Roses | In the Garden With Jera

We are in full swing spring bloom! Currently the work I am doing in the garden is simple maintenance. Weeding, fertilizing, trimming, deadheading, and watering have been the bulk of my to do list. We have a tent/garden party scheduled for May 7 and the goal is to have the garden in its best shape for it. Unfortunately, my irises are about a week ahead and the poppies are a week late, so there will be some bare spots in the landscape. I have been working very hard to keep up with the weeds. In addition, I have been using Scott’s Super Bloom fertilizer in every watering of pots and containers and window boxes to maximize the blooms. I believe that a healthy start assures a better bloom season. Once the containers are about a month old, I will fertilize once or twice a week.

Updates: The bog garden is slowly bouncing back and pitcher plants are forming roots. I still have one flat of winter started seedlings to find a home including scabiosa, salpiglossis, marigold, a six pack of vinca, and a few foxglove. I am still growing cleome, red and white double petunia, pineapple and chocolate mint coleus, zinnias, sunflower and silver falls dichondra.

New: This week a friend gifted me a Fleur Farm Dahlia gift certificate. I had watered her seedlings in her high tunnel a few weekends prior when she was out of town. While not necessary at all as she and I exchange plants often, it was a lovely gesture, I ordered 5 dahlia and am excited to see them in bloom. I ordered Zundert Mystery Fox, Jowey Martina, Arabian Night, Milena Fleur and Crème de Cassis. In addition to the dahlias I also ordered more dwarf zinnia seeds for the front of my summer borders from Swallowtail Seeds. I will start those as soon as they arrive. I love Zahara zinnias for their ability to fill containers, and spill, over the edge of my raised beds, so ordered a couple of those varieties.

All in all, the big work is winding down and the maintenance and enjoyment phase of the season is dialing up. Below are some photos of what bloomed this week:

The week was wet! Temps were in the high 60’s to 70’s and lows in the upper 40’s. We still have 2 nights in the 30’s on the forecast so my seedlings are still in their flats and getting root bound. It’s been increasingly harder by the day to keep them healthy! I spent some of the week looking online for hardy pitcher plants for the bog garden and settled on a set of 5 from an eBay store for about thirty dollars. These will be hardened off as soon as they arrive and will be planted as soon as frost is off the forecast.

The Bermuda grass is greening up and my husband cut it down so the lawn is looking pretty good. Bermuda greens from the bottom so you need to cut back the brown grass on the top to get to a green lawn in the spring. The first spring flowers that I direct sowed are in bloom. Spurred snapdragon, or linaria, are opening!

I took the time to put a little liquid miracle grow on all of my beds this week to give spring a push! My roses were fertilized as well. The frost a few weeks ago damaged the ends of iris leaves and rust and rot set in. I went through the beds to tidy them up and cut off the dead ends and rusty spotted leaves and threw them in the trash. Getting rust out of your environment is helpful so these diseased leaves did not make the compost heap.

I lost nearly all of my peas in the freeze. This week I replanted so peas will be a bit late. I deadheaded in the daffodil bed out front to clean up the look and pulled tulips and hyacinths from the pots that need planting with seedlings to make room. The spent bulbs are replanted in temporary pots so the leaves can die back naturally. This feeds the bulbs. Then they will be dry stored in my garage until September and placed in the refrigerator for 16 weeks and replanted next winter.

I moved my daylily seedlings in grow bags outside 24 hours a day and and planted a new pot up with salpiglossis, petunia and trailing vinca seedlings. They don’t look like much now, but in a few weeks expect an update! I received this pot free to review it and it’s quite colorful!

In spite of the rain, I set my rain bird hose bib fed sprinkler system back up this week. I removed 6 rotating sprinkler heads last fall to avoid freeze damage and didn’t think to label them. I’ve been avoiding setting these up as I did not know which sprinkler went where and they were set up to cover certain angles and areas. Somehow, my first try worked! I doubt all 6 are in their original spots, but where everything is now works to water what I need them too. What luck!