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Cosmos the Flower not the drink

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cosmo

Cosmos are one of the easiest annual flowers to grow.

Just scuff some dirt over a seed in late May, water regularly and by the end of June or early July you have a 2 foot plant that is beginning to bloom.

I’ve found that Cosmos tend to grow about 3 to 4 feet tall by up to 3 feet wide in my garden. They usually bloom for me until the end of September or early October in my Zone 6 garden.

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Neglect

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I’ve been off work since the beginning of December due to a Crohn’s flare. I thought that since I was home I’d be able to putter in the garden and that it would look just lovely this year. However, I’m still not feeling all that well and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been in my garden anywhere near as much as I’d like to be.

I purchased a number of annual flowers to plant in the garden at oh, the beginning of May. These plants are to fill some baskets – hanging and otherwise, containers and a few are to fill some empty spaces in my flower bed boarders. I purchased well over 300 plants! Just little ones, you know the ones that come in containers of four? Yep …. 300+ in total.

I managed to plant 9 hanging baskets, and put some marigolds around the border of our boulevard garden bed but that’s it. I still have many containers of plants to be planted.

My garden also needs some tidying. The roses are going wild since they are so much bigger this year due to our mild winter. I have to get out there and put some stakes in the ground and tie those unruly plants so they look tidier and straighter. I also have some red cedar mulch that I want to put down on the beds.

I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me and I hope to get most of it done this week before it starts to get too hot.

Wish me luck!

Garden evolution part II

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An excerpt from my Gardenweb members page from the year 2002. This passage details how we landscaped the backyard.:

” Well, it’s spring 2002 and we’ve been working on landscaping our front and backyard gardens since early April. We widened and added several garden beds to the gardens. We decided to create raised beds- which unfortunately involved moving and replanting many of the 400 or so spring bulbs that I planted last November! LOL Most appear to have survived the move.

In April we purchased 272 easy-wall garden stones. We chose the red/orange colour which really seems to be a pinkish colour. After planning out the layout of the garden beds we dug out trenches where the easy-wall stones were to be placed and filled in the trenches with screening to provide a solid well draining surface for the stones to sit on. Then we began the creation of our two layered walls. We decided to have our raised garden beds run along the edges of our very small backyard (approx 100 feet long by 17 feet wide). The beds along the long sides are three feet deep, and the bed along the back of the garden is 4 feet deep.

We put in a patio that is approx 10 feet X 10 feet and laid it with red/savanah cobblestone patio stones (4 placed together form a large circle pattern). Along the side are of the patio we have a two foot wide flower bed, and at the side of the patio that borders on the rest of the backyard we built a long oval shaped 3 foot wide flower bed. The flower beds that border the patio will contain plants that grow to 3 or 4 feet in height. This will hopefully create a sort of garden room that gives us some privacy from our neighbours yet allows us to enjoy the rest of the garden while sitting at our patio table.

I purchased several perennial plants from Botanus.com (60 plants or so) and spent March to April growing more perennials, annuals and veggie seedlings indoors. It’s been a cool spring so some of my seedling planting has been delayed. However it’s been warming up nicely in the past week (May 27 to 31, 2002) so I hope to get the rest of my seedlings planted this weekend.

My garden will be a little bit unconventional. I’m planting several wild flowers, roses, and heirloom plants, but I’m mixing them with vegetables in several areas. It’s my hope that the veggies and their colours compliment the garden and don’t look too out of place mixed amongst the flowers and herbs. I really didn’t want to have a separate section of the garden just for the veggies as I felt that would break up the overall look I’m trying to achieve. If it doesn’t work perhaps I’ll go more traditional next year. ”

I’ve planted many more plants since the garden was started. Please see my “What’s Growing” page to see a list of the many many plants that I grow. It’s been a fun journey and along the way I’ve discovered that I do indeed have a very green thumb.

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