End of June/ July Gardening 2018

End of June/ July 2018

The yard tubs were looking great at the latter part of June.
One tub is mostly burgundy Petunias, 1 tub of pink and white regal geraniums (and some diamond frost), 1 tub of Firebird Dahlias with orange and yellow Bidens (by telephone pole),
2 tubs at the end of the driveway: 1 full of red ivy geraniums and 1 with red zonal geraniums, plus a tall red snapdragon and a white daisy cluster in each.  I had bought 2 perennial red grasses at Tail Creek, then divided both in half and planted them in the centre of 4 of the tubs.

Dahlias
Speaking of dahlias, I had started my usual 3 types of dahlias in pots in the laundry room back in April, the Firebirds, the red Thompsons and the Tahitian Sunrise. They all grew well once I switched them to the greenhouse. Then it was time for their new home.
I had planted the Tahitian sunrise dahlia in my Stackstone bed where my old Turbo rose bush used to be and it has set a lot of buds.
The red Thompson Dahlia is growing huge, but I have left it in the pot and put it on the deck to enjoy. It also is covered in buds.
This spring I bought 2 new Dahlia bulbs (couldn't choose between them) one dark blue called Thomas Edison and one pink one called Yarra Falls. Both of them had big tubers so i thought they would do well.
The Yarra Falls started getting some thick dark green leaves on it which alerted me to a problem. Sure enough, it had tiny insects on the under sides of the leaves, so I chopped it all back and sprayed the remainder of the plant with Neem Oil.  It is starting to regrow but needs to be monitored. ( I resprayed it in early July.)

Bleeding heart
My pink traditional bleeding heart in my triangle bed didn't survive, so I replaced it with a new similar one. After I did that I noticed that the red bleeding heart (which I had planted in my vegetable garden to overwinter ) was still alive and had started growing. It looks so pretty now, and has some cute little red blossoms. It is actually my daughter's plant. I had bought it for her as a gift from our grandkids last Mother's day. She didn't have a flower bed yet then so I kept it. Soon it will be going to its new home. :)

Red Currant Bushes: aphids as usual. I sprayed the leaves with Neem Oil, but they were so badly misshapen already from the aphid activity. I ended up spraying the bush with Schultzes Insecticide.

I have aphids there every year. I wonder if I put dormant oil on that location it would get rid of them there?  They must over winter in the soil or something.
I had Dormant Oil in my gardening cupboard in the laundry room, but I'm not sure how to use it....
Guess I'll have to do some research on that.

Raspberry bushes: I trimmed my 2 little bushes down in May and they are growing well. Looks like there might be a few berries developing. :)

Vegetable garden is looking great. The spaghetti squashes which I started from seed had flowers and now there are 4 tiny squashes on the vines. The green zucchini ( the only one that sprouted from my seeds) bloomed and we got 3 little zucchinis off it (July). There are 2 yellow zucchini plants as well which were store bought. None of the flowers have amounted to much. The tiny zucchinis keep falling off but maybe it's because it doesn't get enough sun where it is. There are 2 small kabocha squashes too but so far no fruit on them.

We have had a few feeds of butter lettuce and the frilly lettuce as well as a few  radishes that we successfully managed to grow in a long planter in the greenhouse. We watered them solely with rain water.  (Our soil and well water is so alkalyne that radishes are reluctant to grow in the garden.)
Our two little grand daughters ages 6 and 5 were here for a few days in mid June. Little Miss C was a big helper in the garden. She wanted to water so I kept filling up a watering can about 1/3 full so it wasn't too heavy and she watered every plant in the 2 raised beds. Good girl! I love my little helpers.

Gladiolas and Tulips
The 4 glad bulbs from last year )2 red, 2 white) sprouted well and I planted them in the stackstone bed. I bought a package of 45 glads, a mix of yellow, burgundy and purple. I started a bunch in water, then transferred them to soil in yogurt containers till I could plant them out. I have 5 little bunches of them, 2 in the stack stone bed, 2 in the round bed and 1 in the side of the house bed.  I gave away about 18 started glads to Kath, Julie and Wendy and even as a hostess gift to Jan at one of my quilt guild meetings. :)  Everyone seemed to appreciate them.
They bloomed so beautifully with all the sunshine we were getting.

The tulips this year were very disappointing. I had planted a lot of new ones last fall, pink Candy Floss, but only 1 of them actually bloomed. :(  The red ones that I have had for a few years at the side of the house had plenty of leaves but again only half a dozen flowers. I dug out 2 big clumps of tulips, separated them and planted about half of them back.  I gave a few away and potted a few to let them die back. But now where am I going to plant those bulbs?

After all this work in May and June, it is all starting to look so beautiful, making all my hours and days of garden work worth while. :)

Daylilies

My yellow day lilies are always spectacular when they bloom. They have been here for many years and never fail to please.

Note- Many of the photos ended up on the last post. :)

No September/ October posts. We went to Italy and Germany for vacation on September 10 and only just had time for a quick garden clean up in mid October before Old Man Winter made his appearance. It was an early fall and early winter in 2018, and it was also a very long cold winter.
My coneflower and the Bluebeard penstemon at the side of the house sadly did not survive.