New Hydrangea Arborescens Mail Orders: Invincibelle Ruby and Incrediball Blush!

Invincibelle Ruby (stock photo)

Due to my failure to find these at any physical nursery (yet), I have decided to mail-order these from Garden Crossings in Michigan. A couple of years back, well-known plantsman Tim Wood at Spring Meadow Nursery in Grand Haven MI tweaked some hydrangea arborescens into producing some stronger blooms and stems when it comes to the pink and red spectrums. These will be in within a week's time and planted, and will be getting revved up over the winter for the 2017 growing season!

Incrediball Blush (stock photo)

Review: Westmoreland County Nurseries

Today's haul (containers with hydrangeas) courtesy of Greensburg Home Depot. Sorry, local garden centers, you didn't cut the mustard!

Today I stopped out to some Westmoreland Co. garden centers and nurseries, and by the time I made my last stop at Home Depot I was never so happy to see a big box store. Kind of a waste of gas and overall disappointing. Some of these places are run down and half-overrun with weeds. It's like they don't even have a person to go around and tidy up. What gives???

Here's my summary of where I stopped:

1. Plumline Nursery (Allegheny/Westmoreland border) - 3.5/5 Stars. For 2016, this garden center and nursery was largely renovated with added parking, a new inventory layout and an entirely new checkout shanty. Their annuals were 75% off for Fourth of July week, which is a pretty good sale. Still above average prices on everything else.

2. Camp Joann Nursery (Apollo) - 2.5/5 Stars. Small selection. Somewhat expensive for product sizes. They were running a number of sales on various products, which is appropriate for this time of year.

3. Stallard Garden Center (Mamont) - 1/5 Stars. Didn't even turn in, it looked run-down from the road and I saw no selection. Old shells of hoop greenhouses could be seen in adjacent field. What gives???

4. Sieg Nature Gardens (Export) - 2/5 Stars. Nice little lot, but small selection and high prices. Sale prices on annuals didn't really make anything worth buying.

5. Country Farms (Greensburg) - 4/5 Stars. Always fairly well stocked and the staff is plentiful and helpful. Their interior retail area has an interesting old wood floor. Charming.

6. Greensburg Landscape Center - 1/5 Stars. They brag about 10,000 plants in stock, but only a few hundred generic varieties could be seen in their "nursery" area. No employees to be seen anywhere.

7. Heasley Brothers' Nursery - Google sent me to a residential address in Greensburg. Somebody needs to fix this!!!

8. Garden Envy - Yelp says this is a garden center but apparently it's a wedding planning service. Nothing but a grassy field at Google's "location".

9. Greensburg Garden Center - not a garden center, it's an events hall!!!

10. Wolfe Nursery (Hempfield) - 2.5/5 Stars. Another disheveled place, no sign to get into the "parking lot" - weeds everywhere. Nursery stock was half the quality of what it was last year. Completely unappealing!

11. King Garden Palace & Nursery - closed since 2008. I don't get what the point is in having places listed online that no longer exist. No idea.

Hydrangea Arborescens Haas Halo Lives Up To The Hype!

Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas Halo'. Yes, this is MY plant!

In 2013-14 Plants Nouveau group helped introduce to the market a new naturally-occurring sport of hydrangea arborescens that was found in eastern PA, called 'Haas Halo'. As with most plants of this species, it grows to about five feet tall and can expand more or less infinitely via sucker shoots that appear in the soil yearly. The foliage color is the same as most plants of this species, and flower heads can be best described as a lacecap version of Proven Winners' Incrediball. More specifically, each head can get up to about the size of a dinner plate and features a small number of sterile florets around and interlacing with a large number of fertile florets. Since there are a low number of sterile florets in each flower head, the plant is very flop resistant during heavy rain storms!

Size of mature bloom. Courtesy of Plants Nouveau

New Hydrangeas Lime Lovebird, Grateful Red, Fuchsia Glow Are Solid Replacements for Merritt's Supreme, F&E Red, etc.

A "perennial challenge" for many years now has been the seemingly never-ending quest for hydrangea breeders to come up with reliable plants that display reddish or dark pink hues, and can do this on current year's growth! Starting around 2014, solutions started being introduced, but it takes another year for these to hit the market and a whole winter to get tested. And that brings us here.

Have trouble getting your Merritt's Supreme, Red Sensation, Maltisse, etc. to bloom year after year after year? Yep, thought so! Now there are actually some reasonable solutions on the market. They are (drum roll please)... Fuchsia Glow (Garden Debut), Grateful Red (McKay Nurseries), and Lime Lovebird (Ball Horticultural).

Grateful Red produces the brightest red (akin to the red Knockout Rose), with Fuchsia glow holding down a dark pink (closest to Merritt's Supreme). Both plants have averagely-green leaves. Lime Lovebird blooms a vivid hot dark pink and has somewhat dark foliage with ruddy-colored leaf nodes. Not sure which of these are the largest, but all grow to at least 3x3' in height and do well in part sun (4-5 hours direct).

All three of these entries serve as fine specimens on the (guaranteed) pink end of the hydrangea macrophylla spectrum. Pictures are as follows!

Grateful Red (stock photo).

Lime Lovebird (infant bloom stage). Yes, this is MY plant.

Fuchsia glow (infant bloom stage). Yes, this is MY plant!

My New Hydrangea Macrophylla: Firefly (Horcos)

Yes, this is my plant!

Please allow me to take a few moments to give an initial review of a brand new hydrangea macrophylla to hit the market this year: Firefly! (scientific cultivar name: Horcos). This is a sturdy, robust plant that's supposed to grow to about 4x4' in height. It appears to be very sun tolerant, as mine has been in-ground for a couple of months now and has shown no droop, wilting, or scorching of any kind - pretty good for a new planting!

This blooms with semi-doubled almost bicolored flowers, which start whitish in the centers with pink edges, then change to mostly a vivid pink as time passes. I do not yet know what the spent blooms will look light. The foliage is a vivid bright/deep green with red accents along the edges and along the stems.

I bought mine at Trax Farms nursery in Finleyville off PA Route 88 in a 3-gallon for close to $40. Last I checked they were low, but I believe LMS in Allison Park has some in stock.

My Gardens: 2016 Video Tour!

The following is a video I made on June 28 using an iPhone 6. In this tour you finally get an interactive perspective of my property layout and the current setup of the beds. This is a far cry from my old pictures on here! I even begin to discuss my transition to annual an container gardening, now that my beds are more or less full. Check out how much everything has grown in the last 7+ years! Running time 23 minutes, YouTube.

At last! For your viewing pleasure! Questions or comments, please leave them on the video page on YouTube.

Containerizing Non-Blooming Hydrangea Macropylla!

In 2014-15 I decided to begin to dig up some of the hydrangea macrophyllas that have been having trouble blooming after winters and have been placing them in large containers (~20-24" diameter, ~10-15 gallon). This is because I am transitioning to overwintering only the top performers outdoors (the ones that are about guaranteed to bloom on current year's growth). The containers reside in my (attached and indirectly heated) garage for the winter and are watered about once monthly from December-March.

Shown: Pink n' Pretty (Monrovia) and Abracadabra Orb (Proven Winners).

The advantages of containerizing are as follows:
- freedom of placement around the property (masks, covers, fillers)
- guaranteed bloom
- larger size than if overwintered in-ground and suffering dieback

The following cultivars are the ones I am currently growing in containers:

All Summer Beauty (pale pastel variant of Nikko Blue)
Preziosa (fairly hardy outside, but need to guarantee a larger plant with the unique mophead blooms!)
Firelight / Leuchtfeuer (2) - for bookend use on my deck
Mathilda Gutges / LA Dreamin'
Pink n' Pretty
Abracadabra Orb
Forever & Ever Blue Heaven
Forever & Ever White Out (3)
Forever & Ever Fantasia
Forever & Ever Red / Maltisse
Forever & Ever Red / Red Sensation
Early Blue
Pia
Doublicious
Trophee
Pink Sensation
Hot Red
Red Beauty
Unnamed blue/pink mophead
Midnight Duchess (lacecap)
Mme Emile Mouillere
Queen of Pearls
Double Delights Perfection
Claudie (lacecap)
Blue Wave (lacecap)
Zorro (lacecap)
Free Bird (new!)

Here are some additional pictures:

West side of house (mostly shaded)

Under deck, front: Trophee, Doublicious, Blue Wave, Blue Heaven. Rear: Preziosa

Smaller containers on front porch: Early Blue, Pia, F&E White Out (2), Pink Sensation, Red Beauty, Hot Red.

Swing Bookends! Free Bird, All Summer Beauty

Some new hydrangea entries for 2016-17

These are from the current Star Roses Catalogue. You can get the first two at select nurseries NOW, and the McKay plant has just been made available directly from McKay Nurseries (WI). Violet Crown is supposed to be available this Fall.

'Cherry Explosion': An Exciting New Lacecap Hydrangea Macrophylla for 2016

McKay Nurseries in Wisconsin has done it again! Following up last year's introduction of Grateful Red, a mophead hydrangea macrophylla, comes Cherry Explosion, a lacecap variant! 

H. mac Cherry Explosion, bloom closeup. Yes, this is MY plant!

As with GR, this plant sports a semi-compact size, mounded habit, medium to dark green foliage, and  can bloom on new wood. As of June 2016 t's available NOW, directly from their website and is or will be available from select mail-order websites as well. 

Cherry Explosion, young plant, growth habit. 

Final Time to Prune Most Trees & Shrubs!

Happy Memorial Day! Reminder: this is the final time you'll want to trim back trees & shrubs to desired shape. Locate and find any crossing branches, scraggly or overly long branches, dead wood, or partially dead wood and get rid of it. Keep in mind the kind of overall structure you'll want the plant(s) to carry going forward. Remember This is also the last time to *hard* prune such things as hydrangea paniculata (the full sun "tree" hydrangea). Doing that now at the latest gives the plants time to go through as full as possible of a growth and/or bloom cycle before Fall hits and deciduous plants go dormant in six months.

Some examples of things to prune now:
- wood on hydrangea macrophylla that has not produced any leaves
- rose bushes with unusually long new branches
- roses of sharon (hibiscus syriacus) - desired shape
- any shrub's branches that have become overly "limp" in Spring rains or winds, e.g. weigela branches that bent 180 degrees under bloom weight.

An additional reminder... If tossing branches & twigs over a hillside on your property. Spread them out evenly at the rear of your composting area. Every year or two, shovel recently composted fines (e.g. leaves) overtop of the branches. You will not want to end up with one big stick pile - it is an invitation for large rodents such as groundhogs and other pests that can damage your plants and/or property.

Updated Garden Pics, July 2012 - Part 3

Addition room. The rest of the shade garden off to the right along the west foundation wall isn't in tremendous shape and needs some more TLC.

Front yard, looking northeast.

Front porch, with potted hydrangeas. They are between reblooming stages. Plastic deco container and bench container courtesy of Suncast products. They are extremely durable, water-tight, fade and crack resistant. Highly recommended!

Front walk, looking north. Mailbox planting is of purple (rear) and white (front) hardy mums, and Dusty Miller. The right side is Tradition Azaleas and fire/ice Hostas. Mailbox courtesy of Rubbermaid products - the black is fading, but it's nothing that a quick hit of spraypaint can't fix.

Looking toward neighbor's Nikko Blue hydrangeas. Highlights on my side are  F&E Together and Twist N Shout hydrangeas.

East foundation looking north. There is plenty going on here, including red heart Althea, some Lamium, carpetflower, dianthus, beebalm, rudbeckia, gladiolus, and daylilies.

Another closeup. There is almost too much going on here (whoops!)

Updated Garden Pics, July 2012 - Part 2

Middle of rear bed, featuring Annabelle and Bella Anna hydrangeas. I've since added some clearance Nikkos behind them. 

Northeast rear corner. The short walkway through there is the path to the main compost pile. However, I've thrown clay soil and additional compost material behind the entire rear wall of this terraced garden in an effort to shore up the hillside more, as well as prevent weeds and vines from creeping up and overtaking these beds.

Pan View looking west through Blazing Star along the back bed. Just look at that "wall of hydrangeas" I'm putting together! And, the backdrop is a semi-mature forest covered in grapevines - how cool is that! PS: Don't attempt to be slick and cut grapevine trunks - they will come back meaner than ever - just keep them off your plants.

The northwest corner, from the east.

Northwest corner, from the southeast. 

Plantings alongside neighbor's fence and shed. Visible is an upstart Salsa hydrangea, some hostas, blush-satin Althea, Black Knight butterfly bush, and David Ramsey hydrangea.

A lot going on here. The neighbor's euonymus needs a prune but I'll get to that. Showpiece here is Great Star hydrangea (left). Quick Fire (further down) has already turned pink.

Addition room bed. Hydrangeas are Summer Lace, Grayswood, Penny Mac, and Endless Summer, along with a PeeGee hydrangea tree.

Updated Garden Pics, July 2012

What's a blog without the eye candy? Here's some new shots! Once again, I've only been in this home for four years, so everything is still young and there is still a lot of moving things to be done.

The showpiece of my east foundation bed, Summer Storm hardy hibiscus, standing at nearly eight feet tall! Throw in dinner plate-sized flowers and you've really got something. Also in this shot is one of its smaller rosemallow cousins that only grows to 3'. Hydrangeas are Lemmon Daddy and Cityline Venice. Groundcover is Snow on the Mountain, spotted Lamium, and some Vinca vines.

Close-up of Summer Storm hardy hibiscus flower (well above 6' fence height). These are killed to the ground each Winter, but re-sprout these thick stems each May and begin flowering in mid to late Summer.

Limelight Hydrangea with Blazing Star (Liatris), scented Asiatic lilies, butterfly bush, etc.

My young Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea, with a slew of other perennials.

This year's WINNER! Little Lime hydrangea. The photo does it NO justice. The foliage and flower color is simply AMAZING, much different than the traditional Limelight. These blooms will at least double in size by August. 

Walkway from backyard up to neighbor's cut-through to our front yards. 

Out Of The Drought! Plus Tips and Tricks To Go With It

Well, after the driest May and June that I can remember as an adult, we've finally rebounded here in SWPA. At this point, it's almost too much of a rebound though, since many low-lying areas have experienced some flash flooding - but luckily no one around here has been killed this year. But the grass is green again, and things that needed to grow are starting to catch up.

If you want to apply slow-release fertilizer to plants and shrubs, NOW is the second and FINAL time I recommend doing this (the first time being in Spring immediately after last frost).  Also, do not apply as much as you did in Spring.This gives the plants vigor to continue growing and blooming, but also will allow them time to properly wind down growth and go dormant in the Fall when freezes start hitting again. Also remember, if in prolonged drought conditions, do not fertilize. With overly dry conditions and scorching sun every day, fertilizing will do more harm than good. The only additional fertilizing to be done this year would be your lawn, which should be done around early October, using any granular type of your choosing.

During episodes like these where there is heavy rain every few days, it's a great time to move plants and shrubs around as everything is moist, easy to work, and provides less of a shock to the transplanted specimens. Also, as usual, check your drainage and irrigation systems. If there are washouts or standing water, you may want to look into channeling the flow of rain water in different ways. Spreading water evenly through/over and away from plants is key to their health and survival, and of course key to preserving any hard labor you have put into your landscaping.

It's safe to say we've had almost enough rain to get us through almost another month without it. And with 30-60% chance of rain every few days, that should be *enough* probability to have this timeline extended, and should give us the confidence not feel the need to walk around like an idiot watering all day (believe me, I certainly felt like one after a certain point in the drought). Heck, we might have to cut the grass more than once a month!

Ultimately I'm proud that I kept up the watering enough to keep plants growing enough in size to help them make it through harsh seasonal conditions that we experience here. Since my gardens are centered around hydrangeas, watering was of the utmost importance! They really are great plants, and well worth the effort of keeping up with them. Overwintered specimens here only really need a good covering when late Spring frosts hit, and in-ground moisture from Winter is normally enough to get the plants growing and looking healthy through mid-June, even when dry conditions exist. And, even in the most severe heat and drought, they only need to be watered about once every other day (misting the leaves and blooms is not required but it can help with wilting and scorching a bit).

New Hydrangeas Available Locally

This week, Lowe's has begun carrying 'new' selections of hydrangea from Kurt Weiss Greenhouses. At the forefront, are picotee-leaved specimens "Midnight Salsa" and "Sandy Summer". Sandy Summer most closely resembles Forever & Ever's Peppermint variety. Lowe's also has been selling various traditional florist hydrangeas from KW, however be careful since all of them have been categorized as wither Merritt's Supreme or Blue Danube; but there are many different breeds - see KW's catalog below to identify yours.

For more info, please visit KW's new website: http://www.hydrangeas.com . There, you will find a video highlighting their growing, and a PDF catalog that parallels the video.

Here is the Midnight Salsa I picked up. It most closely resembles H. serrata "Preziosa" in appearance.

Pics From My Garden, June 5, 2012 - Part 3

This is the front of my home.

This is the east foundation wall bed.

This is the west foundation wall bed.