Moving Plants

I have a hydrangea that I really need to move out of the sun and into the backyard. I have heard that Oct/Nov is a good time to move plants as they have time to establish themselves before the stress of the summer months.

Question: Not considering that we are in a drought, is it too late to move it? Any thoughts?

Hillside Plants and Mulch Part 1: Done

Well, I finally got the plants and mulch done in the backyard. 24 Cubic Yards of mulch is a lot of mulch, and I still need about 12 cubic yards to complete the job. The plants consist of 70 Parsoni (Parsons) Juniper and 18 Forsythia.

Now I need to work on the grass in the backyard, I need to get some stone to border the mulch and to build a step at the bottom of the staircase in the back. And i need to muck out the rest of the backyard and figure out what I am going to do with that, right now, I am thinking pinestraw. Also mixed in there is going to be figuring out how to handle all the leaves. Laugh, I think I am screwed.

Yard Pics

Matt has given me the inspiration to finally put the pictures of the trees that I planted on the blog. It has probably been about a month or so since the trees where planted. My neighbor and I went to Broadwells and ended up with around 15 or so trees to plant. I learned a few valuable lessons during this process of planting these trees:
1) If you think a 600 lb tree can be moved by two people....think again.
2) When traveling from Broadwells or any other nursery that is a good distance away, cover the tree with a tarp so that they don't get wind damage. The large Crape Myrtle that was planted in the front lost all of its leaves the first couple of days.
3) Hiring Mexican workers for 10/hr to help plant trees is the way to go.


I planted three River Birch trees:


Notice the nice dark green grass growing........too bad the whole yard didn't look like that.


I planted 5 Cryptomeria japonica ‘Yoshino’ to finish off the border in the back


The backyard grass isn't looking to good right now, but I will have to wait till the spring to reseed.



I also planted two maples:

Here is a pic of the big Crape Myrtle that was planted:


I planted a three double knockout rose bushes in the back to add some color around the deck:




And here are just some random pics of plants around the front and side of the house:

New plantings @ chez m. staton

Well technically not new anymore (took these pics on 9/23), but new to you. Planted this stuff in front of my fence. I was pretty stoked with the results. here's a whole buncha pics.

from left to right:
purple coneflower, sedum, salvia, thyme, broom





broom,purple sage,phlox, salvia


salvia, butterfly rush(guara),phlox, some kinda mini asters and then my old daisies.




on the right end (l to r) more sedum, daphne, phlox, huchera -rosemary-huchera.

close ups of the sedum and huchera:

Beautiful Green Grass

My yard is kicking it with the rain and the cooler temperatures. How did you yard make it through the drought?

Blackwidow

I thought I would post a quick note about the Blackwidow spider I found in my backyard on Monday. He died a quick death, but I am wondering if that could have been the cause of the death for the cat that I found in my backyard a couple of weeks ago. My wife feeds the stray cats, much to my chagrin.

The Mulch: Before and After

After much back breaking work here are the results.

Before:


After:


The best thing about doing this was that I was finally able to layout the boundaries of the yard and visualize what it will one day look like. Now, if only there was some water to help fill in the light brown areas with green, green grass.

Yesterday's rain

We were speculating how much rain we got yesterday. Some said 1/10th of an inch, others 1/4 inch... Wunderground confirmed: Rainfall 0.04"

Excuse my French, but that sucks ass.

hortikulture survives the crackdown!!!

i'm still seeing this on the reged side of the network....

This is what I have called the African Smelly. I am not sure of its real name. It eats flies and it smells terible. The color and the leaves are really cool though.

Free plants (sort of)

The JC Raulston Arboretum is having their annual plant grab on Saturday morning. Lots of free plants for members. Pretty sure I'm going.

http://www.ncsu.edu/jcraulstonarboretum/calendar/event_details.php?ID=165

If you've never been it's a nice place for a walk- no dogs allowed tho.

Things under the ivy

As you all may be aware, I've embarked on a project to clear out my backyard. There is (was) thick ivy all over the backyard, rendering the space useless and serving as a breeding ground for mosquitoes. I forgot to take a before picture, but this first one is the other side of the yard (still untouched). The side I cleared had 5 random shrubs that I took out. The second and third are the cleared photos, albeit still with a huge pile of waste. The last one are some of the things found deep in the ivy. The owners BEFORE the owners we bought the house from had a dog. I also uncovered two stumps that need to come out. I'm wondering what else lies beneath. With over half the backyard to go, I'm hoping not to find any body parts.









The items from left to right: Caution tape, fuzzy die, part of a rubber kickball, an odd squeeze toy.

Big Ol' Pile Of...

Mulch!!!!

Pons Flowers

After last week's rain all the floating plants in my pond started putting out these awesome flowers. I have no idea what they are called but they bloomed in about 24 hours and obviously like rain.

Hallelujah!

Its raining.

Update from India

We've seen some pretty cool plants/trees/flowers since we've been over here. Some of the flowers look similar to what's back in the States but of different varieties (i.e. small hibiscus flowers on smaller bushes).

What's the latest on Hortikulture back home? The blog is lacking new content...

Another drought option: free recycled water

if you happen to have a tanker truck lying around....

http://www.nbc17.com/midatlantic/ncn/news.apx.-content-articles-NCN-2007-08-24-0028.html

Xeriscaping

For those of you that want to drought proof your yards... http://www.wrallocaltechwire.com/business/blogpost/1741331/

Bulbs Purchased

We bought 100 crocus, 120 tulips, and 80 daffodils today. I'm going to put them on the fridge soon and will plant in October sometime. It's time to get geared up for fall planting ladies!

Irrigation System

The rigged irrigation system is complete. I spent the afternoon burying hoses all over the yard and putting everything on timers. It's pretty dope if I do say so myself. :-)

office irrigation system

I thought this might inspire Mr Sperati:

http://berserk.org/ois/

The Canna Lilly - I believe it's one of our best "from seed"
success stories.

Genetic Quirk - Strawmato

I wonder how many Strawmatoes work at RegEd.

http://www.abc4.com/mostpopular/story.aspx?content_id=e156c446-8535-4dc6-aa25-5d8bed039c25

From Seed (successes and failures)

Early in the year I had a real bug for starting plants from seed. Whether this was the cheapskate in me, or some emerging fathering instincts i don't know. Maybe something in between.

So anyways - how did it turn out?

In February i started impatiens, coleus, evening primrose, foxglove and zinnias inside. The impatiens can barely be seen by the naked eye and have only produced a handful of meager flowers- i'll never try it again.

Coleus and Zinnias have really don quite well. All these pics are from mid june. Coleus and now probably 10 times as big now, eclisping the grass lookign stuff in the container. Zinnias are waaay bigger, but also plagued by mildew. Both of those are easy and I would recommend that to anyone. you can also see my cauliflower, which was completely eaten by cabbage worms the next day.

Evening primrose has be testy. In one spot it did poorly and in another it has gone crazy. Still no flowers, but it is a perennial, so maybe next year. You can see it sending out runners.

Also in this pic you can see the white flower of Alyssum which i direct sowed in late February. It's done great and is probably double that size now with lots of white flowers. Very easy.

The foxglove a has also been tempermental. I tried it in a shady spot that was either too shady or too dry. totally weak. hardly anything left of them now.

However in a spot that gets about 5 hrs of sun a day and they are doing quite well and look much better now than in the picture. They are biennials so hopefully we'll see some flowers next year. I tried some direct sow foxglove in the backyard in a shady spot and that also went pretty crappy, but it done late and during the dry spell.

Also direct sown in the backyard were sunflowers, which have faired well, and have now flowered. Not the majestic plate sized flowers but nice none-the less.

Planted Hollyhock, another biennial, at the same time. And it is holding on. Hoping for flowers next year.

Cosmos were an also an easy direct seed that flowered quickly, but did require a fair amount of watering. I did some dill right with them, which you can see in the photo- but i think it needed waaaay more water than i could provide, and didn't do much.

Other direct sow failures include red hot poker, joe- pye weed and the cannas which only produced this little stub:

My artichoke is doing great crossing my fingers it will make it thorugh the winter and bear fruit next year.

In short the winners (all annuals) were zinnia, coleus, cosmos, sunflower and alyssum. I'm crossing my fingers for foxglove, hollyhock, artichoke and primrose to continue doing well and flower next year. In the don't waste your time category: impatiens (if you like 'em buy the pinch pots), joe pye weed, red hot poker, cauliflower (outside) and dill.

For the winners it's not a bad way to add a little color for not much $$$s.

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The Big Kahuna

Okay, here is my Big Kahuna project for the fall. I would like to get my backyard under control. AS you can see it is pretty crazy right now. There is a lot that needs to get down in the next month or so just to prepare for the main event of planting, mulching, pine strawing, getting grass to grow etc.

I will try to post more pics as the project progresses. But for now, I am going outside to start the weeding process.