As the Garden Grows

What's blooming today?


You are here: Home / Archives for Bulbs

I’ll have to replace my Oriental Lilies

by

Join Green Thumb Sunday
Join

orientallily1

Our Oriental lilies didn’t come up this year. Well, there might have been a tiny sprout or two but they didn’t grow. Of course we didn’t winterize our garden last fall. We are in zone 5b and it was a mild winter so I would have thought that the lily bulbs would have been ok, but something happened.

We had our Oriental Lilies for about five years and this was the first year that they didn’t bloom or grow. Does anyone know if oriental lilies only live for a certain length of time?

Do you grow Oriental Lilies? Their scent is heavenly and as you can see from this photo they are absolutely gorgeous.

Well if I’m going to replace them and perhaps purchase other spring and early summer bulbs for the garden now is the time. Home stores and nurseries should be selling bulbs now. Of course, I could always wait and order them from one of the many nursery catalogs that I get through the late autumn and early winter months.

Have you purchased tulip, daffodil, lilies or any other type of bulb for your garden yet?

Green Thumb Sunday News:

I just wanted to add a little shout out here for MsGreen “Thumb” Jean. Jean was kind enough to help out by going through our long list of GTS bloggers. She made a list for me of all the blogs that either hadn’t posted anything at all for months or hadn’t made a Green Thumb post for two+ months. I just finished going through that list and it was correct so those blogs have been removed and the bloggers notified.

If you notice that a listed blog hasn’t posted a GTS post for at least two months I’d love it if you’d let me know.

The preference, of course, is that everyone make a GTS post every week, but I know life gets in the way sometimes. Therefore I’d like to say that GTS members should be making GTS posts at least once every two weeks, once a month at the bare minimum (that’s iffy). Stretches of longer than a month are not good and those bloggers will risk being removed from the list for non participation.

Thanks!

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.






If you want to see my garden here’s a sneak peek

by

Warning! My garden is very small. It’s jam packed with plants, but it’s small.

Here’s a view of the garden. I took this photo while standing with my back against the edge of the house. In other words I took it from near the base of the back stairs.

IMG_1147

As you can see I utilized every space available!

To the immediate right there’s a small storage area. Basically it’s a large grey wooden box that’s attached to the stairs. We keep our garbage containers in it. On top of that area I have several balcony planters where I grow everything from lettuce to tomatoes. I’ve also got my Jasmine or Camellia or whatever it is (see last post) in that area, as well as a Christmas cactus, ornamental pepper and a passion flower.

Immediately in front of the garbage storage area and our enclosed back porch is our small patio area. You can only see a portion of this area in the photo. We have a nice patio table that takes up most of the patio space. We’ve also got raised flower beds surrounding the patio. You can’t really see the central flower bed well in this photo but it’s behind the table.

So the patio table is surrounded by lovely plants. This gives the area the feel of being a separate garden room. Yes, I’m growing some tomatoes in pots on the patio. I’ve also got containers with cucumbers, green beans and tiny tom or cherry tomatoes growing on the other side of the table.

The rest of the garden is a mass of roses, lavender, balloon flowers, brown eyed susans, spring bulbs, hostas, lilies, daylilies and at least a hundred other types of perennial and annual plants.

Our neighbors house is behind ours. He actually lives on the adjoining street so his driveway is at the end of our garden. We also have very close neighbors on either side and can in fact see at least four of our neighbors backyards from our garden. I suppose that’s why I’ve tried to grow plants that are 3+ feet tall along the edges of the garden. It creates the illusion of privacy even if our yard is not the least bit private.

Oh yes I said the garden was small. It measures about 17 feet wide by 30 to 35 feet in length from the back of the house.

There. So now when I talk about my backyard garden you’ll have a good idea of what I’m talking about.

BTW if you click on any of my photos it will take you to my flickr account where you can click on the words “all sizes” above the photo to see a larger image if you want to see the photo in greater detail.

Rows and Rows of Liatris flowers

by

Grab the Scavenger Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Join the blogroll. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Rows

Liatris

When you take a close look at many flowers or leaves you can see that there’s often a pattern to how it’s been formed.

I mean, take this Liatris stalk. When it’s in full bloom it just looks like a puffy floral stalk in the garden, but when you look a little more closely you’ll notice that the stalk is composed of many flower buds in tight rows. Each stalk must have at least 50 flowers on it.

I can’t remember if this Liatris was about to bloom or if it’s blooms were fading when I took this photo, I believe it was finishing up it’s bloom.

I have several clumps of Liatris throughout the garden. I plant five to 15 bulbs or corms (I can’t remember which they are at the moment) in a circular pattern so that when the individual plants grow they form a natural looking clump.

I’ve only been growing Liatris (Gay Feather) for a few years and I haven’t yet noticed if any of the bulbs have naturalized to produce more plants. Does anyone know if they naturalize?

Meta