Welcome to my gardening journal. I am a small hobby gardener. I love growing from seeds and experimenting with growing in containers. I have one last harvest this year of yellow cherry tomatoes, yellow squash, butternut squash, and luffa gourds. I did manage to keep the squash vine borer eggs off my plants this year. I also have some results from my canna seeds I planted this last spring. Next year I will have more results to share especially since I will have more mature plants.
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Beautiful Caladiums,Illustris elephant ears and Zinnia
After all the rain we got from the storm it looks like the elephant ears are going crazy growing in nice and thick making quite a statement. I am surprised to see a few early blooming daylilies Red Stripe seedlings still hanging around. The Burpee Cut and Come Again zinnias are going to be a favorite of mine because I want to save seeds from these to grow next year.
caladiums 
daylily red stripe seedling 
My First Cafe Au Lait Royal Dahlia Bloom
I stepped outside and there it was, Cafe Au Lait Royal was making a statement on its own. What a beautiful bloom! I noticed when looking at more different blooms that this Cafe Au Lait Royal is bright purple with variations of more or less light-colored streaks. This variability in color means that it is not stable in appearance.
I have purchased a variety of dahlia tubers this year. Cafe Au Lait and Cafe Au Lait Royal are two varieties I couldn’t wait to see in person. I started the bulbs in gallon pots this spring because they were sprouting early. I had to bring the pots inside a few times to protect them from frost and did not water them much at first because sometimes the tubers will rot if they are kept too wet or placed in soggy soil that does not drain quickly.
Dahlias are very easy to start from seeds. The dahlia seeds I planted are Bishops Children, Figaro Mix, Unwin’s Dwarf, and Rainbow Mix. I started with a good quality potting mix and planted the seeds in flats at 1/4 in. depth. When the plants were two inches tall I transplanted them into cells. This past week I got the beds amended with a top dressing of composted wood chips and planted my seedlings. I am excited to see them growing and can’t wait for all the new blooms!
The Hardy Hibiscus Seedlings are budding!
The hardy hibiscus grow out has three new buds! It looks like the extra composted manure and time-release fertilizer has been doing its job. I smiled when I saw the cranberry red one on a cute shrub-like plant. There is another white or pink bloom with red veins and one that looks like it might be white. I can’t wait to see them open in a few days.
Another Hardy Hibiscus Seedling Bloom
I have been watching a bud develop on my hardy hibiscus seedling grow out for the past week. I was anticipating the bloom so much that I took a picture of it every day! This beautiful flower was on one of the taller plants with dark green shaded with red leaves. It was light pink with a raspberry red center that flared into the petals. I believe the notably high temperatures caused all the plants in my garden to experience heat stress. I am guessing the slight lipping in this bloom was caused by the extreme weather.
Hardy Hibiscus 6 days to a bloom
We have had the battle of the bugs the past two weeks. The whiteflies have descended upon my garden with a vengeance. I have been busy washing them away from beneath the leaves with water and following up with neem oil and pyrethrins. I mixed the solution more diluted than the package called for and only sprayed in the late evening. So far, it looks like I have good insect control and the plants look lovely except for a bug chew here and there. To view more seedlings visit my hardy hibiscus page.
Hardy Hibiscus Bloom
Daylily Seed Harvest
This week I was excited to discover that the day lily pods from my purchased daylilies are splitting open and the seeds are ready to harvest. The plants I bought this year had larger flowers, bigger pods and much larger seeds than Little Business Red and Red Ribs. I’m not sure what two of the varieties were because they did not look like what I ordered. One daylily was Tuscawilla Snowdrift which did not set any seeds. The two daylily plants with seed pods ready to harvest right now are a big red one and a yellow one as seen in the pictures. I am still waiting for two other daylilies out of the five varieties I bought this year to bloom so I will update those later.
Daylily Growing Gallery
Big red daylily 
daylily pods splitting ready to pick 
daylily seeds 
This morning: Beautiful Luffa gourd vine, banana tree, caladium and illustris elephant ear update.
Moss Roses I have grown
I really love moss roses because they are one of the easiest pest and disease free flowers a person could grow. They are easily started from seeds,need full sun and moist well drained soil. I just sprinkle the seeds over the soil since they are so tiny during spring and water in lightly pressing them in. I will share more of these later.
The Storm was not as bad as we thought
The Hurricane wasn’t as bad as we thought. All it did was make a mess in our garden and I am so thankful for the fact our lights stayed on and we didn’t get flooded out. In 2016 I lost all my plants to a flood and now I am working on restoring my losses by growing seedlings. I have plants that are survivors of this climate and bad weather to use for the pollen and pod parents. This will ensure that I have plants to enjoy for years to come.
Red Sunflowers in bloom
I am glad I supported the sunflowers because they made it just fine and are blooming this week! These sunflowers are some kind of autumn mix and I saved seeds from one or two plants with multiple budding and I hope to get more plants like this. We will see in the next week or so if I get some nice multi bud sunflowers. I will update the sunflowers again later. I will conclude with a picture of one of our daylily beds. I enjoy the iris in early spring, daylilies in spring and early summer and then caladiums and elephant ears with perhaps a few annual plantings for rest of the year.
Preparing the Garden for a Storm
Bracing for Hurricane Barry
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting my garden ready for Hurricane Barry. I didn’t do anything that looked fancy but more like frantic from the looks of this picture. I managed to use wooden stakes and ropes to support some of my sunflowers. The one sunflower I did not support is already toast and this is just the day before! I turned a lot of pots over on their sides to avoid excessive damage to my plants and put some of the more delicate plants like the Japanese Morning Glories in the shed. I placed covers over some of my seedlings so they wouldn’t get damaged or washed out by the rain.
In spite of being in a humid shed the Hannahubuki bloomed beautifully today with a small flush of first blooms. I have more of a variety of different kinds of Japanese Morning Glories to share later on.
July 6 2019 Todays blooms and gardening projects going on
I finally got some daylily pods to plant during the last few weeks. The seeds I have planted took about 14 days to sprout. I was a little worried at first but noticed the tiny green grass like sprouts and decided it was OK to plant right out of the pods. These seedlings are from the Red Little Business.
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| Daylily Sprouts |
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| Giant Banana tree bloom close up |
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| Giant Banana Tree Blooms |
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| Morning Glory white ipomoea purpurea
Echinacea Cheyenne Spirit |
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| Brand new purchase of Cheyenne Spirit Echinacea
I plan on experimenting with seeds this fall. Stay tuned later on around late August or September to see how that goes. When the seedheads are dry and ready to harvest I will plant the seeds in a container then probably give them a light mulch and hope for blooms the next summer. I will update from time to time as things progress. It will be neat to see if there are any variations found when growing these from seeds.
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