Friday, June 3, 2011

Golden Celebration

If there has been a bright spot in this rainy May of rose floriferousness failures, it has been the way that the English rose 'Golden Celebration' has begun to grow on me.  I've never been a great fan of the English roses, but this year I would be hard pressed to tell you why.  'Heritage' has always been a standout in my front garden, but after 'The Dark Lady' sulked for several years, and 'Mary Rose' dwindled in the shade, and 'Benjamin Britton' failed to wow me with color, I was less than enthusiastic about adding more of that tribe to my garden.  This year, all these and more have perked up to be the stars of my garden, perhaps not coincidentally in a year where May has been as cold and rainy as the British climate they were bred and chosen for.  Could it be that simple?


My 'Golden Celebration' is beginning its third year in my garden and it is quickly becoming the blooming apple of my eye.  It is about three foot tall and wide now, completely free of blackspot to this point, and it blooms like a cup-shaped sunbeam in the midst of the dreary rain-soaked garden. Yes, very double 3-4 inch flowers bend over with each rain, but a little sunshine perks up them back up to face the sky.  That bright golden-yellow color, reminiscent to me of 'Graham Thomas', does not seem to fade from bud open to the fall of those hundreds of notched petals.  One reason for my change in heart about this rose is its fragrance.  I knew 'Golden Celebration' was a fragrant rose, but I had occasion to compare it this week against 'Variegata de Bologna' and 'Madame Hardy'.  To my immense surprise, there was no contest.  'Golden Celebration' now gets the prize for the strongest fragrance in my rose garden, a heady fragrance like  fruity tea.

'Golden Celebration' (AUSgold) is a 1992 introduction by David Austin but it was slow to cross the Atlantic. It is supposed to mature at four feet tall and I expect it to reach that height this year.  This child of 'Charles Austin' and 'Abraham Darby' seems to be cane hardy here in Zone 5b and I saw no dieback at all this past winter.  I've never grown 'Charles Austin', but this specimen of 'Golden Celebration' seems much more vigorous and hardy than 'Abraham Darby', of whom I killed several before I gave it up as a lost cause.  Right now, as 'Golden Celebration' takes its rightful place as a star in my garden, the only drawback I can see to it is that I planted it too close to an own-root start of 'Double Delight', which it threatens to overwhelm soon.  I'll undoubtedly move the 'Double Delight', since I now can't risk losing 'Golden Celebration'.

Addendum 6/4/12;  I feel obligated to add that in July of 2011, and now in June of 2012, Golden Celebration has proven to be somewhat susceptible to blackspot and may not be suitable in a non-spray garden.  The lower leaves have dropped and a fair portion of the foliage is affected.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Rose Season Called Off

wah-wahnt...wah-wahnt..wah-wahnt...We interrupt your regularly scheduled garden blog for this important weather announcement:  There will be no regularly scheduled finale to the garden rose season in the Flint Hills because of inclement weather, botrytis blight, wind, and general calamity.

I declare the drought here officially ended as of last night, but I also entirely give up on the roses this year.  Every time recently that we have had a few days of sun and something approaching a normal blossom was starting to open, either the skies or the north winds opened up their attack on my garden and put the kibosh on every rose that was in the process of developing a bud.

As of noon yesterday, we had received 11.14 inches of rain since January 1st, 2011, and we were still 1.6 inches behind average (although that was better than the 5 inches we were behind at the start of May).   Forecasters predicted a 30% chance of rain for Manhattan during the day and evening of June 1st.  During the day, two small showers came through and my two rain gauges (one near the house and the other in the vegetable garden), registered a respectable 0.4 inches of rain when I emptied them at 6:30 p.m.  Then, about 10:00 p.m., a lightning storm and downpour started that continued through 4:00 a.m.  I woke up several times during the storm, checking to see if we were under a tornado warning and believing we had successive bands of rain moving past.  At 3:00 a.m., I was considering investigating the exact length that comprises a "cubit" in case I had need of it.  Unusually for this area, it was not successive fast-moving bands, but a single tropical storm that formed and sat on us all night long.  The radar picture above, captured courtesy of my new Ipad2, looked almost exactly the same during the whole night.

This morning, my rain gauges both registered 4.7 inches of rain.  Since they are only 5 inch gauges, I don't know if we that is all that fell in the past 12 hours or whether the gauges filled at some point and the additional drops coming in were splashing out more then they added.  So the 5.1+ inches of rain I recorded should put the area out of the drought, at least temporarily.  The yard and beds are sopping wet and my anticipated roses are hanging down limply off their stems.  Such is the life of a rose-nut in the Kansas Flint Hills.  In the next few weeks I'll post a few more rose blogs, but the best pictures will have to wait for the second wave of the remonant roses.  If, and only if, they don't bake in the July sun.

Turning on the news this morning, I almost felt guilty for planning this blog after finding out that Springfield Massachusetts was hit by a tornado last night.   Killer tornados in Massachusetts?  Good grief, what's next?  A tidal wave in the Great Plains?

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Charlie Brown's Daylilies

I think just about everyone is aware of the iconic cultural image in the Peanut's cartoon strip where Charlie Brown cannot resist trying to kick the football held by Lucy, who pulls it away from him every time.  From now on, when you think of Charlie Brown with footballs, think of me with daylilies.

'Lady Betty Fritz'
 I am well aware that most daylilies are some shade of orange, despite what we want them to be.  Years ago, I read and took to heart the excellent summary of daylily colors by Cassandra Danz in Mrs. Greenthumbs, where she translates daylily color terminology for neophytes from "melon," "peach," and "deep red" to "orange", "light orange", and "looks like orange from a few feet away" respectively.  I don't really mind orange daylilies.  And I do believe that the red daylilies are starting to really look red, and there are some excellent purple daylilies out there, even though they do not stand out well in a dark green border in the garden. But, unlike the 200+ roses in my garden and numerous irises that I can identify on sight, there are very few daylilies I can differentiate.  The whites all look alike, the purples look similar, and I have no hope for the apricot-melon-oranges.

Yet, I cannot resist some naive impulse that allows me to believe the fantastically colored pictures on daylily plant tags.  Yesterday, Hemerocallis 'Lady Betty Fritz', pictured at the upper right, bloomed for the first time in my garden..   Although admittedly it is a first bloom on a small plant, it bears little resemblance to the fantastic coloring on the plant tag, as reproduced to the left, nor to pictures one the web.  Nor to the description on the back of the tag; "flowers ivory with a red eye and double-red gold edge above a green throat."  Now, I don't know about you, but I would call the eye "maroon" or "deep purple-rust", not "red."  And the "double red-gold" edge is barely present.  And there is no ivory that I can see.  I purchased this one at a reputable nursery, so I don't think it is merely mislabeled.  And I don't think that I've misplaced the plant;  it is one of only three new daylilies I've planted this year.  The bloom size WAS very large.  But I can only conclude that daylily describers are all just imaginative Lucy's.

I've been taken in again and again, long enough that I suppose I'm beyond hope for learning the lesson.  At least the local annual Hemerocallis Society sale, where I buy most of my daylilies at cut-rate prices, throws the fans on tables labeled "orange", "yellow" and "pink", and so I'm less likely to be disappointed.  I just need to stay away from catalogues and fanciful plant tags.  Perhaps a local Daylilies Anonymous would be helpful.  Anyone else care to join?

Sunday, May 29, 2011

A better KnockOut

All of you know that I pretty much despise the wildly popular 'Knockout' rose, right?  No surprises there for any regular readers.  Well, I'll show you a rose that, if we must have a rose whose primary purpose is to bloom and bloom for landscaping enhancement, has 'Knockout' and its relatives beat to shame.

That rose is 'Champlain', a 1982 Canadian rose of the Explorer series, named to honor the founder of the city of Quebec, and touted everywhere for its continuous flowering habit by everyone who grows it.   In fact, it is the third longest blooming rose of the Canadian releases.  I have two, one in full sun in a long border in the garden proper and a shaded one in my front landscaping near the house that has only a northeast exposure.  The latter also has a tree to its immediate east, so it might see direct sun 4 hours a day in the summer and barely at all in the winter.  Both bloom their heads off, although I have to admit the one in the sun does have a more continuous bloom pattern.

'Champlain' is a healthy rose, free of mildew and almost free of blackspot (I see a little on them in humid August every other year and they lose some lower leaves).  Flowers are bright red (a much better red than vivid pukey off-red 'Knockout'), are 6-7 cm in diameter, and have 30 petals.  There is an occasional white streak to the petals as you can see in the second picture.  'Champlain' is a complex hybrid of a cross between 'R. Kordesii' and 'Max Graff' on one side and a seedling from' Red Dawn' and 'Suzanne' on the other.  It seems to be easy to start from softwood cuttings because that is where my 2nd plant came from.  Hardy to Zone 2, it has never had any dieback here in zone 5.  Canadian climates do have some dieback as noted in Robert Osborne and Beth Pownings Hardy Roses.

In front, part sun 
So how many ways is 'Champlain' better than 'Knockout'?  Let's see, better color, better hardiness in the far northern climes, and likely a more continuous bloom.  I'm actually going to count weeks this year for the 'Double Knockout' and 'Champlain' in my garden to determine the latter once and for all.  'Champlain' has a better shrub form, with thinner canes than the hybrid-tea-like gawky canes of the original 'Knockout'.  But most importantly, both my 'Champlain's have grown to three feet tall and wide and have NEVER been pruned.  Never.  Not a single cut.  Around here, many commercial places trim their 'Knockout' to the ground each year, or at least trim them to keep them within reason because it can get to be a six foot bush when left alone.   'Champlain' seems to reach an "adult" size and then just stop growing.  How cool is that?  Heck, even Martha Stewart approves of it.

In back, full sun
Sadly, although it is listed in Ag Canada's Winter-Hardy Roses as having a little fragrance, I can detect none with my middle-aged male nose.

I point out that single drawback solely in hopes that not all of you will choose to grow this nearly-perfect landscape rose.  If 'Champlain' was grown everywhere by everyone, I'm sure that I wouldn't like it nearly as much.  I'm peculiar that way.


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