As the Garden Grows

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Thin leafed poor blooming azaleas?

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How did your Azaleas, and Rhododendrons do this year? Did they bloom well? Is the foliage lush and full?

If you azaleas didn’t seem to do as well this year as they have in the past, or if the leaf coverage is rather thin you might want to be proactive and take some measure to help them get healthy so they’ll bloom well next season.

Apply azalea fertilizer in the spring. You might want to give your plants one light dose before they begin to bloom, perhaps just as they come out of dormancy, and another dose shortly after they’ve finished blooming. Fertilizing will encourage better growth and the plant should get fuller looking.

Lightly pruning blooming branches and bringing the flowers indoors or lightly prune immediately after the blooming season ends.

You’ll be cutting off some of the new growth, but when pruning takes place near the beginning of the season it actually encourages new growth. By pruning, fertilizing and watering regularly throughout the season your azaleas should be stronger the following year.

You might even want to thin some of the older branches after the blooms fade in order to shape the tree for the following year. It make take a few years to prune your azalea into a nice shape that shows off it’s fullness as you do not want to prune too much off at once.






What’s prettier than a red tulip?

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Wordless Wednesday

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A closeup of a gorgeous red tulip that was growing in my front boulevard garden bed.

Only a few tulips came up in that area, one at a time. The first tulip was the first tulip of the season in my garden, but just as it opened someone came along and picked it. Luckily I haven’t noticed that anyone has picked any of my other flowers.

There’s still a few tulips blooming but we’re starting into some hot weather so I’m sure they’ll be gone in a day or so.

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I’m neglecting my garden

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The last time I was in the garden doing any work was more than a week ago. I tidied up the front garden beds and really meant to get to the backyard to finish the half that I had left to trim, prune and fix up, but I just haven’t got back there to do it.

Last weekend, not this one, last weekend we even went to a garden center and I bought some Tomato plants, cucumbers and a lot of other veggies as well as a few annuals to plant. Have I do anything with them other than water them three times? Nope!

I’ve just not been feeling well enough to get out there and get the work done.

It’s a shame really. The plants are surviving without me, but I know if I got out there and trimmed the dead wood off the rose, and pruned them into shape it would help stimulate them and make then grow a whole lot more. Also … I’d rather work with them now to shape them before they grow too much as it will be harder job and uh … more dangerous to my skin as they get bigger and fuller.

since I have more than 60 roses it’s quite interesting to take a look at my hands and arms after I’ve been working with them. I wear gloves but the thorns sometimes punch right through the gloves. I’ll come in after an hour or two of pruning and I’ll have scratches from the roses all the way up to my shoulders, or well … pretty close!

Is gardening a dangerous activity in your yard too?

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