Garden Report v2.7 - May Rains

So it's been far too long since I actually wrote a blog post for the garden.  May was pretty discouraging, and not much happened, so it was hard to get motivated to write something. Once I got out of the habit, things were blown for a while. Not a great excuse, but it's the truth.

The May garden was very depressing. The seed potatoes I sent away for were cut, cured and planted. They promptly rotted in the ground due to the massive amounts of rain we had. I had planted 12 this year, and whereas last year at least a few survived, this year ever time I dug down to check, they were completely rotted. The garden itself isn't raised at all, and was pretty swampy through the entire month. About the only thing that was successful in May was the garlic, which went happily along as if it weren't mired in the muck.

Day lily

Fortunately, at the end of May, my father-in-law Ron came up and helped us with some non-vegetable landscaping around the front and side of the house where the new driveway created some new beds. Pictures and descriptions of what we put in after the fold.

A trip to the local nursery and a wagon load of shade-tolerating perennials later, we were ready to spruce up our pretty naked beds. The beds started basically empty, with the exception of some day lilies (which are nearly impossible to kill, even with heavy driveway-destroying machinery) and a false cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa 'gracilis aurea', If you want to get technical.) which was actually given to us by my in-laws late last year. It overwintered okay, but did get a little twisted under the weight of the snow. We figured it might be useful to pick plants which would mostly die back each year, rather than evergreens, so that they wouldn't have the weight problem of the snow off of the roof.

Astilbe

Looking back`, I have the advantage of providing pictures and perspective from later in the season. We planted these in the rain, and got ourselves quite muddy, but it was worth it, because they've really grown well (with one possible exception) and given some great color and life to the beds. One of my personal favorites is the astilbe (pronounced a-still-bee, 'Fanal' variety). These provided some brilliant red color, with interesting stalks of tiny flowers.

Of course we put in a couple more varieties of Plaintain Lily, aka, Hostas, because they seem to be the gold standard of shade-tolerating perennial plants. If there is a shaded garden in our neighborhood that doesn't have some kind of Hosta in it, I'd be surprised. We added two varieties which are not already present in our beds, 'Gold Standard' which, as the name suggests has a more yellowy color to the leaves, and 'Sum and Substance' which isn't exactly descriptive as a name. While some of our other hostas have begun blooming, these have not quite bloomed yet.

Dead Nettle

A couple varieties of ground cover-plants we chose were Dead nettle ('Orchid Frost', Lamium) and Sweet Woodruff (Galium Odoratum'). The hope is that these two spread a bit, and fill out the empty spaces. Interestingly, Dead nettles are so named because of a resemblance to stinging nettles, but they don't sting, so they are "dead."

We planted a couple Turtlehead ('Hot Lips', Chelone lyonii) on either side of the back door, but they're going very slowly. Nothing much to show, and no blossoms yet. The card indicates they bloom in fall, so perhaps we'll have some decent color as the seasons turn.

Sweet Woodruff

We also have the biblical selection, highly appropriate I suppose, consisting of Jacob's Ladder ('Brise d'Anjou', Polemonium caeruleum) and Solomon's Seal (which I don't have the card for, so no variety or scientific name for this one). The Jacob's Ladder produced some cute little blue flowers, and is mostly done at this point. After doing a bit of reading, it seems that Brise d'Anjou is not as hardy as some other types of Jacob's-ladder. So, here's to hoping it's just done for the year, and not failing.

Speaking of failing, we also put in a Japanese Anemone ('Party Dress') which is not doing well at all. It seems to need a great deal more water than anything else in the beds, and we've added fertilizer as well. I don't know why it's failing, but it's definitely not happy. After a shaky first couple weeks, it does seem to have at least stabilized, but it doesn't seem to be putting on new growth at all. We'll see if it survives for next year.

Lastly, we put in an Iris ('Batik') for some contrast. It was blooming (sort of) when we put it in, so for the moment it's just some extra green in front of the brick, but it should be some nice color next season.

Tall Bearded Iris, 'Batik'