Daylily | In the Garden With Jera

Weather and pests: Spring in the south is over. Most days come close to 90 and we had 4 weeks with no rain. Humidity hasn’t yet hit its daily highs and watering has been very necessary. We have moved into daylily and perennial season. The poppies are dried up, the irises are done and the reds and yellows abound. With the dry weather, an increase in pests began. Whiteflies are all over my tomatoes and it’s been difficult to keep up. In addition to bugs, we have had 3 snakes in the garden. 2 we scared off, but the third was in a window box a story up on our deck. That one we netted and put out front.

Work: My work in the garden has been pulling of the spent spring poppies, dead heading, staking tall plants and putting in summer annuals. I have also been weeding crabgrass out of my beds nearly daily.

Purchases: On May 27 we hit up the Growers Outlet. It is a a plant outlet at rock bottom wholesale pricing that is open to the general public. For the most part, it’s the usual plants, but occasionally they have some unique finds. I came home with the following fun finds: miracle horizon hypericum (St. John’s wort with pink berries), dwarf Cavendish banana, prairie smoke geum, agapanthus everwhite, scaevola, Baptista, variegated abutilon, Kent beauty oregano, pink ground phlox and a few things for a friend.

Blooming: it’s lily season and the dahlias are almost in bloom. below are some of the photos from these 3 weeks. I’m almost to the point where I’ll be inundated with tomatoes! Last year a hail storm took them out along with my grapes so I hope I’m lucky this year! I have hundreds of grapes and have bagged up 10 bunches to keep the birds off of them. This year I am trying determinate tomatoes which will finish up in June. I am doing this due to the difficulty in growing tomatoes into mid July due to leaf foot bug damage. Leaf foot bugs are throughout my back yard already, but have yet to find the tomatoes this year as I moved them to my driveway out front on the other side of a 6 ft fence.

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!