Easy Care Plants – Black-Eyed Susan

July 17, 2019plantsblack-eyed susan, flower garden, perennialarthurized Leave a comment

Nope, I have no idea how she got her name. But, dang. I sincerely hope that Susan fought back and did a little damage of her own.
Kidding.
Sort of.
Let there be peace on earth, and all that.

In 2009, when my Grandma turned 90, we traveled to Indiana for her birthday party. She had recently moved into a nursing home and her house was being sold. We went over to her property to dig up a few plants to bring home with us. We dug up her pink peonies, which transplanted beautifully, and her lilacs, which sadly didn’t thrive here. In the corner of her yard, we found one small black-eyed Susan blooming underneath a tall, evergreen tree.

We brought her back to Virginia and transplanted her into one of the few sunny spots in the yard. As with all of my plants, I fuss over them for a few weeks with daily watering, monitoring for wilting leaves and other signs of stress. If they look good at that point, I mulch them well and cut back on watering except for the hottest/driest times of the year.

Black-eyed Susans are members of the sunflower family and come in both annual and perennial varieties. If you have an annual variety, don’t worry because they are prolific self-seeders and you shouldn’t have to re-plant each year. They’re native prairie flowers in the U.S. and are fantastic for attracting pollinators.

If you don’t cut them back at the end of the growing season, the seed heads provide food for the birds over the winter. While most growing guides say that deer avoid eating black-eyed Susans, we’ve had a few years when the deer have mowed them down. Punks.

This bed is about 8′ x 10′ and grew from Grandma’s one, tiny flower. We mow around it to prevent it taking over the entire yard. We’ve divided it several times, transplanting to other locations on our property and we’ve given loads of them away to family and friends. I love to hear updates on how these “Hoosiers” are doing in our friend’s yards!

Black-eyed Susan make beautiful cut flowers as well! Easy peasy! Just snip them, remove any leaves below the water line and plunk them into a vase.

If you are #soextra like me, (just ask my niece) and believe that more is more, jazz up your black-eyed Susan bouquet with other garden flowers. Have some fun with them!

For more reading on the care of black-eyed Susans:
https://www.almanac.com/plant/black-eyed-susans

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Easy Care Plants – Coleus

July 10, 2019plantscoleus, flower garden, gardening, home gardening, perennialsarthurized Leave a comment

In an effort to stretch my gardening dollar as far as possible, I like to plant easy care perennials; those garden work-horses that will return year after year.

Also, I hate planting annuals. I have no patience for a plant that will grow for one year and then die off. Kiss it goodbye. I’d rather save the time and effort, plant the $50 bill and be done with it. (Our porch is in deep shade and I make an exception for annuals there.) However….

Coleus are tender perennials so they behave like annuals in Virginia. After one summer in the sunshine, they are done. Sadly, I can’t overwinter them because our house has few sunny windows in which to grow plants. (And I need those windows for blog photography!) These plants are showy and worth every penny. They are ridiculously simple to care for. Plunk them in the ground in a sunny spot, water regularly and admire them.
It’s just that easy!

While my taste in flowers tends toward ‘cottage garden’; these beauties are a punch of abstract art. The Andy Warhol of perennials, if you will. They provide edgy contrast to my restrained daisies and lavender. Give them a try! I think you’ll like them!

For more reading on coleus, go here:
https://www.finegardening.com/article/sizing-up-coleus
I’ll have to hunt down that ‘Candy Store’ variety. Those colors are amazing!

Rescuing Clearance Rack Perennials

June 5, 2019plantsballoon flower, bees, butterflies, coreopsis, daisy, flower garden, flowers, gardening, herb garden, perennials, plants, poppy, speedwellarthurized 1 Comment

While shopping for deer fence T-posts, I happened upon several racks of clearance perennials marked down to $1 each. Of course I loaded up my cart! Some of the blooms were ready for deadheading, but the leaves looked fresh and healthy. I figured these underdogs were worth a chance.

Perennial flowers are fantastic because you do the work of planting once, and are rewarded with year after year of blooms. Given the right growing conditions, most perennials are easy care, requiring only deadheading and occasional dividing.

We purchased these for the herb garden, because that is the sunniest area of our property. They range in height from 6″ to just over 2′ tall, so they shouldn’t shade other sun loving plants nearby.

Thinking about their mature size, bloom time and relation to neighboring plants, I placed them around the garden. I like to arrange them in irregular shaped, odd numbered groupings of 3, 5 or 7 of the same plant. This gives the garden visual ‘flow’ and is more appealing than planting in straight rows, as you would in a vegetable garden.

Here’s what we planted:

Balloon Flowers – one blue, one white
I’ve wanted to try balloon flowers forever. These deer resistant plants are whimsical and fun. They both had tags showing blue flowers, so the white one was a surprise!

Poppy
This one is a mystery plant only because I misplaced the tag. Oops! I seem to recall that it is an orange variety.

Darling Daisy™ Shasta Daisy
Daisies were my husband’s great aunt Ruth’s favorite flower, so I remember her fondly when I see these. This variety is fairly compact, growing to just 12″ tall. I deadhead these about once a week, and they are blooming their little hearts out.

Dwarf Coreopsis
We picked up nine of these, and I’m hoping they will provide a sea of golden blooms. They grow to 12″ tall, and bloom from spring through fall.

Giles Van Hees Speedwell – These tiny flowers bloom in summer. They seem a little finicky and we’ve already lost two of the five that we purchased. (R.I.P., little guys) I’m holding my breath that the remaining three will settle into the garden nicely.

Little Women Daylily – I’m not sure where we are in the bloom cycle, but I suspect that we’re done for the year. I bought three of these for their unusual, peach color which will pair nicely with the nearby lavender.

Hopefully our plants will be happy here, and provide some interest to the garden. They’ve already drawn the attention of neighborhood butterflies, so we think the bees will find them soon as well.

How about you? Do you take pity on the clearance rack plants, and take them home?

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