All the Dirt on Gardening

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,...

Coneflowers are showing up everywhere, blooming in open fields, roadways and flowerbeds. Their humble origins aside, there are now dozens of colors to choose from. And, all have the same preference for making their best flower display on hot, dry summer days. There is some confusion about Echinaceas among gardeners because sometimes Black Eyed Susans are called Coneflowers. The brown centered orange-yellow wild flower is actually a Rudbeckia not an Echinacea. Both are members of the perennial Aster family that includes chrysanthemums, sunflowers and Asters. The botanical name Echinacea is from the Greek word echinos meaning hedgehog, referring to the appearance of the center cone. Large stands of Echinacea used to be common across the central and eastern parts of North America (http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=ECPU ). The perceived herbal medicine benefits of Echinacea roots and stems have led to the plants being illegally removed from the wild and sold to pharmaceutical comp...

Globe Amaranth is another one of those plants that goes by several different names including Gomphrena globosa, flower of immortality, and everlasting bachelor button. Whatever it is called, growing this little plant is a busy or lazy gardener’s dream. The plants were originally from Guatamala, Brazil and Panama so they are heat and humidity tolerant. They are easy to grow in our area from seed and they will bloom until the first freeze. The old fashioned varieties were peach and pink “flowering” plants that grew 2-feet tall. The pretty colored gomphrena buttons we think of as flowers are not actually flowers. They are bracts. Just as what we think of as the bloom on a poinsettia is actually a bract or a collection of colored leaves surrounding a tiny flower. New varieties and colors include 4-to-6-inch dwarf plants to border the front edge of a bed or to fill the space around a tall, potted plant. Seeds can be started as early as January in a greenhouse or on a south facing ...

It may look like a fragile plant, but Musa basjoo Japanese Fiber Banana is cold hardy to 20-degrees below zero. Musa is the most popular banana tree for landscapes as cold as zone 5 in Kansas and Pennsylvania. In our zone 7, gardeners plant them in gardens permanently close to a building or fence and mulch them in the winter. By the end of the following summer they can grow to 15-feet tall. Matthew Weatherbee, owner of Blossoms Garden Center in Muskogee, grows them at home and sells them at the nursery. They really do survive the winter when planted in the ground, Weatherbee said. They will freeze down but come back from the roots bigger than the year before. They also multiply and one tree becomes a clump of trees. This is a great plant! Park Seed is offering the plants this fall. Transplant mail order plants into larger pots and keep them inside for the winter while their roots expand. If you have one outside in the ground, the roots will live even when temperatures dip to 20-below z...

Susie Lawrence is well known by most people who shop at the Muskogee Farmer's Market. For the past 14 years, Lawrence has been there selling cut flowers, herbs and vegetables that she grows from seed at her greenhouse in Braggs. Lawrence offered her advice for gardeners who want the advantages of growing from seed for their own gardens. "Get a how-to seed starting book, such as 'Park's Success with Seed' by Ann Reilly or the newest edition by Karen Park Jennings," Lawrence said. "Park's Success with Seed" 1978 edition sells online for around $5. The 2006 revised edition costs $25. "Success With Seed" has its own Web site http://www.successwithseed.org/ . The photographs and information in the 2006 book are duplicated there. On the left side of the site's main page, click on links to find out which seeds require pre-soaking, are easy to grow, are for containers, shady spots, etc. Park's blog at http://gardenblog.typepad.com/ h...

Lurching Toward Spring, in my book, is this series of warm days that make plants optimistic and break ground, followed by 25-degree nights that shock them back into realilty. Jump back, it is not spring yet. Most days that go above 55-degrees you will find me outside doing something, though not always much. If you can get outside this week with the temperatures going up to 60-F on Thursday, here are a few things to do. Remove winter cover from shrubs, bulbs and beds. Plant dormant shrubs and trees. Divide and re-plant day lilies. Feed trees in 2-inch deep holes around the drip line. Mulch trees and shrubs with manure for spring growth. Fertilize shrubs and evergreens now. Use evergreen or azalea type food for evergreens. Water in dry fertilizers. Prune summer flowering shrubs now but not spring flowering ones. Remove the larger, center stems and branches, dead stuff, broken limbs, etc. Clean out small branches that prevent sun from reaching the roots. Prune back your honeysuckle, cro...

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...

The red lily on the left is one of the new additions to our garden from Old House Gardens . There were several additions and each one has seemed remarkable in bloom. The wonder of these bulbs is that they seem to take care of themselves after they are planted. The stems are strong and the flowers are breathtaking. The Spicebush Butterfly Chrysalis was on the side of the container last night but gone this morning. A search of the immediate area yielded nothing so there are two possible outcomes. Either the butterfly emerged and flew away or another insect used the Chrysalis as a late night snack. The photo of the leaves folded over is where the next generation of tiny caterpillars hangs out during the daytime heat and the photo on the right is one of the youngsters. It's easy to get into looking for new plants in new places. It may come as a surprise that the wonderful whirl of a succulent in the planter came from good, old, reliable Park Seeds and not one of the many new compan...