August 25, 2008

Looking Back over the Summer

Cestrum

Turk’s cap hibiscus

With the first of September just around the corner, it seems a good time to assess how our gardens fared this summer. What annuals or vegetables performed well – what would we plant or not plant again? Did some of the plants wilt under the summer heat, or fail to flourish with the amount of water we were able to provide? Did the wildlife demolish the plantings? Did some plants just need more care than we felt we could give – for insect or disease problems? Did some reproduce so wildly that they just outgrew their welcome?  A garden journal is a real help for those of us with selective or poor memories. Unless we keep some sort of record, next summer may find us making the same mistakes we did this year; a journal can also help us repeat our successes. I make notes in my yearly calendar to use as a guide when the huge array of plant material becomes available next spring. My memory often goes blank when faced with rows and rows of gorgeous greenery and blooms.

I will surely buy the wonderful begonias, Super Olympia Rose with bright pink flowers and light green leaves, again next year; they did beautifully in the sun; profusion zinnias will be at the top of my list for 2009 as they just don’t know when to quit. Over the years I was the kid in the candy store trying every new annual (and often perennial, too) that came on the market. No more; over the years by trial and error I learned to plant the old faithful for summer color – begonias, impatiens, pentas, and zinnias. Another fine performer this year was Mexican heather, an annual with either tiny lavender or white flowers.

By this time of the season our container plants are getting very tired. They are leggy, unless we kept them pinched; they have become pot bound and are requiring copious amounts of water on a daily basis. One cure-all is to pull them all out and replant and enjoy this second crop of flowers until the first frost, which in East Central Alabama may not happen until mid-November. In our area it is way too early to fill our gardens with pansies and others who prefer cool days and cooler nights.

The deer sneaked in and stripped my potato vines of all their leaves. I have lost them to the deer two years running, so next year regardless of how tempting those beautiful chartreuse leaves are, I won’t choose them unless I can keep them out of harm’s way. There are so many plants that deer do not browse that it will simply be a matter of choosing one of them. My beautiful leucothoe (a subject of an earlier blog) died and it looks like my shady lady anise (the second one) is not long for this world. The hydrangeas, although they had survived an early spring cold snap, did not perform well at all. As a matter of fact only the rebloomers like ‘Vince Dooley’ and ‘Endless Summer’ actually bloomed this year. That seems to be the same story I heard from my gardener friends. Hydrangeas no longer make my yearly shopping list even though I love them dearly. (By the way it is almost past time to prune hydrangeas that bloom on old wood: mophead and oakleaf hydrangeas should be pruned soon after blooming; they begin to set their new flower buds from August through October.) If you pruned after that time in years past, it may be one reason why your hydrangeas did not bloom. The hosta did not have a banner year; leaves which should have been more than a foot in size only reached a couple of inches. Most of the ones in pots fared better than those in the ground. From what I read, this problem stemmed from the drought and heat of summer 2007.  Failures in the hosta department will not deter me from buying them again next year, but more will be planted in containers than in the ground as the container-grown ones did better.

Late summer has many stars in the garden. Two full sun beauties are cestrum and Turk’s cap hibiscus. The cestrums have been blooming for a while but are clearly stand outs now. Their tubular flowers are beloved by hummingbirds and butterflies alike. They can get large and may need pruning after flowering. Cestrums are considered to be tropicals, but my cestrum hybrid, pictured above, grows very nicely in my zone 7B-8A garden. Another wonderful bloomer right now is the Turk’s cap hibiscus with brilliant red flowers that the butterflies just love. Within days the garden will be full of bright yellow butterflies flitting through the hibiscus, a scene that defies description. The little creatures dart so quickly that it is hard to capture them in a photograph. Speaking of creatures, the garden is buzzing with hummingbirds; if you have a feeder, keep it clean and full of fresh solution so these small miracle can tank up good before flying south for the winter.

Although many of our plants may be weary after putting on their glorious summer show, many are still at their peak. Take stock now and go from there. There are always beds to be filled, containers to be planted, and blossoms to admire. Gardening can be full of frustration – plants that don’t bloom or don’t survive or don’t thrive; but on the whole gardening can also be the most rewarding activity that there is, as we experience the pleasures of watching living things grow.  Just as a gardener rejoices over the past season’s successes and moans the failures, a gardener can always look to the next season for more challenges and more delights.