Sunday work

On Sunday I tried my first… no, they weren’t my first cuttings. I must be trying to erase the failures from my memory. This was a big batch of eighteen cuttings from ‘Madame Abel Chatenay’. It didn’t go real smoothly – as usual. Once a klutz always a klutz. I wanted to use Jungle Growth organic potting soil but only had Miracle Gro, so I ran over to Lowe’s. Surprise! They don’t carry it anymore. I settled for StaGreen which the Lowe’s employee said was the same as Jungle Growth now. NOT!! When I opened the bag, it choked me. It had a strong chemical smell, maybe turpentine which did not dissipate at all. If my cuttings die, I’m sure it will be due to this soil.

I used the clear 9-oz Solo cups, sticking holes in the bottom, but I don’t think the holes were big enough. They held water!! After trying and failing to enlarge the holes (while the cups were filled with soil, water and cuttings) I finally used a Bowie knife. I’m not sure if it helped, but at least I didn’t cut my hand off. I think DH would have had a stroke if he had seen me wielding that knife! I set the tray of cups in the shade under ‘Bow Bells’ next to a micro-sprayer. Such a simple thing, but I managed to get mud all over the front porch and me. So typical. I really do dislike doing something the first time. It never bodes well for me. Simple things never turn out simply for me, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Murphy’s Law, I guess.

Love this nearly white daylily but can't remember its name.

As I was arriving home this afternoon, it was spritzing rain, so I decided to put out the Blood Meal I had bought on Sunday. You see I had learned something about the timing for feeding roses recently from a post on the Antique Roses Forum. I learned that roses take up the most nitrogen during a bloom flush. The consensus was that feeding a quick release nitrogen when the buds first appear was the thing to do. So I sprinkled six pounds of Blood Meal which did all the roses except ‘Mrs. B R Cant’. She just finished her flush. I wonder if the Blood Meal will make some of my Tea roses leafier. I will be totally thrilled if it does. Also, I’m hoping the roses won’t look as exhausted and ratty after the flush. With better nutrition when they need it most there should be an improvement.

'Mary Guthrie'

Another Sunday event was the death of the power supply in my PC. So I’m using my netbook which doesn’t show the greatest color on the screen, so I’m a little unsure of these photos. They were taken at dusk and needed a bit of exposure tweaking. Kind of like flying blind. So I apologize that they’re probably a bit off the mark. Funny thing, silly me thought I could just access the photos on the PC through our home WIFI network, but the PC had to be ON in order for that to work. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?



While I was at Lowe’s on Sunday, I bought two six-packs of red Pentas to replace the three ‘Mulberry Frost’ daylily plants that were at the front of the ‘Le Vesuve’ round bed. I must strongly advise that no one ever buy ‘Mulberry Frost’. It is highly susceptible to rust - at least in my garden. I couldn’t stand it anymore so they’re gone. I understand that sometimes daylilies can outgrow or become resistant to rust, and sometimes the next cold winter can reduce it, but this daylily was a mess. When I first started acquiring them, I knew nothing about rust. Then last year when I started educating myself, I saw this one on a list of “susceptibles”. That explained the nasty-looking leaves. So now they’re gone, and the pentas were planted on Sunday. I chose red for around this pink rose deliberately. Red pentas are very attractive to butterflies, and ‘Le Vesuve’ has nice red flower buds and red new growth so it won’t be such a big clash. I planted them pretty close, so hopefully they’ll fill in beautifully and bloom prolifically.

'Le Vesuve'

The coneflowers are blooming abundantly. I could easily photograph them all day long. Hopefully, you won’t mind looking at them often, because there are definitely more coming.

Special visitors

 

Let's play "What's My line". These two delightful ladies have many things in common but mostly one thing in common. The many things are 200+ roses, and the one thing is the nursery that is comprised of those roses. You might ask Linda Rengarts on the left if she owns a rose nursery. She would answer, no, I do not. You might ask Cydney Wade on the right, "Did you start your own rose nursery from scratch?" And she would say, no, I did not.

Not to be too cute, I'll just cut to the chase. Linda is the one who started her own rose nursery from scratch, and Cyd is the one who now owns the rose nursery. She bought Linda's nursery last December. Linda and Cyd are the former and present proprietors of my famous favorite rose nursery, Rose Petals Nursery currently in Newberry, Florida.

Cyd and Linda wanted to see my garden in person, and I wanted them to take some cuttings from several of my roses, so they rode about an hour south on I-75 from Gainesville to Ocala this hot Sunday afternoon. Cuttings are important to small own-root rose nurseries. They are the seeds of next season's product line. Usually, cuttings are taken from their own bushes, but if there's a rose that they don't have, they have to buy the plant just like the rest of us and wait for it to become mature enough to tolerate cutting off several inches of cane. Or someone like me who grows the wanted rose can donate cuttings that will provide stock and a mother plant for the nursery. Most importantly, this donation puts a rose in commerce for other rosarians to grow and enjoy. The more people who grow a rose the less likely it is to disappear forever. Linda and Cyd turned their love of roses into a business that will perpetuate Old Garden Roses for decades and perhaps even generations.

It is a very exciting thing to me to be a part of perpetuating these roses beyond the reach of my small garden. So it was an easy thing to live for an extra week with crispy deadheads all over my roses. Deadheads that would have gone to the county compost pile or been dropped under the roses will make new plants that one day, hopefully, some of you will plant in your garden. To me that is very cool!

Plus I feel like I have a vested interest in seeing that Cyd's efforts are successful and her nursery lives long and prospers. With shipping costs as they are a Florida own-root OGR nursery is like money in the bank for Florida gardeners, and the quality of her rose plants is second to none. The truth is that I want all small nurseries to live long and prosper, and hopefully, gardeners all across the country will be their frequent customers. However, having a Florida nursery that raises - and proves - roses in Florida's conditions gives Florida gardeners that extra ounce of assurance that a rose will prosper in their garden. That's a good thing, as is keeping Florida dollars in the hands of Floridians during these tough economic times. Gardeners in every state should feel the same way.

Cyd is in the process of relocating the nursery - bush by bush - seven miles down the road to the 100-acre ranch that she happily shares with her husband, Art, and lots of antique horses, antique cattle and untold numbers of chickens that lay delicious eggs. I'm sure she is excitedly busy designing the layout of the new gardens and collecting ideas of all sorts for the parts and pieces that go into making a garden beautiful and customer friendly. She's a sweetheart and dedicated to the task before her. Not least of all is the support and encouragement that Linda gives freely to Cyd even going so far as digging two roses out of my garden that will find a new home in Cyd's garden. They're great ladies who make a great team. I'm so blessed to count them both as friends.