More Mums and the $50 Lowe's Giveaway Ends Today!

Today I'll show you a few more pictures of the mums but I also wanted to remind you that today is the last day to enter the $50 Gift Card Contest to Lowe's!  The folks at Lowe's Creative Ideas are providing anyone who comments on the mums project posts this week an opportunity to win that $50 gift card.  All you have to do is comment on this post, or my wheelbarrow planter mum post, or my October 1st mum post!  Share an idea about using mums in the garden in the comments and you are entered to win!

Here's another look at the mums in the wheelbarrow planter.

Some red mums from the garden up close.  These are in the birdbath garden.

I actually like the daisy flowered mums more than regular mums.  Here's a lavender colored one:

This one is called Jessica Louise.  I don't know who Jessica Louse is but somebody must have liked her enough to name this mum after her!  The flowers are very large over 2 inches in diameter.

The last two mums were mail ordered in the spring.  I ordered several others but so far the flowers haven't emerged yet.  Rampaging rabbits nibbled the mums down too much right after planting.

I'm still waiting for the 'Sheffield Pink' and 'Clara Curtis' mums to flower - they will be breathtaking once they do!

Don't forget to comment!

A Few Garden Photos for Friday (Photo Post)

Here are few things happening in my garden that are worth a look at through the photos. No real theme for this post just a chance to look at some garden pictures!

Beautyberry Bush

Morning Glory

Red Zinnia

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

Blackberry Lily (Belamcanda chinensis)

A couple years ago I was given a blackberry lily (Belamcanda chinensis) to add to my garden.  I planted it when it was covered with seeds and let it go to grow as it could as I do with so many plants. I forgot about it but apparently several seeds landed in different location near our front porch entry area and surprised us with its flowers this year.

Blackberry Lily with 'Powis Castle' artemisia and potato vines

Blackberry lily is a member of the iris family and resembles irises with its foliage.  The color and texture of the leaves is very similar but the formation of the leaves differs. 

The flowers are about 1 and a half inches in diameter and are colored bright orange with specks of darker orange to red colors.  The flowers eventually produce a seed that resembles a blackberry hence the name.  It readily grows from seed and it is extremely easy to cultivate!

'Primal Scream' Daylily AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

The other day I mentioned I had another daylily that was about to bloom called 'Primal Scream', well that daylily is screaming now! 'Primal Scream' has large orange blooms that have faint hints of reddish coloring in the outer edges of the petals and a more true orange color the further toward the center.

I planted my 'Primal Scream' daylily in the birdbath garden which unfortunately no longer has a birdbath. The soldering fell apart around the bracket that held the copper birdbath onto the post. One of these days I'll get around to repairing the old copper birdbath or maybe I'll find a new one.

A Master Gardener who lives nearby recently invited our garden club to visit his garden that houses over 600 daylily varieties. I've been very curious about his garden for a while now and hope to make a stop up there while the daylilies are still in bloom!

I have to say that 'Primal Scream' is one of the most vibrant daylilies I've seen but I know that with the ease of daylily hybridization there must be thousands of high quality daylilies available. Now if I can ever get my act in gear maybe I'll actually hybridize something!

I Have Two Huge...

Hollyhocks! These plants are simply enormous. I haven't measured them but a rough estimate of six and a half feet sounds very realistic. Unfortunately they are in a really bad location - flanking our front walkway. I should have transplanted them last year to another location more suitable but either didn't think of it or was too lazy. Although the term "lazy gardener" is rarely attributed to me! Darla even thinks I don't sleep...

Hollyhocks and Dave's Daughters

Anyway these hollyhocks sprouted last spring from seeds made the previous season. They grew the first year and never produced flowers. This is the second full year of growth and they are now flowering, such is the nature of the biennial. I need to remove one of these hollyhock beasts to make the walkway walkable. I want at least one of them to grow old enough to produce seed so that I may collect it and relocate it to another garden. I did transplant a new hollyhock to another garden at the beginning of this spring so we will have a flowering hollyhock next year. To keep hollyhocks flowering year after year you really need to plant the seed every year so that when one is flowering another is growing in its first year.

One of the biggest problems with our hollyhocks is this lace effect on the leaves.

Hollyhocks are far from pest free and I've had these caterpillars on them every time. They are the larvae of the sawfly.  They munch and much and munch until the leaves resemble a set of grandma's doilies. The hollyhocks are covered with these half inch long larvae. I'll be outside very soon spraying them down with insecticidal soap to take care of the issue.

Hollyhocks are definitely not a plant for the perfectionist!

Achillea millifolium (Yarrow)

Achillea millifolium is one of the easiest perennials to grow. Almost no care, very little maintenance, and bright punches of color make it a very good plant for low-maintenance gardens. In our garden we have 4-5 varieties which unfortunately are mostly unnamed but their colors include red, yellow, white, and pink. The only thing I do to maintain achillea is the occasional deadheading and division (which I'll write more on below).

'Paprika' Achillea is the one I know - all the rest are unidentified. At one point I added one that was called 'Appleblossom' but I have some doubts as to the accuracy of its name.

How to Propagate Achillea

Propagating achillea (yarrow) is about as easy as maintaining it. Just divide a small section during the growing season and plant it where you want it (including a pot). The nice thing about division is that you can go ahead and plant the new plants right into the ground without waiting for rooting to start - it's already done! There very little need to try stem cuttings since the plants divide so well.

Performance of the Poppies!

Every year one of the great performances in my garden is the performance of the poppies. These simple red flowers came in a free packet of seed several years ago and still keep on putting on powerful displays of red paper-like petals. With as easy as poppies are to grow and maintain (I do nothing other than spread the seeds every now and then) it makes me wonder why they aren't in every garden? Poppy seeds planted in the fall bloom the following spring and produce seed pods with lots of little tiny poppy seeds. I think I should add a few additional colors of poppies to the self-sowing garden for some variety.

Do you plant poppy seeds in your garden? Or are they just in your muffins? ;)

Oops, I Missed One!

In my last post about the irises of May in my garden I showed you several of my irises. Today a new one opened up that we just planted this spring. It's also a hand me down and has no real identity but it's nifty to look at!

I planted it with several others in front of the garden shed. (I really need to update you on it's progress soon.) So far this iris is the first of the new irises to bloom.