Our weather is strange here in the Mid-Atlantic states. After months of hot and humid weather it has suddenly cooled!
Many plants who’s blooming is an indication of Fall have begun to show their stuff!
Autumn Clematis
Ginger Lilies
And the cucumbers are still cumin’ in the garden.
I will have to begin the annual Fall chore of pulling up English ivy and poison ivy seedlings and anything else that has volunteered where it should not be!
Ahhh! The joys of my half acre homestead!
🙂
Filed under General Gardening
It’s mid August here in the Mid-Atlantic States. It’s hot and humid. The garden has grown wildly with the abundant moisture we have received this summer.
By this time of the year the perennials are thick and heavy to the point that one cannot tell what creature is living in there. So I take the mower to the beds around the patio in an effort to clean up the area and get it all under control. Usually bunnies go running in all directions.
The spiderworts and four-o-clocks will often begin another blooming cycle during the cooler Fall weather.
The old-fashioned hydrangeas are usually pruned to remove the branches that have bloomed this season and to allow the plenty of room for this seasons growth,which will bloom next year. They bloom on two year old wood so I like to keep them cleaned and neat like this. I cut the pruned limbs into 6 to 8 inch cuttings and place about 5 or 6 cuttings per pot in my nursery and by next Summer they are growing into nice size plants.
When the liriope begin to bloom in August it’s a sure sign summer is coming to an end.
There are large beds of this member of the lily family along the drive way and around the patio. Black berries form after the blooms and volunteer seedling come up around the garden. They slowly sucker to create a nice ground cover or under planting for shrubs.
The Rose-of-Sharons (Althea) are blooming now, too. They are a wonderful late Summer and Fall bloomer and the single flowered cultivars reseed heavily so there are always volunteers.
The acuba’s leaves are very attractive this time of year. There were two at the corners of the patio when I purchased the house but I have moved the original plants and rooted dozens of cuttings so there are colonies of them in several areas of the yard. The gold spotted cultivars do not bloom or produce berries like the green leaved cultivars but the leaves make up for it.
The Fall blooming Autumn clematis are budding and beginning to open. It’s a wonderful Fall-blooming evergreen clematis. The blooms are small but fragrant and they bloom heavily. The vines are so vigorous that I cut them back to just a few feet or so in early Spring. They grow back into large tangled masses by the Fall blooming season. They produce fluffy masses of seeds after blooming and reseed all over the yard. I have them on the mailbox and on the lamp posts.
Once the weather cools and mosquitos and ticks calm their activities it will be time for the yearly chores of removing the thousands of English ivy seedlings and any other volunteers the birds have sown under the azaleas and around the fence and bird bath where they perch. It’s a never ending battle! Hmm, it also explains why my arms and back of my neck are so tanned!
Filed under General Gardening
I grew up on the Southeast coast of North Carolina. The weather is humid and subtropical. The winters are very mild and the hot summer days are often followed by short rain storms. I did not realize how much the ocean breezes cooled the air until I moved about an hour-and-half inland to attend college. The summer air was so humid and thick you could cut it with a knife!
The good side, as a gardener, is I could grow so many tropical species down there! Now I am two-and-half hours from the coast and the winters are just a bit colder but not by much thanks to climate change.
Crepe Myrtles are a very popular tree or large shrub throughout the South. The flowers originally came in shades of red and pink but now there are whites and lavenders and purples. There are also a few sections with burgundy foliage, also.
NCSU has a very nice list of the cultivars with descriptions of flower color and growth habits:
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/factsheets/trees-new/lagerstroemia_indica.html
A few photos for Crape Myrtles around Raleigh, North Carolina.
I call this color watermelon. These are in my neighborhood.
A pink Crape Myrtle in Cameron Village Shopping Center.
A young group of mixed colors near Cup-A-Joe.
And a beautiful purple Crape Myrtle in front of The Reader’s Corner.
This beautiful red one on Oberlin Road has a very nice shape.
And a white one photographed late in the evening.
Crape Myrtles need to only be pruned to removed crossed limbs or damaged or low hanging limbs. Some varieties have beautiful bark that can peel in beautiful strips which revel shades of red and brown.
Unfortunately, most landscape crews do not know how to prune this heavy blooming plant. They tend to prune crape myrtles as if they are herbaceous perennials.
This promotes an awful water- sprout type growth.
These are weak stems which may eventually split the main trunk where they are attached. This type of pruning creates a look of a pollarded tree. Its not attractive or healthy for any tree.
Just say NO and don’t.
No! No! No! If you are in doubt that your Crape Myrtles need to be pruned. Just don’t do it. They will look better with a more natural shape anyway.
This is a properly pruned crape myrtle.
This pruning allows the a more natural shape to develope which allows the beautiful and colorful bark to be seen.
🙂
Filed under General Gardening, Plants
