the mulch. Time will tell.

So after so much trial and error with up north gardens in the past 3 years, how did I settle on what to do? It was actually a “happy accident”.

The association board at the townhouse (from which I am now retired), decided to have all rock gardens between the garages pulled out and replaced with asphalt. In the rock garden between our garage and the neighbor’s garage there was some history I decided to preserve. There were rocks from a previous neighbor’s parents’ farm that we had used to keep the landscape rock somewhat contained, and there was an alpine current bush that my father had given me 15 years ago that had thrived there, providing many a happy day for our neighborhood birds. The rocks went up north in two batches in big bins (which are now quite beat up from the weight but oh well, it’s for the new garden!).

For the foundation, because the soil at that little house is rocky and needs some gardening love, I chose to do a modified lasagne garden, putting a layer of heavy cardboard down on the very old lawn, adding soil where needed, securing the cardboard in place with the rocks, and putting a good 6″ of mulch on top of that. I worked the cardboard around the plantings. Then I trimmed the areas with the smaller rocks.

Because I was tentative on how well things would work, and because the results of my previous up north gardens were less than optimal, I built in sections. I brought up plants from things that needed dividing or saving from the townhouse gardens. The Rainforest Sunrise hosta needed to come out of one of the areas in the townhouse garden because it was getting crowded. The shrub start was from rootings off the alpine currant that was removed. The sedum were cuttings and divisions. The daylilies were from last year’s purchases and plantings, and the daylily seedlings were from last year’s Purple D’Oro seed harvest.

The plants I put in before I decided on the modified lasagne method took a bit of a hit from the deer, but since I put the mulch in the deer have left everything alone. Fingers crossed.

There is so much more that needs to go up in the next 8 weeks. Two trellises went up because we had to replace the ac at the townhouse. The new ac unit was bigger, necessitating the removal of the trellises. I cut back that clematis, and it will be moved next. Beyond that, the Blue Mouse Ears desperately need dividing, a Patriot Hosta has really burned this year in the landscape rock and drought and needs moving, and I should move some crowded hostas out of the area across the path from the weigelia. That will probably fill the current garden up at the little house, and then I will finish putting the rest of the mulch in. After that, sleep new little garden. Rest up for next year.