More Garden Map

This weekend, I told you about what's Surviving, Thriving, and Dead in the six pots closest to my back door.  Time to move a few feet to the next six pots!

Pot # 5 - This is easy.  Fig tree.  Dead.  I am officially out of the Fig Business.

Pot #6 - the Taxus Helen Corbet (a Yew).  Thriving, and beginning to put our new needles at the end of the branches, which will be a much lighter green than the current foliage.  Also in the pot: Redstone Falls Heucherella and Apple Crisp Heuchera.  Both surviving and putting out new leaves.  Apparently the secrets to success with heucheras are 1) mulch and 2) a mild winter.

Pot #6A - the new Barberry, the new Champagne Heuchera, the new Lady in Red Fern, and the new Rhino Hide hosta.  All doing fine, but they haven't had much chance for anything to go wrong let, so let's call them Thriving - For Now.

Pot #6B - similarly, the new Poplar hasn't had time to be anything but Thriving - For Now.  It has no companion plants yet.

Pot #6C - a white swamp oak that self-seeded in another pot in the fall of 2017; I transplanted it to this pot in June 2018.  No leaves yet but there are little buds, so it's possible that there will be leaves soon.  I'll reserve judgment for a while.  Also in the pot: three nameless bare-root hostas that came from Walmart in 2018, and that are coming up nicely.  Let's say "Probably Surviving" for the oak, and "Thriving" for the hostas.  And then there's a small cast-iron statue of a winged cat, but that's not its best side.

Pot #7 - an American Hazelnut that I got from ForestFarm at Pacifica in the spring of 2018.  Putting out lots of little leaves, so I'm going to be optimistic and call it Thriving, even if I don't know if it'll ever produce nuts again.  (I got a crop of three last year!).  Also in the pot: a Snow Queen Iris from 2017 (dead, dead, dead); and two nameless bare-root hostas from Walmart from 2018, thriving.

The Garden Map

Once upon a time, it was easy to keep track of what was in my garden.  I had five or six pots, and each pot had, at most, four plants.  Those days are gone.

Now I'm up to more than 30 pots, and the only way I can tell you what's supposed to be coming up this spring is by consulting a document I call my Garden Map.  It's more of an inventory than a map, but it helps me remember what I've got, what it's called, when I got it, and where it came from.  Each pot has a number, and the Garden Map is my cheat sheet for what's in the pot.

I thought we'd do "Who's Surviving, Who's Thriving, Who's Dead" in groups this year, and we'll begin with the group of pots nearest my back door.

Pot #1 is a galvanized metal planter I bought from Gardener's Supply in 2016.  It contains a Japanese Pieris and three different colors of Astilbe plants.  At least, if they ever bloom, they'll be three different colors.  Right now they're just green.

The Japanese Pieris is blooming, which is a bit of a victory for me - since so few things bloom in my dark garden. 

So I'll put that in the "Surviving" column.  Why not "Thriving"?  Well, here's a photo of some Japanese Pieris plants on the sidewalk in front of a local plant store - so you can see how they really are supposed to bloom. 

If mine looked like that, I'd call it "Thriving."

Of the three colors of astilbe (red, pink, and lavender), all are coming up, so let's call them "Surviving" too.  But only the pink ones have ever bloomed, and we'll have to wait until June for that.

Pot #1A has three bare-root hostas that I  bought this spring from a company called Michigan Bulb.  "Bare root" just means you get a plant with no soil on the roots.  You soak them when they arrive and then plant them.  They're quite cheap - I paid $2.58 per plant for these, including shipping - but you get no hint as to what variety they are.  They're all coming up, which is all one expects a hosta to do, so I'll put them in the "Thriving" column. (One is coming up much faster than its friends!)

Pot # 2 has two Blue Mouse Ears hostas, which have been thriving in my garden since 2016 and look like they're planning to do so again this year.  The third plant is a Cherry Berry hosta, split from the one in Pot #3, and it looked terrible last season so I'm surprised it's coming up at all.  So two "Thriving" and one "Surviving."

Pot #3 contains the Laceleaf Japanese Maple Orangeola, which I've had since 2017 and which is doing quite nicely.  The leaves come in with a red tone and then turn green as they open up, as I hope you can see in the photo.  Thriving.

Also in the pot, a Cherry Berry Hosta, which again, looked terrible last season but is coming up ("Surviving"), a Bergenia Pink Dragonfly which appears to be doing just fine ("Surviving," and if it blooms again, it'll get a "Thriving" score), and an Oxalis, which appears to be the only plant in this group of pots to receive a score of "Dead."

Pot #3A contains the brand-new maple tree that I showed you last week, plus a bare-root hosta from last year's batch of Walmart bare-root hostas, and a new hosta, the Lakeside Paisley Print.

I'm a little embarrassed about the Lakeside Paisley Print.  Bluestone Perennials sent it to me after I complained that the Rhino Hide hosta they sent me looked dead.  And then the Rhino Hide came to life.  I tried to cancel the Lakeside Paisley Print at that point, but they had already sent it.  So good customer service on their part, and I will continue to shop from them.

Pot #4 contains two heucheras, Happy Hour Lime and Obsidian, both from Bluestone Perennials in 2018.  Both surviving and putting out new leaves, which improves my lifetime heuchera score considerably!  And also another bare-root hosta from Michigan Bulb, which is just starting to come up.

More New Plants

Greetings from my garden!  The "Oregon Fern" Fullmoon Japanese Maple is leafing up nicely.

 I've got some new leafy friends to introduce today

Beginning in 2016, I've purchased trees and shrubs every spring from ForestFarm at Pacifica.  They've sold me some lovely trees, including my Winterberry holly plants, both of my Japanese Maples, and the Upright Japanese Yew that I accidentally killed last year.  So I'm always excited when the ForestFarm box comes.

First out of the box - the replacement Upright Japanese Yew!

I put it in the same pot where the old Upright Japanese Yew lived.

That pot should look a whole lot better once the "Ghost Lady" fern comes up.  She's always a latecomer, so I'm not worried.

Next up, the Barberry.  Barberries are a native species to this area, which was why they first appealed to me, but this is actually a variety from Nepal known as Jaeschke's Barberry.  It's a thorny little critter, but I think it will make an attractive addition.

I added it to the pot with the new plants from last week.  Barberries come in numerous varieties and colors, so if this one works out, I can see myself adding more.

I'm not sure why I ordered the next one.  It's a maple - not a Japanese maple, but a real grown-up maple.  It doesn't seem completely fair to stick it in a pot.

And finally, the Columnar Chinese Poplar.  You may have noticed that I like tall skinny plants (the Upright Japanese Yew, the Sky Pencil holly).  Here's another one.

I've always liked poplar trees, and I think they do OK in windy conditions.  We'll see!

Next week, we'll take a look at what's coming up.  The short answer: almost everything!

Back from an extra-long hiatus

It's spring in the garden once again.  Little stubby green things are appearing in my pots and will soon turn into hostas.

The heucheras are growing brightly-colored little new leaves - which is especially exciting because often, my heucheras do not make it to a second season.

 

And the trees are budding.

Well, most of the trees.  Maybe not the fig tree.

I suppose I owe you all an explanation for why I blogged only once last year.  There's a one-word answer: fertilizer.  I had asked an employee at a garden center why my Japanese Pieris didn't flower, and he suggested a particular fertilizer.  So I bought the fertilizer, and a companion fertilizer for non-acid-loving plaints, and I fertilized my Japanese Pieris and many of my other trees and shrubs.  Unfortunately, I did so very enthusiastically, and I exceeded the amounts specified by the package directions, and I killed a lot of my plants. I killed the Japanese Pieris. I killed the Upright Japanese Yew that had been in my garden since 2016.  I killed the Orange Dream Japanese Maple that I'd raised from a twig in 2015.  I killed a Boxwood.  And I killed a Mountain Laurel.  Losing so many beautiful plants by my own hand was devastating.

So I didn't have the heart to blog last spring and summer, even though most of the rest of my plants did just fine.  I got some new plants.  I mulched everything last summer and fall, to help the pots retain their heat in the winter, which may be why my heucheras are mostly not dead (though the reasonably mild winter we had could also be a contributing factor).

It's too early yet to play "Who's Surviving, Who's Thriving, Who's Dead," or to show you the garden as a whole, but I thought I'd introduce you to three new plants that arrived this week.  Say hello to the Champagne Heuchera!

Please welcome the Lady in Red Fern!

Yes, I agree, she does look like a Lady in Green.

And I'm not sure what you should say to the Rhino Hide Hosta.

Yes, that's exactly how it arrived.  Looks stone dead to me, but I put it in the ground anyway and will keep you posted.

By next weekend, four new trees and shrubs will have arrived, so that's something to look forward to.  Happy spring from Grey to Green!