Visit to Trax Farms

Been busy over the last few days, so haven't got to do much except watch things grow. And boy they have. But.... I did put the icing on the cake with my last official shrub purchases of 2011 on the 20th. I had the pleasure of stopping down to Trax Farms nursery in Finleyville PA. They basically carry all the new or recent introductions of flowering shrubs. Being on my neverending hydrangea kick, I picked up 3 gems: Great Star paniculata, Forever & Ever Fantasia, and Bella Anna arborescens! Will plant tomorrow if weather permits.

Alright, we went out to Wal-Mart for our weekly shopping run, and as always we checked out the outdoor section for clearance items and the like. What we found was not only more than we expected, but everything we'd hoped for! It's clear that every major retailer carries Endless Summer hydrangeas, but the least common variety I've seen is Blushing Bride. On a whim, I decided to "dig a hole" in between the Twist n' Shouts and the Originals near the back of the display, and low and behold - about a half-dozen BB's! So I picked up two healthy ones, and while I was doing that my wife began to get excited about 5 feet away. About what? Oh, just $25 Jane Magnolia and a dogwood tree! As it turns out, we had to make 2 trips to the car on separate bills, but everything magically fit as usual. Another successful night - will plant tomorrow. 

A miserable rainy day, but found a  5-minute window to put in the northwest corner of the yard my new starter Viburnum Opulus Roseum (snowball bush), which came in the mail. Later on, I was browsing around the Internet and found some more great starter hydrangeas, which I will certainly grow outdoors - only this time in pots for the first year or two. These included two Mme Emille Mouillere (white), a Pia (pink - might stay in a pot), Mathilda Gutges (all-color chameleon), and a Harlequin (pink with white edged leaves). These potted starters will all surely receive varied amounts of sun and the elements as needed, and hopefully will shoot up to great sizes sooner than later!

At work, bothering me were a few empty spaces I'd left in the west/addition room beds. By the time I left, I caved and went to get a Lemon Daddy hydrangea at Penn Hills L&G. I also saw a nice 3' astilbe that would be put in within 10 feet of the hydrangea. To install these correctly, I moved a clump of Stella D'Oro lilies, a dwarf spirea bush, and one of the upstart buddleias to the northwest corner bed area. Mission complete!

Tricky day :( - one  where the whole plant placement strategy thing has a hard time coming together. Main target areas were: north hillside bed, addition room bed, and west wall bed.  Started out good as I left work; plucked another healthy butterfly bush out from beside some railroad tracks, got it home and in the ground. I figured it would look nice by my compost pile and it does! Next, I addressed the culvert area of the north bed , which is a cut away portion of the hillside where outlet is from SE house downspout and driveway drain. This extends from where the newly planted butterfly bush is, another 10' to the main part of the bed, which extends all the way west to the NW corner of the property. I began by moving further away the baby spruce and evergreen euonymus that were occupying the space, and decided to move our two rhododendrons there from the west wall bed. This was a good idea, because the rhodies were not getting enough sun in their former locations, as many I'd seen around the area were in full bloom while mine had zero. I spaced them 5' apart and moved on to placing the new hydrangeas. As usual, I had to figure out how to do this based on hardiness and sun needs. First off, I'm not that huge on lacecaps but I so far enjoy the upright growth habit. To this end, I decided to put it in a 3 gallon deco pot for the first season, where it will reside at the front of my porch slab and receive midday shade from our big maple tree. I then decided to place the Ramsey hydrangea between the two rhodies where it will receive moderate sun. The Charm will also receive moderate sun at the NW corner of the addition room, but may need winter protection.

Hydrangea Addiction Refueled

Okay, so we didn't plan to go anywhere in the afternoon becuase we were tired, but at 7pm we decided to run a few errands at the last minute. Seeing as how we hadn't stopped at Home Depot in quite a long time, I decided to give them a shot since it was on our route. In three simple words: hydrangeas, hydrangeas, hydrangeas! Not good for my addiction! The prices were unbeatable to boot, and they had at least 10 different sizes and/or varieties to choose from. I ended up with three: a 3' tall Charm, 3' tall David Ramsey, and a very healthy Endless Summer Twist n' Shout lacecap.

Before the storms rolled in at 6pm, got everything in the ground - looks great and it's all getting its first soaking right now! I forgot to mention which annuals we purchased, so I'll tell you now (we put these at the front of the property only). We started with mostly petunias, which we enjoy the mounding habit of immensely. Then, we got a few snapdragons, whose upright habit serves skinny areas better. Then we got some barbarini dianthus, which for $1 a square you can't beat, because they're always marked as annuals but will come back perennially here!. Lastly we got 2 trays of celosia for around the mailbox.  

Made one of my "Spring sweeps" of regional garden centers in the east suburbs. All of the following are pretty decent outfits, but there are some subtle differences. Started at Penn Hills Lawn & Garden Center, which is tidy and has a decent selection with good prices. There, I picked up an upshooting campanula "blue clips" and a popular "home run" rose bush. From there, I moved on to Beall's Nursery in Plum for my first visit ever - decent selection, prices not that great! To me, just seems like one of those boutique outfits for people with 300K homes looking to drop 5K on instant landscaping. Then I wrapped down 286 to Stanford Home Center, one of the larger "Do It Best" chain locations. They always seem to have some oddball plant types and have been known to goof on a few occasions. Hence, didn't take me long to find a 5gal Pink N Pretty hydrangea retail for a mere $20! Visiting across the street at Holiday Garden Center (huge selection, okay prices), they had the same PNP's half the size for $30! Lastly, I stopped up at Lowe's to pick up 2 more 1gal Forever & Ever starter hydrangeas - "peppermint" and "early sensation". They were really letting their stuff go up there, but these still had some good growth on them.

One of my pet peeves about the non-big-box garden centers is: why do they have to sell nothing but the huge 3-5 gal pots of shrubs and charge 50 bucks for it, when they could just sell me a starter size for $15 bucks? Are they afraid the small size makes them more prone to failure? I prefer to grow things from a young age, because it's more rewarding and it fits my budget! Besides, you can order mostly small sizes on the Internet, and they usually ship well bare-root in a box!

At any rate, that concludes my rant for the day - will get out and work tomorrow!

Picked up some annuals at Wal-Mart last night, in addition to a 4-stalk orange asiatic lily and a pot of scabiosa. The scabiosa and lily will go on the west side bed, which gets part shade. The annuals will go mainly in areas toward the front of the house, which get mostly sun. This includes 3 colors of dianthus (which can act as perennials here!), petunias (various), and a few snapdragons. I will put them in either this afternoon or tomorrow; both days are supposed to be great, with highs around 80 and no rain!

Another update: the potted starters on my front porch are taking off nicely, which include 25 liatris and 2 bleeding heart plants, started from just corms and roots, respectively. 

A Happy Mother's Day - beautiful one at that - but not one to be out gardening because a) it's the middle of my workweek and b) I'm all caught up on things. (Couldn't imagine going to a store, either!) I did do one thing in the morning, however. The small pink Endless Summer hydrangea I got at the end of last season doesn't seem to be taking off like it should, a.k.a. a couple small leaflets and mostly bare stems. Thinking about it more closely, this is no surprise considering it's on the west side of my house, which gets shade until after noon and then again after about 4. To jumpstart it with more light, I moved it to the east side bed in a temporary position, until I extend the bed 4-5' south of the front garage wall. This new portion of the bed, which will get between 6-10 hours of sun, features the vanilla strawberry hydrangea paniculata, a couple clumps of lilies, and a few other small perennials and annuals.

Into the evening, before leaving for work, I decided to come up with a final backyard design, which includes a shed/barn, and a sitting area. To do this accurately, I grabbed a screen capture of the aerial image of my property, blew it up, and drew in the borders. 

Clear skies overhead = back to work outside. Spent longer than originally thought I would, but in gardening this usually pays off! I decided to re-work the northeast corner of the property in order to accomodate the new hydrangea (rear), the two new dianthus (middle), and the pink gaura (front). This required moving the foxglove I had there to a different location, moving a fire&ice hosta 6 inches to the left, and moving a couple new sprigs of mexican primrose from the area. Being a windy day, it was a bit hard to work but you deal with the hand you're given.

After, the northeast corner was complete, I moved to the west wall bed, which is mostly shady. There I made room for the clearance bleeding heart plant, by dividing down a few hostas there and relocating a few baby astilbe

.

Continuing to fear for the safety of the three "florist hydrangeas" that had been getting too much sun, I decided to move them to the south end of the east fence in the back yard. There are now two pink Merritt's Surpremes with a Nikko Blue in between. Hopefully they will shoot up large this summer, get well established, and make it strong into next year! This means I will be dropping from a 6 to a 5 hydrangea arrangement in the north rear bed, going to annabelle-dooley-x-dooley-annabelle sequence.

Finally, I remembered to level the two 2x2 patio stones that lead from the northeast corner of the lawn to the compost pile. I used a bucket of the sand that was originally used to level them on the makeshift patio in front of the addition room.

On my weekly browse, stopped up to Lowe's to check out their selection. They are STUFFED with plants this first week of May! And rightly so, my wife gave me a $25 spending limit to avoid going absolutely crazy. This in mind, I decided to pick up my first Forever & Ever hydrangea, a Red Sensation. These are everblooming, hardy, and can grow to 4' high x 3' wide, which will be best located in the northeast corner of the property. This knocked out the first 16 bucks for a 1gal pot. Then I got a 2' tall bleeding heart plant for $3 on clearance, and a gaura for $4.

Later that night, we made our weekly run to Wal-Mart for groceries, and in doing so we picked up 2 different kinds of gallon dianthus, magenta and red. Then we sprung for a trio of hanging baskets for eve that overhangs the garage doors out front.

Deer Attack!

Drat! A few days after I tought I'd thoroughly treated the "succulents" on my property, the damned deer came up their favorite path through the woods (after which includes my backyard) and nibbled on 2 of my arborescens hydrangeas! Now, it had rained a good bit during that time but I didn't think it would be enough to bring on such an atrocity. Anyhow, all I could do was surround the smaller one with a fence and soak them both with a new coating. Now, it's been said that there are two types of hydrangea that deer seem to avoid (oakleaf and climbing) but I have neither of those, and don't currently plan to.