Lots of dirt under the fingernails

I've spent a lot of time in the garden this week.  I no sooner get the dirt scrubbed from my fingernails than I find myself diving into another task, leaving them filthy again.  I occasionally take a moment to put on garden gloves but the finer tasks in the garden, like pulling out weeds with long tap roots, don't always permit bulky gloves even when I put them on.

 

My first priority has been getting new plants in the ground.  I'm not done but I've made progress there.  All three of my purchases from Seaside Gardens have been planted.

From left to right, my Seaside purchases were: Cistus ladanifer 'Blanche', Templetonia retusa, and Arctostaphylos 'Sunset'.  All can get by with low water once established.

Cistus 'Blanche' has pristine white flowers and should reach a mature size of 4-8 feet tall and 4-5 feet wide.  At the higher end of that range, it may be too big for this area in the back garden but I'm going to try to keep it pinched back.

Templetonia retusa (aka coral bush) is an Australian plant that grows to 4-6 feet tall and wide.  Like the Cistus, I've planted this one in the bed that runs from the backyard fountain to the south patio.  You can find a good photo of the plant in flower here.

Hybrid Arctostaphylos 'Sunset' produces pinkish-white flowers and grows 4-5 feet tall and wide.  I've planted it in the front garden on the side adjacent to our garage.

 

I've made headway with my purchases from Terra Sol.

I bought a wider range of plants, albeit in smaller sizes, at Terra Sol

Ptilotus exaltatus 'Joey' and Verbena peruviana 'Pink Bicolor' replaced a fading Rudbeckia in this urn in the area alongside the garage 

The 5 small succulent plants I picked up at Terra Sol all went into this pot.  They include Crassula crassissimus, Echeveria mexicano, Portulaca 'Tricolor Jewel', and Sedum 'Alice Evans'.

I pulled the Dahlia mistakenly sold as 'French Can Can' out of this barrel in the front garden and planted one of 6 plugs of Digitalis 'Dalmatian Peach' here.  The rest will be planted in the raised planting beds of the cutting garden once I've finished clearing them and refreshing the soil.

I pulled some Aeonium 'Kiwi Verde' that had edged this bed in front of the garage because it was repeatedly battered by the gardeners.  The 3 Carex flacca 'Blue Zinger' shown here in pots will replace the succulents after a little fussing with the irrigation set-up.  The Carex grows about one foot tall and 3-4 feet wide and makes do with limited water.  If I like it better than the Festuca glaucus I've tried in the past, I'll hunt down more plants to continue that edging along the the driveway.

 

My recent mail order Annie's purchases got upgraded from their four-inch pots but they haven't made it into the garden yet.

Clockwise from the upper left: California natives Trichostemma 'Midnight Magic' (already flowering), Ribes sanguineum and 2 Heuchera maxima.  I've identified spots for all of them but I need to finish cleaning up those areas before I plant them.

I've also made a good start pulling apart my summer cutting garden to prepare for cool season plants.  Removing the mildewed Cosmos and Zinnias was easy but digging up dahlia tubers and dividing them is a messy, time-consuming, and frustrating process.

I didn't have many flowers to give away but those I did disappeared quickly

Many of the dahlia tubers had grown large and densely packed.  Even after watching a 30-minute video on dividing them I struggled given the size of some of them.  According to the video, to be viable, each tuber division needs and eye, a neck and a body.  Identifying the "eyes" often isn't easy.  I suspect some of the 'La Luna' divisions I took are blind.

Some dahlia tubers separate easily but 'Lavender Ruffles' was a monster.  I didn't divide it last year and simply planted the original clump with very little cleanup and it more than doubled in size.  I had to butcher the clump on the left just to hunt for viable divisions.  I essentially gave up on this one with just 3 prospects.

It broke my heart a little to end up with so few divisions of 'Mikayla Miranda', which was one of my favorites this year.  In her video, Erin Benzakein of Floret Flowers said you may end up throwing away half of each clump you divide but I lost more than that with this one.

I did better with 'Summer's End' but at that point I may have been seeing eyes where there weren't any.  I left one small clump intact too, which may improve my luck.  I notice that some mail order dahlia sellers send single tubers, while others send entire clumps.

 

I've also divided Dahlias 'Catching Fire' and 'Enchantress'.  I haven't decided whether to bother with 'Labyrinth' - the flowers are pretty but my plants did poorly this year.  I've thrown out a few tubers I didn't think were worth saving.  I still have several more to dig up, wash, and divide and, once they're fully dry (but before they wither with the expected kick-up of another round of Santa Ana winds next week), I need to pack them up in vermiculite before tucking them away to rest out their dormant period.

 

There are far fewer flowers in my garden now.

This 'Breakout' Dahlia bloom may be my last.  There are buds on a few of those still in the raised beds but they probably won't open before I throw in the towel this weekend.

A few fall flowers have arrived.  Clockwise from the upper left are: Barleria obtusa (aka bush violet), Iris germanica 'Autumn Circus', what may be the first bud of Protea 'Pink Ice' (although it looks very small and dry), and a burst of yellow from Senna bicapsularis.

 

Best wishes for a calm weekend.

All material © 2012-2023 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Fall Standouts

Los Angeles County authorities have posted an "extreme" red flag (fire) warning this morning and with the wind already blowing like a banshee and humidity levels dropping by the minute, work in the garden isn't a viable option.   Time to focus on some of the pretty pictures I've taken over the past two days!

With the dahlia season clearly over, my fall garden has few standouts when it comes to flowers.  There are a few notable exceptions.

This is Barleria obtusa (aka the bush violet).  I picked up a couple of plants at one of South Coast Botanic Garden's fall plant sales years ago and they've bulked up and freely self-seeded.  After showing just a few flowers last week, they've suddenly burst into bloom in my back garden.  I imagine that the clumps in my front garden will follow suit soon.

Senna bicapsularis (aka Winter Senna) also threw out a few tentative flowers before powering up a full-fledged bloom-fest

Plectranthus ciliatus 'Zulu Wonder' is still keeping things low-key but I appreciate every graceful flower spike it produces, as well as those fragrant quilted leaves

Persimmon 'Hachiya' obviously isn't a flower but I'm impressed that I actually have some fruit this year.  I watched a greedy squirrel scamper off carrying a whole persimmon in its mouth yesterday so I don't expect them to last long.

While making a quick round of South Coast Botanic Garden on Monday in preparation for a tour I was scheduled to conduct on Tuesday, I snapped a few photos of plants that stood out there too.

 The Silk Floss trees (Ceiba speciosa) are the most dominant features of the garden at the moment

There are still some single-petaled dahlias to be found.  I believe this one is called Dahlia 'Mystic Spirit'.

This is a very interesting vine I can't remember coming across before.  It goes by the common names of orchid vine (for the yellow orchid-like blooms shown in the photo on the left) and butterfly vine (for the lime-green butterfly-like seed pods, fading to tan as they mature, as shown more clearly on the right).  The plant's botanical name is Mascagnia macropterum (syn. Callaeum macropterum).  I recently received some seed pods from a thoughtful blogger friend and will have a go at growing it.

My guess was that this is Persicaria orientalis, which goes by the fanciful common name of Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate, but I'm no longer sure of that ID.  Can anyone confirm or correct this ID?  This is Antignon leptopus, aka coral vine, a native of Mexico.  Thanks for the ID, Susan!

While I was at the botanic garden I thought I'd try to grab photos of the sculptures on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as I'd captured only one during a prior visit.  All six of the LACMA sculptures have been placed in the "back 40" (acres) of the garden to entice visitors to wander deeper into the grounds.  That proved to be a longer hike than I had time for but I managed to photograph three more.

This is Firestone by Peter Voulkos

This is Trace by Nancy Graves, which is perhaps my favorite of the sculptures the garden has on display

This is One on One by Richard Artschwager.  It seems to be the odds-on favorite of children as I've never seen it without children climbing all over it.

The sculptures do seem to be increasing traffic in the back area of the garden, which is great.  Restoring/reconstructing the lake would also give the garden a major boost but that's a longer-term project on the botanic garden's master plan.

What's grabbing your attention in the garden as October comes to a close?


All material © 2012-2019 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party