Dahlias, Peonies and Other Blooming Things

I finally took my red cactus dahlia out of its pot and planted it in the usual spot, my big circular 'angel bed.'  I started all my dahlia tubers back in April and pinched them back a couple of times to hopefully grow nice and bushy.  I have been growing these particular tubers for about 10 years now. I dig them up in the fall and over-winter them inside till the following spring.

My 2 Firebird dalias are growing really well. One is planted in my old stack stone bed near the house and the other is in a big half-wine barrel in the yard surrounded by yellow Bidens, and purple and yellow pansies. This is my 3rd year growing these tubers. The blossoms are such a beautiful colour, orange and yellow like fire.

Firebird dahlia, yellow Bidens and pansies

I am so thrilled to see the buds developing on my peonies!!!  I have been "peony challenged" for many years and never seemed to be able to get one to bloom after I planted it. :(  
Last year I planted a white peony Festiva Maxima which I had bought mid summer and I also transplanted a young peony from the back of my wild bed which had been struggling to grow in the shade under the trees there.  I moved that one to my newest bed, (my triangle bed) which gets hours sun. That little peony not only has lots of new shoots now, but flower buds as well!   I think I finally broke the peony curse!  I am looking forward to seeing what colour those flowers are. :)

Long perennial bed with Festiva Maxima peony sprouting at near end; Also delphiniums, Monkshoods, columbines, creeping jennies, pink Malva, a hosta and one Morden Centennial rose bush at the far end.

The monkshoods are growing like gangbusters with all this rain, but I see a need for some Neem Oil spray . I found a few inch long caterpillars wrapped up in the growing tops, which I squished with my gloves. :{

John Davis- hardy 'explorer' rose bush

I bought a new rose bush this week. Okay I'm a sucker for roses. I went to the greenhouse with the intensions of buying a small shrub, a "Little Devil" Ninebark, but ended up with an pretty medium pink Explorer rose bush full of buds! It is a climbing rose so I bought a narrow climbing frame as well. I decided to put that in my long perennial bed instead of another delphinium. Right now  the rose bush is blooming away in its pot on the deck and I might just leave it there for a week or two to enjoy the blossoms, before planting it out into its permanent home.

Did a major clean up / trimming of my red currant shrubs yesterday. Took out a lot of dead branches and a massive amount of 2 foot tall new quack grass as well as old brown dead grass tangled in the branches from last fall. It took over an hour and it's still not completely done. I trimmed back the potentilla shrub as well to give my Hostas in that bed a bit more sun.

Blue Persian Cornflowers and a few late tulips blooming on west side of stack stone bed. Potentilla bush behind them and lilies growing on the right.

East side of stack stone bed orange poppies are blooming and daisies are getting ready to open their buds.

 The Lychnis Splendins in the front centre of my triangle bed is full of buds that are justing starting to open. It is a short perennial that should bloom most of the summer (supposedly).  The False Spirea behind it is doing well as are the day lilies at either side. I planted 9 little Durango marigolds and some Rocket mix snap dragons.  I started the marigolds from seed in April and learned my lesson from last year when they kept getting eaten. I put the beer traps out early and only caught 1 slug so far. (Last year I drowned over 100 slugs!)  But with all this rain, I am not going to get complacent.  I am going to renew the beer in the traps when it stops.

One final thing: a reminder to self: Bobbex the heck out of everything again!  The little bunnies living nearby don't like that and the deer seem to have crossed me off the lunch list. :)  
 Now if only the dogs would be successful in catching the little varmints living under my huge juniper bush by the house my garden might be safe...

Vegetable Garden update June 2//13

I hate to say this, but the weeds seem to be trying to take over my vegetable garden... :(

Thankfully you can't see the weeds in the photo other than the long grass on the outside... :)

The tomato plants are doing okay, but would grow much better with some sunshine. The 4 squash plants in the garden are barely hanging in there. The squashes in the small pots in the greenhouse have now grown twice as big, so I replaced one of the spaghetti squash plants today with a nice healthy greenhouse grown one and added another healthy butternut squash as well. I still have room for one sweet dumpling squash plant (and maybe one final tomato plant) if I skip the zucchini plant or maybe plant it over the non-cooperting carrots!

I am not ready to give up on the carrots. I will bite the bullet so to speak and go buy a carrot seed tape. That's what grew the best carrots last year, although even those were not really great either!  I have a nice big pot of lettuce and dill plants in the greenhouse which I hope to eventually bring up on the deck to grow so I can have easy access to them when I want a fresh garden salad. (Copying Judy K's idea. Thanks, Jude!  :)  )  I have pretty much given up on trying to grow radishes in our very high alkaline soil.

After doing a bit of weeding in the veg garden today I am feeling a bit better about the whole thing. I also happily noticed that many of the peas are showing up above the ground now. No beans have surfaced yet, although I did sprout them all first using the old wet paper towel in a glass trick... Mother Nature sure can be stubborn!

June 10/ 13

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are growing faster than any of the outdoor ones. I attribute that to the windy conditions outside. I switched a few of the deck potted tomatoes with bigger greenhouse ones, so we'll see if that makes a difference.

The rhubarb is growing gigantic in all this rain, rain rain. I made 2 pans of rhubarb squares a few days ago, one for us and one to bring to our quilt guild's Quilt Show this past weekend.  I have plans to make a strawberry rhubarb pie as well...

Rain, Rain, Rain!

Okay, ENOUGH already!

Blooming: tulips and grape hyacinth; lilies and persian cornflowers are growing.

The first part of the spring was bone dry, not a drop of rain and now the situation has reversed with rain  or rainshowers almost every day for the last 10 days.  The garden and the planted pots are soggy wet and they need some extended hours of sunshine to get things to blossom.

The grass and the dandelions are thriving!
:(     And I don't want to say any more about that topic right now...

On a more positive note, I spotted a cute little dark hummingbird dipping its beak into the pink tulips in my stackstone bed 2 mornings ago. I watched  the performance and just enjoyed the moment, knowing full well that if I tried to get it on camera, the little bird would be gone by the time I came back outside with camera in hand.

I have planted 5 out of 6 of my big tubs now (half wine barrels actually) and only one down by the road still need to be done.  I was a little slow with the Bobbex unfortunately and 2 of the pansies that I planted got stripped of their flowers and nibbled down to a short stature. They will recover, though, and hopefully will be bushy and full of blossoms as long as I keep applying the Bobbex as they grow. It is starting to look quite pretty around here now although not much besides tulips and annuals are in bloom right now.

Tuberous begonia

The apple blossoms are very pretty right now, but probably won't last because of all the stormy weather.

Apple tree with blossoms next to the deck

Apple blossoms

The hollyhocks are growing well, as are the lupines, monkshoods and maltese crosses. Five of my peonies are up, but that's no guarantee of the number of blossoms. I seem to have a difficult time with getting the peony planting depth just right. Too deep or too shallow means that you will get lots of greenery, but no blossoms.  I am ever optimistic, however, and will check them hopefully and enthusiastically nevertheless. Time will tell...

The clematises are a bit slow, but I attribute that to the lack of decent sunshine so I hope that they will catch up soon.

My one and only bleeding heart which grows in the back corner of my triangle bed, looks beautiful with its little droopy pink heart-shaped blossoms. Also in that bed is an unusual perennial, a Lychnis Splendins which I am looking forward to seeing bloom.  (Photos later)

Triangle bed with bleeding heart in the back corner, day lily on left and miniature lilac with irises on far right.

I planted a Bergenia in the shadier end of my side bed yesterday.  It was originally part of my great grandmother's Bergenia in Germany long, long ago. My own mother brought a slip to Canada many years ago and had it growing in her flowerbeds in northern Manitoba. It will be interesting to watch its progress and hopefully see it bloom as well.