Wednesday, January 02, 2008

2007 Garden

As I looked through the garden photos from 2007, I found some winners and some losers and a few that were a little of both.

Losers

The pot of Double Flowering Tuberose (Polianthea tuberosa) did not bloom (again). I promised myself if there were no blooms in 2007, they would be compost. But, I've the pot away for the winter (again). (see December 29, 2006 post). We’ll see. I get plenty of green leaves and lots of new bulbs each year, but no blooms. I don't know if I'm ready to give up the challenge.

Lobelia 'Crystal Palace' started with a few pretty, bright blue flowers in a pot with zinnias. They never developed into much. I’m not sure if it was the competition from the zinnias or the shade from the zinnias or the hot, dry summer. I've tried nasturtiums and petunias in the bottom of this patio pot. Neither one worked very well. I’ll be looking for a different cascading plant this spring. I may try some of the bright sweet potato vines.

In the middle

Container Vegetables. The cucumber (Bush Champion) plants produced a normal amount of cukes before they were overcome with mildew. I may try a mildew resistant variety this year. The beans (Kentucky Wonder) were a success producing beans into fall. But, keeping the containers watered was a problem in the hot, dry summer. I will be researching watering methods and gadgets this winter.




Making aerobic compost tea was easy enough to do. (see July 7, 2007 and August 8, 2007 posts) I think I got some good results on the roses. I’m not sure how valuable it is as a soil amendment. I’ll be trying it on a portion of the lawn next spring. At the very least, I got to stretch my valuable compost a little further.

Sweet Pea (Sweet Dreams & Streamers Mix) took a long time to germinate. Half of them turned brown and withered. The other half produced a fair amount of flowers. The flowers were almost exclusively lilac colored with few exceptions. There was no noticeable fragrance.

I’ll get to the winners next time.

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