I'm lucky to work remote- so all I have to do in terms of commute at the end of my work day is walk downstairs. Even so- even spending most of every evening outdoors, I still have so much to get done. It has been almost a week since we got any sort of measurable rain- so I had to run around and water everything. I do have soaker hoses running in the veggie garden- but those are more like extra support with the expectation there will be some rain. They can keep everything adequately damp in addition to rain- but they can't seem to manage to keep the garden watered if we get no rain at all. Just not enough soaker hose for the area. Allegedly it will rain tomorrow night- but had no choice but to water tonight as everything was looking sad.
Up-potted a lot of rosemary and coreopsis from seed trays to quarts- a bit overdue, but, they will get going fast now that they are out in more sunshine. Shuffled some pansies I forgot about into some of my barrel planters that had some space. I start so much from seed that sometimes I lose track of a few. I thought I had a whole tray of agastache until I saw a pansy flower in it this morning. I had an old expired partial seed packet of pansy and I was really trying to use up my really old stuff this year- so I put a row of pansy in my agastache tray. It was labeled and everything, it just didn't stand out enough. Oh well, good timing, they were all getting ready to bloom in the seed tray, so now they can bloom a bit in my barrel planters and hopefully reseed themselves for next year.
I transplanted some agastache to my rose garden last week and am just so impressed with how quickly it has filled out. It's crazy how it goes from being a stick with leaves and a spindly flower to a real plant out in the ground in the sunshine. This time of year, I start my seeds on my porch so that they get morning sun and are pretty much hardened off for easy transplanting.
I can't believe how big my hollyhocks are this year! I started them from seed last year, they didn't flower and were pretty small when they died back for winter. This year they are just huge. Of course, now that they are flowering, I can see they were mislabeled.. lol What I bought was a single mix and what I got was a whole bunch of fully double reds. I'm assuming they are Chater's Double Red. Thankfully, my colors are so mixed out there it doesn't really matter. It could bloom any color and be fine out there.
I did not correctly mentally picture how big hollyhocks are and now I'm dubiously eyeing my 'i don't even know how many' pots of hollyhock and not certain I can plant it all out. I mean, I'm going to try, but, this is going to require some creativity.. lol I haven't counted recently and I did lose a couple in the last heat wave, but, I had over 100 of the little guys- most in quart size now and ready to go out into the yard. To be fair, last year my germination rate wasn't great on them, so I planted a ton this year and had great germination.
What's weird is, last year I had great germination on lupine and delphinium and this year both of those had terrible germination. I didn't get a single lupine to come up this year from seed. I ended up with 4 delphinium out of a whole tray. Last year, nearly every seed came up. Same seed packet for both of those- so maybe those just don't age well.
Though, maybe it was the seed starting soil. I used three different kinds- the Burpee organic made with coco coir, the Miracle Gro made with coco coir and the Master Garden organic seed starter they sell at Menards. They definitely did not perform the same. Unfortunately, I didn't think to label which was which when I did this. I will add a label for the soil used next time I start seeds though.
Anyhow, I took the day off from work tomorrow to make it to kid's dentist appointment- after that I will garden like crazy. I'll be planting the clearance hydrangeas tomorrow- looked them all up one at a time and they are all smaller ones with the exception of Torch. I spaced the ones I planted last year way too far apart thinking they were going to get a lot bigger. I was buying quickly because they were on clearance online and selling out as quickly as I could put them in my online cart. Anyhow, all the ones I planted are the little guys that get about 36" and I planted them like they were getting 6' across. I've got them arranged where they are going, diagonally between the ones I planted last year. Should look nice. Torch is going right by my porch- I have a spot that got too damp for a Mr. Lincoln rose- window AC drips there. I've had Torch under the drip in the pot for a couple days now and it looks really happy about that situation, so I'll dig out the dead Mr. Lincoln and get Torch in the ground. That poor rose, I rescued it from the trash cart at TSC last year, I offered to buy a few really bad roses for a dollar each and they sold them to me. But, they were literally piled into a cart to go to the trash. I didn't notice it because I wasn't super familiar with borer back then, but that rose had borer all the way to the graft line. It just limped along all summer. This year I sealed all my cut ends with wood glue and my roses look so much better. I've probably still missed a borer or two out there, but, it's not like how I missed them last year. Most of the ones with borer came from TSC- maybe a high concentration of them around there.
It's crazy how many things get borer and how different it looks from one plant to another. I'm in iris borer territory as well- thought I haven't spotted one of those yet. I keep checking- but I'm nervous I'm going to miss it. Last year I had a lot of damage to my raspberries from the raspberry cane borer- this year I knew what to look for and snapped those stinkers off early. The raspberry ones are actually kind of cool looking, they cut the cane in two lines about an inch apart and lay their eggs between. You can spot it because the end of that cane wilts just a bit and then you can easily see the two little lines. The little lines they make also make it easy to snap off- so I just snap that little bit off and put it in the fire pile to burn. If you don't snap it off, they burrow down and the whole cane dies. If you snap it off early, you just lose about 4" on the end- much better.
Oh well, enough about bugs and so on. lol
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