Why I Oughta...

Since our first (and only) visit to Luxembourg Gardens in Paris a few Summers back, I've planted this large(r) corner container with the same color combination that we first saw there and have used (mostly) the same trio of plants:  Red Petunias.  Yellow Marigolds.  Purple Salvia.   Last year, I used the same red petunias.  But, used yellow Zinnias and a perennial, more woody Salvia.  Here's a look at a different container that I planted with the remnants of the wooden corner box.   This year, I used this dark purple Vista Salvia and a yellow Marigold and even tucked in an Elephant Ear bulb into the corner.  Thus far, the elephant ear hasn't put up any growth but, it might lend a nice tropical vibe to the corner of this container box.   You will also note that in the photo above, the container is still naked lumber - and hasn't been stained just yet.  That's #4 on my 2021 to-do list that hasn't been done just yet. 

We had 15 steaming yards of mulch delivered in May - and at the time - I knew I needed more, but the truck only held 15 yards.  Here, below, is a photo showing off the next eight yards delivered on the driveway.  Taking me to 23 total yards for the front and backyard.  This was delivered in the beginning of June, but I'm posting this at the end of June.  Turns out, I'm a few yards short of what I really needed and should have bought ten to twelve yards instead of eight.  I laid it on VERY thick in many spots - in an attempt to make up for some of the deficiency last year. 23 total yards - for this year - wasn't enough. 

 Back at the end of April, I was sitting at one of the kid's softball practices at a local Downers Grove park when I found these huge seed pods sitting on the ground.  A quick search showed me they are from Kentucky Coffee Tree seed pods.  How neat.  I posted a few times last year about how I found a few of these in our yard (thanks to an Arborist) and learned how they are/were native trees in Illinois .  So, I grabbed a few of these seed pods and brought them home.  A few days later, I cracked them open and harvested the seeds.  Here, below, is a pod cracked in half: And, here, below, is a look at how many seeds I was able to get out of the pods: A look online told me that I could get these seeds to germinate if I soaked them overnight and yanked out any that floated.  I had a few that floated, but most of them stayed at the bottom.   In the photo below, you can see  Soaked at end of April: I took those seeds that didn't float and planted them in a soil mix on the first of May

Last year, I bought a single Waterslide hosta at the Morton Arboretum Fall Plant sale and immediately had regrets of not buying more.  It is a pretty green/silver color and has strong ruffled leaves. I planted it around the flowering Cherry tree last Fall and it came back this Spring .   When I went to the Spring plant sale, it was sold out, but that just meant that I had to hunt for it.  On a trip to Home Depot one night, I found two of them and put them in my cart quickly. Here, below, are the pair of ruffled, Waterslide hostas laid out where I planned on planting them - in a sort of linear drift adjacent to the sedges.   Once planted, you can see the difference in the size of the one from last year vs. this year's version with the oldest one on the top right: And, here's another look - below - showing the three Waterslide hostas.

Just yesterday, I shared a photo showing a six-week update on some bare root hostas that we picked up at Costco this Spring.  On that same shopping trip, we bought some bare root Astilbe plants - these Gloria Purpurea purple varieties that I planted underneath the larger Chanticleer Pear Tree in our backyard.   I arranged them around the trunk of the tree and hoped for the best.   Here, below, is how they look now - with (by my count) four bare root plantings up with green leaves and the two on the right side showing off their first flowers.  The package said there were six, but I'm not sure if I planted them in five groups or six.  I believe there should be one - that hasn't come up - to the left of the tree trunk. Seeing them packed in with a hosta in front and a hosta in back makes me realize that there is too much going on in this little area and I'm thinking that I need to remove both of those hostas and transplant them somewhere else to allow for these Astilbes to b

Back at the end of April, I planted eight (or, so I said in that post) bareroot Bressingham Blue hostas that Nat picked up from Costco. I planted them on the border of the newly created curved bed on the north side of the backyard.  At the time, I wasn't sure what the success rate would be for these bare root hosts, but with a little bit of time behind us now, it seems like the first few months have yielded seven hostas that have come up.  One of them - the second from the left along the border - is SUPER tiny...just barely above the ground.  But, it *is* indeed there.  The other ones have popped out of the ground a little bit and are small, like 4-5" plants.  You can see the seven hostas (well...six plus one you can't really see in the photo) below: The reason that I'm questioning the success rate (it might be 100%) is that I can't find the root structure of the last one that would likely be to the right of these.  It just isn't there.   I'm going to ke

Like I've done in year's past, I decided to use Jobe's tree spike fertilizer in and around some of our trees in the yard.  These were (surprisingly) hard to find this year - and I ended up buying them online at Home Depot . What struck me was the pretty BIG difference in the quantity of the package that Jobe's has brought to market.   Take a look at the photo in this post showing that they had boxes of 15 spikes last year (2020).  The, flip back here and look at the pile of spikes I bought this season below.  The boxes had just 9 spikes in each box.  I bought four packs of 9 - 36 total spikes for deciduous trees.  And one box of 15 evergreen spikes (below): I used the evergreen spikes around the new Falsecypress tree , the Weeping White Spruce and the hedge of Hicks Yews - where I wasn't able to put down spikes for every shrub.   Same thing on the decidious spikes - even with 36 spikes, I ended up short of feeding all of my planted trees around the yard, but tried