Plant Sale, 12 days and counting!

(Daylily 'Laura Harwood', a dark beauty that blooms in August which is late even for a daylily. How nice to have a perennial that blooms during pool season when so many others have finished and are browning out due to summer heat.)

Well, here I am again, hopefully bringing lots of information about our up-coming plant sale.

After yesterday's post I realized that I forgot the most important thing. Where is the sale???

The sale is at my house, just go to google maps and type in 259 Beverly Road, Huntington Sta. NY 11746 and it will give you directions. We live on the part of Beverly Road that runs south of Jericho Turnpike, right before it intersects with Fox Hollow Road and Old Country Road.

While folding the laundry last night I came up with some more possible questions so I'll post those until I hear from some of you.

This sounds like a good cause, how can I help? You can help by spreading the word! Maybe you're reading this blog but don't live on Long Island. Well, send an e-mail out to some friends who do live here, I think just about everybody in the world knows somebody on Long Island :-)

What's your goal? Two years ago we brought in $2,000. The students who worked a half day shift earned $50 towards band camp. A few worked a full day shift and earned just over $100. My goal for 2007 is to blow those numbers out of the water!

(Euphorbia polychroma (bottom left corner) is a favorite here every year and I think I'd better pot up some more!)

How do your plants compare with those at local nurseries? The plants here are at least as good as what you'd get at one of the major home improvement chains and the selection is better. Our prices run from fair to bargain basement. Many perennials such as Rudbeckia (Black eyed susans), Echinacea (Purple cone flowers), Liatris, Phlox 'David', Phlox 'Delta Snow' and Coreopsis 'Zagreb' will be $4 for a one gallon pot. There are also lots of pots of Hakonachloa (Hakone grass) for $4 and that's better than wholesale prices!

(In this photo you can see how lovely Hakone Grass (top left corner) combines with just about any Hosta (bottom left corner) to fill a shady spot in the garden.)

Some plants are extremely limited. There are only three pots of Pulmonaria angustifolia 'Azura' and I expect them to disappear almost immediately. Yesterday I began digging the Polygonatum. We'll have the dwarf humile variety and the variegated Polygonatum odoratum variegatum for sale.
(Pulmonaria angustifolia 'Azurea' has heavenly blue flowers and non-typical lungwort foliage. No spots! A big bonus is this plant grows like the dickens.)


Only three daylily varieties have been dug so far but there's 20 more on the "to-do" list. With over 400 daylilies here you can tell that I'm just crazy about them.


(Daylily 'Chorus Line' is a beauty, loved by gardeners all over the world shouldn't you have a piece in your garden too?)

If you're new to blogging, they are kind of like an on-line diary. For more information on the plant sale you have to read yesterday's post which comes after this one.

Off to dig!
Melanie

Plant Sale May 12, 2007

Hooray! It's Plant Sale Time!

Please bear with me, the next two weeks of posts will be dedicated to our Plant Sale.

What kind of plant sale is it? Why, it's a perennial plant sale :-) and this is our 4th year now. All the plants have been grown in my garden here in South Huntington, on Long Island, zone 6b or have been donated from other gardens in this town.

ALL the profits from this sale will be donated to the participating students of the Walt Whitman High School Marching Band. The money will be held in a special account in each child's name to help pay for band camp. When we say ALL profits, we mean ALL, only the costs of holding this sale (potting soil and any advertising) will be taken from the total intake.

How do they participate? They eat donuts in our breezeway. Well, ok, they really help our customers put the plants in plastic bags, load up the wagons and bring them out to their cars. But there's lots of donut and bagel eating too!



When is the sale? Traditionally it's been held on Mother's Day weekend and this year will be the same. Saturday May 12, 2007 is the date. We open at 10:00 am and close at 3:00 pm (unless we sell out before that time and that has happened in the past).

What kind of plants are for sale? Hybrid Daylilies galore, Hosta (this is the first year we will also offer named Hosta varieties), Phlox, Iris, Astilbe, and so much more! Stay tuned, every day we'll add a new post and hopefully lots of pictures and growing information.

Hopefully we'll get some local folks to visit this site. This afternoon I put a sign out on the front lawn with the address. If you know of somebody on Long Island who would be interested, tell them about us!

Questions? Please post lots and lots of questions, I'd love to answer them for you. If you are having problems posting in the comment section, send me an e-mail at melaniev@optonline.net and I'll post them here for you.

Almost 300 pots already potted up with 25 different types of perennials so far! By next week you won't be able to stand on our front stoop or walkway!


Thinking Green,
Melanie

April Showers

April showers bring May flowers...

Well, it's been pouring all morning. Thunder-storming torrential rains!

This first photo was taken two days ago at my friend Gianna's house. She is so incredibly talented and I just love her muscari pond with her faux swan swimming along.

The garden sure needs this rain so I'm not complaining.

Luckily I took a photo the other day of my double blood root in bloom. They are so fleeting but oh so lovely too. The foliage is also divine so they are well worth growing for that alone.

I wish this shot was a bit clearer but my rinky-dink camera just isn't up to it. These bloodroots have been in the garden for a number of years thanks to George Rasmussen. They've been horribly slow to increase but are not in a good spot at all. Last year I took a single division and put it in the back shade bed where the soil is much better and the sprinklers deliver lots of water. Walking Calie in the rain just an hour ago I noticed that the single division is now 4 or 5 and will be blooming on our next sunny day.

Hooray! Hopefully I've found the right spot for these beauties and I'll have some to share in the near future.

Thinking Green,
Melanie

Dedicated to Virginia Tech

Dedicated to the students, faculty, staff and families of all at Virginia Tech

Garden Tip of the day

Garden Tip of the Day

Yesterday I put together a list of garden tips for a program I did at Temple Beth-El in Huntington NY

Here's tip # 1

Amend your soil!
Would you feed your children or pets only bread and water? Your plants want extra nutrients too. Help them by amending your soil with composted manure and fertilizers.

Get rid of that tired old potting soil in those containers before potting them up this year. You don't have to throw that soil away, I just add it to my compost heap.

Instead of buying one of the pre-mixed potting soils I like to make my own. So many of the soils on the market are extremely light and once they dry out they are like clay. If there's a great price on potting soil I will buy it but it's really simple to make your own.

I buy compost or top soil, mix in peat moss, vermiculite and a slow release fertilizer. Then again, I use hundreds of pounds of potting soil so this works for me. If you are using smaller quantities, I'd still advise mixing some compost in with your pre-mixed potting soil just to add some "oomph" to the mix and some weight to the pot.

Time to split!

Hooray! Yesterday I finally got to dig in the dirt!!!

I've been growing Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) in my garden for many years.
After moving here 11 years ago, I bought a few in boxes from local garden centers in the early spring, planted them in the ground and didn't give them much thought after that. For some reason, I was under the impression that they were finicky to move, I guess I didn't think that out too carefully. If they were finicky, they sure wouldn't have survived being packaged in those little cardboard boxes and loaded on the shelves at the stores.

One bleeding heart had been planted in my driveway, lots of sun, lots of water and lots of composted horse manure. That plant grew to epic proportions! It was just amazing in the spring, more than 6 feet across (2 meters) during peak bloom. The one problem with a bleeding heart of that size is that by mid summer the foliage disappears leaving you with a big hole in that same spot.

Last year I decided to bite the bullet and divide this monster. I dug it up, didn't know what to do with all those carrot-like roots so I snapped them off. I chopped up the pieces with my garden knife until I had pieces that fit into pots and potted them up. Finally, the pots were put in the shade so the plants wouldn't go into total shock. A few weeks later every single pot was full of lush blooming bleeding hearts. I was thrilled!

In the past I had only dug young bleeding heart seedlings. Yes, bleeding hearts will self sow if you leave the seed pods alone. Nobody had told me this and I was so happy the first time I found those distinctive little seedlings.



Both red and white varieties of Dicentra grow here. The red seems to seed more easily but maybe that's because it was the clump in the most sun. I've only found 3 seedlings so far near the white bleeding heart. They've been moved around the garden over the past few years so hopefully more will volunteer to grow here.

Every spring I hold a one day plant sale and invariably people ask if I have any of the white Dicentra for sale. This year I decided to divide up that big clump so I could share it with a few folks.

The first photo shows a close up of the root system on the Dicentra. The second photo shows the emerging foliage on a red Dicentra that seeded next to a clump of daylilies. The third photo shows the foliage of the white Dicentra (the two small pieces I left after removing the large clump). As you can see, it's easy to tell what color the plants are going to be.

Since I still had a wheel barrow half filled with potting soil, I decided to bite the bullet and also try my hand at dividing up the Euphorbia polychroma (Cushion spurge). If you look through my post titles, you'll see that I did a feature on this fantastic perennial.



The photo here is not too exciting, as you can see, I tried to get this divided up before it puts on any growth. That seemed to be successful with the bleeding hearts so I wanted to use the same method.

This last photo shows the clump of Euphorbia on the edge of my work table. The roots were even easier to work with than the Dicentra. So far the plants all look fine in their pots, one reason to be thankful for our cold rainy day.

Hopefully tomorrow I can attempt another perennial and share that here too.

Gotta love that mud!

Stay Tuned!

The past two weeks has been spent traveling. First was four lovely days in Niagara Falls, Canada and then a wonderful week in Delray Beach, Florida.

The above photo of a desert rose (Adenium multiflorum) was taken at the National display gardens for the Orchid Society in Delray Beach.

Stay tuned for lots of garden posts coming up, unfortunately I hurt my back on Monday afternoon and sitting in the computer chair is quite painful so I have to limit my time here.

Yesterday I took photos while dividing Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) and will share those later today or tomorrow.