Showing posts with label daylily. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

February Update on the Leap Day

Today is the leap day, thought it would be great to give an update of my February garden, just make this post a little special :)

There are so many colors and flowers bursting in my February South Florida garden due to the mild winter we had this year.

In the past, I only tried pink snapdragons, and this is my first time to grow yellow and white ones, and I find myself loving them so much in the winter garden, warm and bright.

This is the time for Golden shrimp plant(Pachystachys lutea) to bloom.

Giant Apostle's Iris (Neomarica Caerulea 'Regina') started blooming, much earlier than last year.

This Lobelia plant is one of the rare blue flowers I have ever seen. They make the great trailing (spiller) plants for the container.

Lobelia

This Purple Verbenas is also great for container, either as the filler or the spiller.

The following two are the new plants I am trying this year, Cuphea llavea Vienco™. I love them in a more compacted size, suitable for my small garden.

This year I am trying to grow Mona lavender (Plectranthus) in the ground instead of in the container. It is in a partial shade area, and they seem quite happy there. Best of all, it doesn't require frequent watering compare to growing in the container.

These two Begonias had their blooming peak this month.

Begonia Odorata Var. Alba

Rex Begonia

Even caladium bulbs are shooting out of the ground here and there much earlier than last year.

Dipladenia pink just started blooming again after a hard trim I did late last year. Now they came back fresh and strong. I expect they will be on their peak time in March.

Dipladenia pink

Bulbine plants look the best when they are blooming in a mass. Bees just love them.

This Chorus Line daylily has not finished blooming yet, neither has Pandoras box daylily.

CHORUS LINE

Wow, I found I am having quite some blues in my garden. I guess that doesn't happen by accident considering blue if one of my favorite colors in the garden. Could not help snap some pictures of this blue butterfly flower every time I pass it by.

Blue Butterfly
Clerodendrum ugandense

February is also the month when many orchids bloom. One of most impressive orchids bloomed this month is Epidendrum Orchid, or go with the common names such as Crucifix Orchid, Reed-stem Epidendrum, Sun Orchid,and etc.

I bought one in April of 2010. After the initial blooming, it only had a few flowers last year. After I put them into the ground (this orchid is terrestrial type) in a more sunny location, this year they just bloomed like crazy. If you are trying to find an easy growing orchid, this is the one that you should try! They are also so easy to propagate by division of pseudobulbous stems or offsets, or by removing and planting those pups on old stems or flower spikes. From one 5 gallon container, now I have three clumps of this orchid spread in my garden.

You also can spot Epidendrum Orchid in the below flower bed.

Now the rest are different orchids blooming currently in my garden. I put them mostly in my front porch since my back porch has too many suns. I really need more space for more orchids!

For those of you living in the cold weather area, hope you enjoyed the flowers in my Tropical garden, and remember Spring is coming!

Happy Gardening!

Monday, February 13, 2012

More Day Lilies Blooming and a Long Over-due Project

Two more daylilies are blooming in the garden. They were planted at the end of last October as bare root fans, which I ordered from smokeysdaylilygardens.com.

PANDORAS BOX

(Evergreen, early-mid, rebloomer, 4" flower, 19" scape height, white/cream, Ruffled, fragrant, recurved)

CHORUS LINE

(Evergreen, early, rebloomer, 3.5" flower, 20" scape height, pink/rose, Ruffled, extended bloomer, very fragrant)

I wish these daylilies can thrive in my garden for many years coming!

Now here is an over-due update of a loooong over-due garden project. (Can you hear the word "procrastination" whispering in the air?)

In August 2010 August, we started building a path on the west side of house and back yard to replace a muddy grass area. You can see how it looked then here. It was just a path with grasses removed, and layered with weed block clothes, plus the pea sized gravels.

Later, we added the step stones (you can see the picture in this post). We were then looking for bigger sized stones to lay on the top of pea gravels to level with stepping stones to finish the job, but never got time to do so.

During the recent Christmas holidays, DH and I had a couple of weeks off the work. We finally found a local landscape place had the river stones for sale, just what we were looking for! After dumping 40+ bags of river stones, now the path finally had a finished look.

This is the portion of the path at the west side of the house, looking towards the South (backyard).

Now looking from the back yard towards the North (front of the house) of the same path.

Zooming out more in the same direction (towards North). The majority part of the path shown in the picture now is in the backyard, west flower bed.

Now turn around to look the other direction (towards further south, lake side) of the west side. The portion with four stepping stones were just created this past Christmas by removing the grass there. Now the whole west side along the house includes only flower beds and stone path, no grass at all.

I am really enjoying the soothing and tranquil feeling of this new river stone path gives.

On the east side of the back yard, there was a short path leading to the fence door going out of the backyard. Since I often need to hauling the soil to the back yard for planting, and river stone path won't be easy for a pulling card to go through, we turned this pathway to a brick paved path. Now I can easily transport the soil using my little pulling cart.

Although it is not a perfect job, we were proud to have this path paved all by ourselves considering this was our first time ever to try this.

With the above project finished, now within the fence, we only have last strip of grasses left, which is along the lake side (see below).

Two small Christmas palms were added last December. Between two palms, the small tree in the container is "Michelia champaca", which should produce very fragrant yellow flowers. Now I have already put it under the ground outside of the fence since the above picture was taken, and I cannot wait for it bloom for the first time!

Removing this last piece of grasses, and converting it to another planting area is in progress, I will post it once it is finished. One hint, this area will be involving some rocks.

Last, let me use this full opened hot pink gerbera daisy wish you all a very happy Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Early blooming of Daylilies and Other Things in the Garden

Since this is my first post of the year, let me first say "Happy New Year" to you all !!! Wish you have all the fun of the gardening in this new year!

Every year, from early Spring through the summer, I admire those beautiful pictures of Daylilies from other people's blog, wondering when I can own some of these beauties in my garden.

For some reasons, Daylilies are hard to find in South Florida. Occasionally, the big box stores have some for sale. I brought two home in two different times, and both died after the initial blooming. I did some researches, and found out that among thousands of Daylilies, there are three foliage types: Dormant, Semi-evergreen, and Evergreen. For people live deep South like me, Evergreen is the one that will survive our long-lasting hot weather. No wonder I failed twice since those two were all Domant types! Then why they even sold them in the store since Daylilies are not supposed to be a one-time thing in the garden?!

Anyway, since I did not find any local nurseries to buy Evergreen Daylilies, I looked over the Internet. I ordered 5 bareroot Evergreen double-fans from http://smokeysdaylilygardens.com/, and they arrived at the end of last October.

This week, two of them are already blooming! I am not sure if it is only because they are the early bloomers ( 'Lavender Silence' is labled as "Extra-early", and "Whooperee' is labled as "Early-mid" ), or also because of the mild winter we are having in South Florida. Nevertheless, I am excited to see these beauties are finally finding a home in my garden! If they all perform well after this summer, I think I will order more this fall. With a small garden, Daylilies are the ones I can find some space to squeeze in.

Whooperee
Evergreen, early-mid, rebloomer, 6.5" flower, 24" scape height, fragrant, recurved

Lavender Silence
Evergreen, extra-early, 6.5" flower, 22" scape height, ruffled, fragrant, recurved

Other things going on in the garden...

This Rex Begonia is in a shady area, and recently started shooting up the flower scapes. I bought it last year. After one year, it has been growing nicely. I have separated it into four plants. I think after a couple of years, I can expand them to the whole border that surrounds the air conditioner area. Even when it is not blooming, I love the texture of this plant.

Begonia

Love this combo in this part of flower bed. White Vincas, Orange Indian Blanket flowers, pink Pentas. That purple leaf plant with white dotted flowers is Alternanthera dentata 'Purple Knight'. Some says 'Purple Knight' is kind of invasive, but I have not found it is a big problem for me. It does have some seedlings, but only a handful I found so far. I can easily pulled them out, or give them to the friends. In the winter, they are full of those tiny white flowers, brighten the winter garden, and give us Floridians some snowy touch :)

Another combo I like: White Angelonia angustifolia, colorful coleus, and blue Lobelia erinus Techno Heat. This Lobelia is supposed to withstand the hottest summer temperatures while blooming nonstop. I will see if it holds true to Florida heat as well.

My front entry is quite colorful this winter. I removed some copperleaf bushes in the front, and put two cast iron cranes statues there together with some bromeliads.

This philodendron 'moonlight' behind the cranes statues started as a 3-in house plant from the big box store. Oh boy, how much it has grown! Wonder how much bigger it will get if I put it in the ground.