Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 4.17

Cross-posted at SquareState.net

Good morning, and may the madness end!  Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.

While the east coast has sweltered under a heat wave, and the midwest is flooding, here on the Colorado front range we've been cooler than normal — and with wildly fluctuating temperatures.  For example: last Sunday, the high was 73°; on Monday it was 78°.  Tuesday the cool front broke and we got up to 93° — but Wednesday brought the lowest high of the week, at a mere 71°.  Our lows have been hovering in the 40s — not warm enough for tomato blossoms to set.  Hell, my tomato plants are hardly growing; they've been in the ground for a month and are barely knee high.  Ditto with the cucubits and beans.

And the corn — oy!  Barely out of the ground, with a very poor germination rate.  And, of course, this is the year where I don't have a packet of corn seed in reserve, so what I get is... what I get.

WTF?

Looking ahead, though, it appears that we'll be getting more normal, early-summer temperatures over the next week — including fine weather for next Saturday's Garden Blogging Garden Party and Meeting of the Colorado Chocolate Fountain Caucus.  Perhaps the Green Lady really is watching over us.

Over the past several years, I've developed a penchant for outdoor container gardening; while I haven't migrated the veggie patch to Earth Boxes, I do appreciate the flexibility that pots of flowers give me in the outdoor landscape.

Containers are very useful for filling in spaces which are devoid of color.  Sometimes I'll end up with blank spots because an annual, such as dahlias, haven't reached blooming stage yet.  Or I'm in-between the blooming times for perennials.  It's really handy to be able to fill a pot with blooming plants, wait two or three weeks, and have a focal point to fill in the blank.  This pot is sitting in a front yard bed where the iris have already bloomed, but the dahlias, agastache, gladiolus and annual salvia aren't yet blooming.

I've installed hayrack planters on the fence, and under a kitchen window in my "shade corner", filled with begonias and lobelia.  The planters serve three purposes.  First, they give me a nice view out the window when I'm inside the house — otherwise all I'd see is an alley, a parking lot, and the neon signs for a tattoo parlor across Broadway.

Second, because of the redstone pavers in the shade corner, there's little ground space for planting.  So, although the begonias might love it in the ground in that corner, there simple isn't enough ground space to plant begonias, along with the coral bells, bleeding hearts, hostas and ferns that are already there.

Third, the planters give vertical interest.  When sitting in the shady corner, not only can I see the in-ground plantings, but I'm also surrounded by blossoms above eye-level.  In the shade corner I also have a hanging basket of fuchsia to hide the electrical box, and a potted jasmine to add some scent.

This living wreath serves a similar purpose — it fills in a blank space along the western fence which faces the stairs going down from the deck.  Because of the hardscaping, I can't plant in the ground there: there's just a blank wall of naked fence providing zero visual interest.  But, because this is the "entry" to the back yard, it really does need to have something going on there.

This is the first year I've tried the living wreath, and I'm sure I'll getting better at planning the plantings.  This year I planted it with small impatiens and lobelia, and I find it somewhat... lacking.  It's not visually full or varied enough.  Perhaps some coleus would be a good addition (ok; when can I run to the nursery to get some small coleus...)  Next year I think I'll add some potted flowers along the fence, too — at least, if the Mister finishes doing the hardscaping wall there and I have the pile of redstone out of the way.

That's what's happening here.  What's going on in your gardens?