All the Dirt on Gardening

Steve Owens welcomed our group Bustani Plant Farm in Stillwater OK is an incredible destination garden center! Bustani is closed for the worst days of summer; reopens in the fall Fall  Hours: Sep 4-27, Tue-Sat, 9-6 Here are a few photos from our visit this weekend. Gorgeous garden beds inspire visitors one of the combination containers on site One of the demonstration gardens at Bustani

To be able to grow an Aloe outside in zone 7, it has to be unique and this one certainly is. The flowers are green and bloom atop a 4 to 6 foot tall stem that rockets up, up, up. Full sun to part shade and dry to moist, well-drained average soil will keep this unique Aloe happy all the way down to zone 5. They are most often found on rocky glades and in open woods in their native surroundings, especially Arkansas. The stem emerges from a rosette of fleshy leaves that are 8 or more inches long and 2-inches wide. On ours the leaves have red flecks.  Flower Rattlesnake Master Several yellow-green flowers bloom on the top of the stalk and they are followed by fruit/seed capsules.  False Aloe flower stalk height  Manfreda native range Their native range is FL to TX, NC, WVa, OH, IN, IL, and MO.   No insect or disease problems. EasyLiving Wildflowers has the seeds but I bought ours as plants. Bustani Plant Farm in central OK has them ...

There are only 11 species in the Eucomis plant family, related to asparagus and Crinum lilies. Eucomis is from hair of the head, a reference to the tufts of bracts top the plants. Perfect for a sunny border or large container. No pest or disease problems! Check out the photos and comments at Plant Lust . Wow. South African Pineapple Lilies, Eucomis, do well in our zone 7 weather? Steve Owens at Bustani Plant Farm said his are in the ground for 14 years and going strong. Bustani Plant Farm - Oakhurst Pineapple Lily Steve says all 4 varieties he offers are hardy in his western Oklahoma gardens.  Giant Eucomis - Bustani Plant Farm Other growers in our zone agree. Plant Delights catalog says, "Since we began growing eucomis (pineapple lilies) in the early 1980s, we have found them to be easy, reliable, and fun garden perennials. We continue to evaluate most of the 10 Eucomis species from South Africa along with new hybrids from breeders around t...

Steve Owens at Bustani Plant Farm offered some trial plants to our friend Russell Studebaker . Russell shared a few of the doubles with us. One of them was this gorgeous Mountain Mint that Steve identified for me as Agastache cana Bolero.  Agastache varieties are native all over the U.S. and this one is not native to Oklahoma, of course. Oklahoma's native Agastache is Agastache nepetoides  yellow giant hyssop - a far cry from this beauty. Swallowtail Gardens has the seeds of this Agastache and several others. If you go to their page, also look at the Apache Sunset. I saw that one at the Xeriscape Garden in Colorado Springs last year and it was stunning. Despite the near total destruction of our gardens because of the drought and heat I'm planning for next year's garden. How about you?

One shrub that blooms no matter how hot it gets is Amorpha. There are 15 species of Amorpha that are native to North America. They grow in dry prairies, scrub and sandy ground as well as woodlands and riverbanks. Amorpha’s native habitat ranges north and south from Canada to south Texas, New Mexico to Louisiana and Wyoming to Minnesota. They thrive in zones two to nine. Amorpha canescens shrub has small, gray, aromatic leaves and tall racemes of small, dark violet flowers. It grows to about 3 feet tall. The common name is “lead plant” and one writer speculated that it was found growing on a lead mine and another said that its presence was thought to indicate where there was lead underground. One seed source, Lorenz’s OK Seeds in Okeene, (580) 822-3655 and www.lorenzsokseedsllc.com, says it looks like it is covered in white lead. The flowers bring bees and wasps for nectar. The caterpillars of Colias cesonia (Dogface Sulfur) and some moths eat the leaves. In turn, the insects fe...

Many of the flowers we enjoy growing are the result of a gardener's curiosity and efforts. One example is the Candy Lily, also called Orchid Lily or Paintbox Lily. It is a hybrid between a Blackberry Lily and the night blooming Vesper Iris. Its scientific name is X Pardancanda norrisii. Its parent's scientific names are Pardanthopsis dichotoma and Belamcanda Chinesis, making Pardan + canda the name. The X means hybrid and norrisii is for Samuel Norris, the original back yard breeder. One parent, the Vesper Iris, a Siberian native, has light green sword leaves and mauve or purple-blue flowers with white and yellow markings. Vesper Iris, also called Star of the Evening, opens in the late afternoon during the summer. When the flowers fade they twist into spirals and fall. Bustani Plant Farm is one source of Vesper Iris plants, www.bustaniplantfarm.com and 405-372-3379. Ruth Owens at Bustani provided the photos you see here. Ed Rasmussen of Fragrant Path, www.fragrantpathseeds.com,...

Free and open to the public Feb 20, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. Steve Owens, owner Bustani Plant Farm "Plant Hunting in Kenya for Oklahoma Gardens" Garden Education Room, Honor Heights Park Sponsored by Friends of Honor Heights Park Talk followed by membership meeting Steve and Ruth Owens, owners of Bustani Plant Farm in Stillwater OK, focus on growing unique plants for gardens in Oklahoma as well as other states with similar growing conditions. Steve and Ruth travel to Africa looking for new plants. This Saturday, he will give a talk for Friends of Honor Heights Park members and guests. His topic is plant hunting in Kenya but since he is knowledgeable in all things horticultural, participants should come ready to learn a wide spectrum of details about how to succeed in their gardens. In a telephone interview, Steve said, Gardeners can get a good idea what we have from the website (www.bustaniplantfarm.com) and from the free catalog, but, there is a much greater variety available to an...

Tomatoes and peppers are turning their backs on the cloudy, rainy weather, yellowing their leaves and refusing to make blossoms. Lots of the other plants are thriving. Take a look at the poppy, snow peas and the greens. We are having cooked greens or salad every day from the abundance. And, the snow peas gave us our second bowlful of pre -dinner, tasty snacks last night and they are blooming mightily. I take cuttings every year of my Dicliptera suberecta and grow them in the shed over the winter. From spring to first freeze, they produce tubes of red orange flowers that the hummingbirds and butterflies find irresistible in the heat of the summer. Suberecta is possibly hardy here but I haven't taken a chance on putting it in the ground without taking cuttings for next year. I bought my original plant from Bustani Plant Farm and they are hardy on that hot side of Oklahoma - we are in very different climates from each other. This pink tropical Dicliptera is one I traded with J...

Over the past week, I have been interviewing garden center owners for upcoming columns - their excitement is palpable and contagious. Every time I leave one of them I come home and plant more seeds or transplant something. Are you working in your garden yet? What cuttings are you taking? What seeds are you starting? Clearing out flower beds? This week's weather forecast is much better than all those below normal ones we have had for the past month. Back to normal 50s during the day and above freezing at night. I feel for the Ohio gardeners - almost 2-feet of snow on their spring bulbs has to melt before they get to enjoy spring. Our new neighbors moved into a home where gardening and landscaping was spare. I was so grateful that they took some of our excess canna lilies to their house in the back of their truck on Sunday. Plants as valuable as cannas have to go to new homes instead of the compost pile and now the corms have gone to a happy home. And, besides, I volunteered at the T...

Today's column was about beneficial and destructive bugs in the garden. If you missed it here is the link to " There are good bugs and bad bugs for gardeners " that ran today. Storey published the book, "Bugs, Slugs and Other Thugs" in 1991. It has tons of good ideas. I've written most of next week's column on cleaning indoor air with houseplants - what an interesting topic it turned out to be. With that done, I started snipping plants to see if I could propagate them with cuttings. That I nternet research led me to the discovery of all things D icliptera . The one I want to propagate is a perennial that attracts hummingbirds. The parent plant is from Bustani Plant Farm and needed to be trimmed to store it for the winter. What do gardeners do with clippings? We stick them in soil to see if they will root. It's a good sickness. Really. Then there is a mystery herb in the little herb bed. It's leaves smells like root beer and the plant has brig...

This wonderful Penstemon from Bustani Plant Farm is one of the best new finds in the back yard this year. It has bloomed nonstop since the beginning of the warm days and looks like it will carry on until freeze. And this adorable Clematis from LaPorte AVE Nursery is blooming with a bell shaped flower after only a couple of months in a pot. What a treat. Park Seed sent out their sale email today. This link is to their cut flower listings - bare root perennials for fall planting. So many of the listings are plants that would make a good addition to perennial beds. Winky Purple and White Columbine is a plant that is not normally considered a cut flower but it looks very pretty. Columbines re-seed easily in gardens here. Their Raspberry and Inferno Dianthus are also gorgeous. You might prefer to start Dianthus from seed - many people have great luck with them. This is also the time to plant seeds of Columbine - the seeds need a winter freeze in order to crack open in the spring to mak...