Why I Oughta...

A few days ago, I posted a couple of photos showing how I was using some frost covers to try to extend the dahlia-growing season just a little bit after the first 'hard frost' had arrived in our Zone.   I only have a couple of frost covers, so I wasn't covering *everything* in the garden, which lead to some things suffering from the cold.  The most-prominent plants that took the biggest hit from the frost is the coleus that I've planted as bedding plants.  In front and back.  Below are a few photos showing the 'morning after' - where the frost worked FAST to kill the Sun King coleus in the front yard island bed.   And, the large colony of Inferno Coleus in the backyard, near the patio died back, too: I'll leave this stand for a while and I assume the next time the frost arrives will be permanent for the Winter.  And, this will decline even more without the need to cut-back.  Most of the rest of the perennials weren't affected as significantl...

I walked out to the back and noticed that one of our dahlia plants is in RAPID DECLINE.  I mean...rapid.  It went from (I'm pretty sure) totally healthy what you see in the photo below overnight.  It is wilted with very little rigidity in the plant everywhere.   This happened before in this bed, but the dahlia recovered very quickly.  What I figured out (then) was that the poor soil conditions (this is a ton of clay) along with a period of heavy rain caused the tubers to drown and become overwatered.  Is that what is happening here? Or is it a pest issue like spider mites?   Or, something else.  Like a disease? I'm treating this two ways (right now). First...I dug up some of the soil around the tuber to try to help dry out the clay and let the tuber breath a little bit.  See below: Second, I'm seeing some tiny webbing (and what I think are Spider Mites) near the top of the plant.  So, I've applied a heavy dose of mite-icide to ...

Starting in the Fall of 2022, I have added one type of groundcover every year - Ajuga 'chocolate chip'.  I think it was Plantsman Roy Diblik who first turned me on to the plant (in one of his videos) and I stuck a few plugs into the island bed in between our front stoop and the driveway .  A year later, I was calling these a success as they had grown and filled out some of the space .   By last July, the groundcover was peeking out over the driveway and filling in space all around the Karl Foerster Feather Reed Grasses in the bed.   But, over this past Winter, we had a setback.  There was some serious die-back on the entire bed.  Everything shrunk down and some of the plants didn't seem to come back.  I also lost ALL six of the Island Bed plugs that I planted last year, too .  This wasn't my first Winter of decline for some of the Ajuga.  I've posted this 'Ajuga Hits and Misses' post in Spring of 2024 that talked/showed some of th...

My Disneyland Roses have struggled all season.  Not a lot of blooms.  Yet...tons of LOST foliage.  They look bare.  The past week-or-so, I've tried to baby them with water.  And, I just applied the last feeding of the year - with this systemic granular.    I'm hoping that they'll have a strong Fall showing and get fat-and-happy with the weather cooling off a bit now that August is in the rearview mirror.  I'll do my part - and water them more regularly, but, I don't see a way that they get back to what they were last year - at this time - with BIG bunches of blooms and a happy Floribunda bush .  

Yesterday, I posted a photo of a cut flower arrangement with dahlias, zinnias and Disneyland Roses .  I thought it would be useful to document those plants - as they sit at the end of August.  This is when they're going to (or should) pop-off with blooms.   The Dahlias and Disneyland Roses are two totally different stories.  The Dahlias seemingly are thriving.  The Disneyland Roses?  Dying.  Literally. They've dropped so much foliage.  And have so few blooms.  They look sickly.   The dahlias are full and lush.   Below are a few photos showing the current state of the sideyard - in late August 2024. First, below, is a look at - from right-to-left - a Melina Fleur dahlia, a Disneyland Rose in the middle and on the left...another dahlia.    A bit further to the left are a couple of things that I'm NOT certain of- but I think they're Nicotiana Jasmine and some Zinnias.  Next, below, is the middle Disneyland...

One not-so-bright-spot in the garden this year is the small London Planetree in our parkway.  I planted it in late 2022 and it has maybe 1/5th the foliage that it had the day it went in the ground .  NOT GOOD.  I did NOT give this tree very much water this year, but once I noticed this thing in decline, I've been watering it daily.  Below is a look at the tree - with a lost leader and some TINY leaves.  Will this pull through?  We need a good Fall season for that to happen:

Coming up on two years ago (April 2022), I planted six Green Giant Thujas in two spots .  Three evergreen trees in a row on the southside of the backyard and three on the northside.    Here's a post showing the three on the north side that included transplanting some Lilac shrubs along the fenceline.   By December 2022 - 7ish months later - two of them were in trouble.  Here's a look at how one of them had 'browned out' during the Winter dormancy period .  By the following Spring (May 2023), another one was gone.  Two down, one remaining on the north side .   The three on the southside have survived just fine.  Here's a look at those three last September - 17 months after being planted - and they looked good .  Right now, in Winter they look *different* than they do during their growing season: darker, less shine and a little unhappy.  But, I'm pretty sure those three are going to be fine come Spring. The remaining one on...

Like they do at the Hollywood Awards shows, I should (if I had more time) make a montage video marking the "In Memoriam" of everything that we've planted and died.  I suppose this post - showing four trees that didn't make it through Winter this year - will have to do (for now). First tree lost:  our first Japanese Maple: Tamukeyama .  Too bad.  I'll try to replace this with another Japanese Maple.  The next two trees (if we're calling them that...) are a two of the three Green Giant Thujas planted back by the Lilacs.  One of them remains, but two of them went orange. I yanked one of them out and put it back by the compost pile.  I'll do the same with the others this weekend when I find the time. The last one, that I don't have a photo of (because...I'm pretty sure the dang rabbits gnaw'd it all the way down to the ground) is the Shagbark Hickory.   It, too, is struck out below.  With this update, I am changing some of the stats.  2023 m...

On a recent afternoon, I went to have a look at some of the garden to see how it was navigating this first part of Winter.  We've had plenty of hard frosts, cold nights and even a little snow.  Most everything has gone dormant, so I was mostly (on this trip) focused on having a look at the evergreens.  I went to the back of the garden to see how the three Green Giant Thujas that I planted this Spring were doing and noticed that one of them is doing...not so well.  See below for the photo of this tree (or shrub??) turning light brown:  This one is the middle of the tree in the back - on the northside.  It was planted in late April.   I'm not calling this thing dead (just yet), but it appears that will be the case come Spring.  

Earlier this week, I shared photos (and a video) of the removal of our large, 70-year-old Norway Maple that was situated right in front of our wrap-around front porch.  This tree was an important landscape feature for our home - we site'd the house back purely to SAVE this tree.  But, it had to go.  That removal and subsequent processing into rounds for splitting was phase one of the project.  Phase two is to remove the stump.  A few days after they removed the tree, the team came back with a giant machine to grind the stump.  The drove the machine up front the front and started to grind the stump down.  See below for a look at the start of the stump grinding: Here, below, is a close-up look at how the machine grinds down the stump into shredded wood.  The operator ground down the stump about 24" in total depth. Stump grinder removing a Norway Maple stump The whole process didn't take long - maybe 20 minutes of grinding.  Here, below, is a v...

The day finally arrived.  A day that I have not been looking forward to in the life of our property.  That day is the day that our large, mature Norway Maple tree that was located just outside of our front porch came down.  This tree was a lovely tree.  Lived a good life.  We moved the location of our house foundation specifically so we could try to keep this tree.  But, it still needed to come down. I foretold the removal of this magnificent tree just last month when I posted about the continued decline of the tree .  In mid/late September, we had an early evening storm and lost another large limb.  Dare I say...a 'widow maker' came down.    It wasn't as if we didn't try to save this tree.  In fact, we surely didn't want to remove it.  But, it seemed liked it was necessary as the limbs kept falling and I began to become worried that it would fall on my house.  Or, my neighbor's house. Over the years, we've worked this tre...

After years of fighting to try to keep our large, signature front-yard Norway Maple tree alive, we've made the difficult decision to have it removed.  We tried everything - giving it a growth regulator , feeding it, pruning it.  But, the tree continues to decline.  Every time we experience a storm of any meaning, we lose a limb .   I'm having a few firms come out to give us a price, but within a couple of weeks, this tree will no longer be gracing our front yard.  I'm not quite sure that I've come to grips with the size of the impact the removal will have on our landscape, but I know it will be massive.   My brain already moves to thinking about what to replace it with - and if we can get the replacement in the ground this Fall.  My normal move for tree planting is to find SMALL trees that can handle the transplant, but this location calls for something else - something larger - as an investment.  That way, we can enjoy the tree WHILE we...

As part of my (normal) early-season puttering around the yard and garden, I've been trying to take in all the signs of new growth and early-season life (new shoots, tips) as well as trying to have a look at all the damage that took place over the Winter.  I've posted about all the gnawing that the rabbits (jerks) have done on things like our sedges and Oakleaf Hydrangeas .  But, the cold weather has also done some damage to a few things including part of our Upright Hicks Yew hedge (in training) in the far back of our yard.  Below is a photo showing the fourth-and-fifth Hicks Yew (when facing them from the house, counting from the left).  You can see the orange parts of the larger one that has suffered some cold, Winter damage.  This is a bummer as this was one of the tallest Hicks Yews that we've had grow back there.   There's still plenty of green growth on this one, but I'm troubled by the orange parts.  This is the ONLY one of the 15 back ther...

Day three of the front-yard tree buds in Winter - first with the Saucer Magnolia fuzzy flower buds and then yesterday with the Red Fox Katsura .   Today, is the Chanticleer Pear flowering tree that is in the 'in between two driveways' island and planted pretty close to the Katsura.  This was a replacement tree that was planted in 2018 after our first one died.  This one STRUGGLED.  By October of 2018 (four months after planting), it was in bad shape .  Turns out, it was planted in a 'clay bowl' and the roots were drowning in what is called the ' bathtub effect ' where water had no where to go.   It seemed to continue to decline in 2019 - but by Spring 2020, I was seeing the very FIRST flower buds .  Not everywhere.  But, some flowers.   Then, last Spring - 2021 - we seemed to have a big part of the tree that had died back.  And a bunch of the tree that looked to be back on track - and flowering .    I ended up ...

Yesterday, I shared a couple of photos of the very young Japanese White Pine tree that has a ton of brown and orange needles .  The tree is either in severe decline and will be dead soon.  Or, it is going through a normal process of needle drop to get ready for some new Spring growth.  I have no idea.  I *do* know that the tree was stressed before I planted it and the cones were already present at the top - indicating that (I think) the tree was concerned for its own wellbeing, so it threw out a good crop of cones based on the size of the tree.  In that post, I mentioned that the small (and adjacent) Weeping White Spruce appears to have stabilized after suffering some heavy drought damage this Summer.  It seems like the needle loss has stopped and the remaining sections are green and well-connected.  I shared a mid-Summer update on this tree where you can see the needle loss, but when you compare the photos from September to now , it is clear that even...

Things aren't looking good for the Pinus Parviflora 'Glauca Nana' - the dwarf Japanese White Pine tree that I picked up at Home Depot in mid-Summer after it had lingered in the lot for quite some time .  I was really excited about the tree and hopeful that it would put down some roots and establish itself this Summer.  But, unfortunately, it seems that it is fading.  And fast.  Here's what it looks like right now - in the photo below.  It is brown, orange and certainly NOT green. But, when I inspect the tree closer, I see tips that are *still* green with small needles.  Like the section you see below: And, using the old 'tree health test' of scraping away some bark with a fingernail to see if the limbs are green underneath reveals (at least *some*) sign(s) of life.  See below for a little spec of green that I revealed under the bark: Could this be normal behavior?  I'm pretty SURE it is not normal and this tree is in decline and will not be green ...

I was walking around the front beds and - once again - I'm struck by how I've had not a lot of luck with anything I've planted underneath our large Norway Maple tree that sits right outside of our front porch.  This large tree is in decline - likely due to the construction we had when we built our house in 2016 and 2017.  I've tried to attack *that* problem by having the arborists from Davey apply a growth regulator and a liquid fertilizer last year.  And, I'm hoping that the tree is on a path towards survival.  They'll come back this year to apply a second year of fertilizer - that I'm pretty sure (based on these photos) is working .   This year though, I lost a mature hydrangea - a Vanilla Strawberry (one of four out front) and my Lime Light Hydrangeas suffered some this year - and dropped a lot of their leaves in the middle of the Summer .  Here, below, is a top-down photo showing the dead hydrangea (very bottom, middle) and the proximity to the Nor...

We have had an interesting growing season in terms of precipitation in our zone - USDA growing Zone 5b - in Northern Illinois.  I say 'interesting' because the Illinois State Climatologist has posted over the Summer on their blog and talk about a dry Spring/early Summer followed by a really wet period.  A few callouts from that post:     The first two-thirds of June was very dry across Illinois (Figure 5). In fact, the period between June 1 and 20 was the sixth and seventh driest on record in the northwest and northeast Illinois climate divisions, respectively. But... Due to the very wet last 7 to 10 days of the month, June ended wetter than average in all but the northwest and southwest climate divisions, and it was the sixth wettest on record in the east-central division. That 'really wet' period was great.  But, it was followed by another very dry period.  If you look at the US Drought Monitor from late August , you can see that our county (DuPage ...

I bought a bunch of All Gold Japanese Forest Grasses - Hakonechloa macra 'All Gold' last Fall and then bought a few more this Spring - both times at the Morton Arboretum plant sale.   I planted six in the back and then after extending my beds dug many of them up and transplanted some to new spots .    After a Spring drought and a tough Summer, below is what this area looks like now.  The front row has six (photo only shows five) and back row now has just two.  Here, below, is a similar shot showing all nine back in May .  Green circles are the grasses.  I transplanted the back three closer it seems. The one that is dead?  (or in severe decline). The back row, furthest to the left.   See below - the red circle shows the placement.  What's the grass look like in that circle?  This - below.  Just one tiny shoot.  I'll baby it, but I think this thing is gone. I have another one of these out front that hasn't really s...