So, let me tell you about my week! I lived it, you can...

[PhoenixHope]

Good News:

See, gardening, re: gardening.

So, I mentioned that toward the end of the last growing season my local road crew helpfully used their heavy equipment to mow one of my hillsides that had shamefully got a bit over-grown. The downside was that in the middle of that over-grown area was a rose bush with my fav purple roses that also got chopped.

IT'S ALIVE!

IT'S ALIVE!

Seriously, it's barely an inch off the ground now but it is putting out leaves which means it's alive! YAY!

[ghost07]

Sometimes, that's how they renew a rose bush that's gotten too woody. At the horse track, where I used to work, they had these gorgeous red roses; they used to cut them to the ground every year and they would come up even more beautiful the next year.

My mother used to do that with some of her roses, too; just not with her climbing blaze...it would take too long for them to climb back to where they were the previous year.

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, my Mother had that done to hers, too.

Yay for the purple rose bush. It's an inspiration for all of us.

[huggle]

I have to add a tiny caveat: some roses get grafted. They shouldn't be cut all the way down as then there's a risk that they might sprout from the root instead of from the grafted stem. In that case you'd get not the nice big blossoms the grafted sort had but some smaller and totally different blossoms from the rose that made the roots.
If your rose was grown from a seed there is no such prob as it is the same sort throughout the whole plant.

[PhoenixHope]

Well, unless the company I ordered from sent me something different from what I ordered neither of my roses should be grafted, which means my pretty purple should come back true to form.

[huggle]

great! =)

I love the strongly scented sorts. My mom makes a delicious rose petal jam and I make rose syrup. This way we have some rose scent in the cupboard all year round

[PhoenixHope]

*sigh*

Well, I was soooo worried about the rose that got chopped that I didn't pay much attention to the other rose until recently when I was outback planting some Petunias. Looks like while the one that got chopped is going to live it seems the one outback is not. Leaves have not returned and while it is a rose bush with thorns I can't get to the base to give a proper scratch test the "branches" at the edge are brittle and easily snapped.

*sigh*

On the other hand, I have most of my flower pots (we're talking big pots in my front "yard" on concrete, because basically my front yard is a big driveway, so it's big pots if I want some color out there) filled with something. However, I can already tell a couple that I really liked are going to be water hogs so they probably won't survive, because it's hard for me to work and keep water hungry plants watered enough. However, the rest are looking okay so far.

And I've got some toms and peppers (the non-hot kind) already in the big garden on the side. I've also got two cherry toms going and I'm trying to start a few more from seed. Of course, it's old seed so I'm not expecting much, though I would like a few more cherry tom plants, because I eat cherries like nobodies business.

So once I get a few more plants (ordered) and later get a few more flower seeds started I'm hoping if not this year for the next I can finally get my gardens all full of flowers and then be more low-care in the years to come.
(For example, I'm trying the pea flower again, which is fun to say when the spelling is not obvious (and I think it's called a sweat pea), because while last time I tried it was all leggy someone told me the leggy thing happens when a plant is getting too much shade, so this time after getting them started I'm gonna put them in a more sunny place than my front porch and then plan for them to end up in a sunny flower bed.)

And as for the rose that doesn't appear to be coming back it's in a spot that is getting overrun by blackberries anyway and since I like eating blackberries (but can't always pick the ones in hard to reach places) more bushes means more berries so I probably won't try to replace that bush.

[RJDiogenes]

Aw, that's too bad about the rose bush. But at least you still have the other one and more room for blackberries. And, who knows, maybe it will revive later in the year or next year.

[PhoenixHope]

Sadly I don't generally have luck with something magically reviving. If it looks dead and brittle I generally find that it is dead and brittle.

Although, as mentioned, to be fair, I couldn't get down to the base of the plant to see if there was still life - it could just be some dead branches, but the fact that there's no green is also telling.
(For the record, and those who care that bush was the pink one - also the climbing rose that was not planted in a good place for climbing since I didn't know until after planting that it was a climbing rose.)

Still with loosing that space to the berries I really don't have a good place for another rose anyway.

[Santaman]

Plants and I don't get along... the ones that should be in the garden all turn into dust and the ones I don't want in the garden live long and prosper...

[PhoenixHope]

*snuggles Santa*

I admit I don't exactly have a green thumb either, but somehow I mostly make do.

[Santaman]

*hugs*

SpaceBall and I cope with the garden, our dream is a 100% concrete solution..

[PhoenixHope]

Yeah, that doesn't always work as well as you'd think, because a crack or two will always happen and it pretty much never fails that you'll get weeds coming up in the cracks.

Hell, I've had a watermelon plant (one of the most productive I've ever had in fact) sprout up from a driveway crack. But then there was also a couple years of purple morning glories over powering my actual flower pots from a crack in the concrete. And last year (after having had an awesomely productive plant the year before) I got a dozen (or more) yellow cherry tom plants coming up from various concrete cracks. And while I like yellow cherries I couldn't help wishing it had been on of the red ones that bred so much though.

PhoenixHope pissing in people's cereal five years in a row. LOL

[RJDiogenes]

I'll be doing some gardening this Spring myself. I got a Kermit the Frog Chia Pet for Christmas.

[PhoenixHope]

LOL

Sadly, I'm not sure there's a universe out there where that would be considered gardening.



What's worse, though is that once upon a time I wanted one.

[RJDiogenes]

It's the closest thing to gardening my universe will ever see. I plan to take pictures to document my progress.

[PhoenixHope]

I better see some updates on this as well.

[huggle]

Sorry about your rose, Hope.
On my terrace, I grow everything in buckets and big containers. It works nicely with some plants while others simply refuse to be grown like this. It takes some experimenting but this year I seem to finally have an unexpected success:
My grandaunt had a beautiful garden with huge old peonies. The garden was just rented, though she had it for 60 years. When the plot was sold to build an administration building on it, my sister and I dug out whatever we could. The two old peonies turned out to be a problem: the root/bulb system was more than 5 feet in diameter. We had expected to have to divide it up into 4 or 5 bits but then found it had to be 12 bits - bad survival chances for either. For 8 years now I have one of the bigger segments in a huge container. It frequently gets buds that blacken and shrivel when they get to the size of a pea. But this year there are 4 buds that have already reached the size of a really big hazelnut and they keep growing. Now I finally get a chance to find out whether I got a part of the lovely white scented one or the pink one without scent =)
It's soo thrilling - this is worse than waiting for Christmas!!

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Wow, it's been recovering for eight years and now it's ready to bloom. That's amazing. You should write a book about it. You can call it My Little Peonie.

I better see some updates on this as well.

I'll begin this weekend.

[huggle]

^peonies are infamous for sulking when you divide them up I read on the internet that after dividing them up it can take 4-7 years for them to recover from the shock. As this one was unusually old and huge, I expected something between 8 and 10 years.
There's still a chance that the buds might shrivel and blacken. It had 2 buds that size in year 2 after the division which did. On the other hand I discovered lots of ants on the buds this morning. That shows there's nectar being prepared in them already. I just gotta get the ants away before they remember that they can bite their way through to the juice as they did with my courgettes, 2 years ago. I hesitate to poison them as long as they do no harm.

[RJDiogenes]

Maybe you can put something easier for them nearby to lure them away.

[huggle]

heehee, my neighbour just did that: he planted a hibiscus right next to my peonies on his side of the terrace. Greenflies love hibiscus juice and ants love greenfly-droppings

[RJDiogenes]

[PhoenixHope]

HeHeHe!

I just have to brag, though honestly I doubt I had anything to do with it. But I was checking my seed starter trays today, because I knew the sweat pea and the Narci plants needed to be put in something a little bigger. Well, the Narci's could've stayed another week or two in the starter tray, but for some reason sweat peas put out this one big long root and the plant will start to lean (and die) if that root doesn't get more room.
(Cosmos are also like that - if you don't move them into something bigger almost right after they start they die real quick.)

And guess what - ALL my old red cherry seeds appear to have started - I planted nine and it looks like I have ten - apparently there was a seed stuck to another seed or something. This is seed that was packaged for 2011 so yeah I wasn't expecting anything really - maybe a plant or two. The yellow cherries on the other hand did about like I expected it looks like only three plants out of fifteen seeds and one of them I'm not sure yet is a tom plant it could be a weed.

Alas, none of the old sunflower seeds have done anything.

Another alas is that it looks like my gooseberry plant is not going to be making a return this year. On the other hand my grape plant already has some tiny little grapes. Hopefully this year I can get to them before the damn deer!

Oh and good on you huggle - I've never tried peonies, because I'm rarely good with lets call them high-maintenance plants.

[huggle]

they're actually very low maintenance. You plant them, water them till they have rooted and then you forget about them. In fall, they get a thick layer of leaves to keep them warm and in spring I remove those leaves that haven't decayed. That's all.

Congrats at your seedling success! I tried a few old seed packets, too, but only the basil germinated. Somewhere I must still have a few seeds for hot peppers. It's high time to start them.

I've seen an absolutely fascinating new breed of Cosmos in a British magazine the other day: the petals are grown together so that the flowers look like tiny translucent bowls. Absolutely beautiful!