Growing Your Own

Connie, of Hartwood Roses, recently published a blog about growing roses from seed, illustrating a particularly beautiful soft yellow rose seedling that she grew and continues to grow.  An open-pollinated seedling from a neighbor's rose hips, she's so impressed by its disease resistant foliage and non-fading color that she is planning to evaluate it for commercial introduction by her nursery.

In honor and imitation of Connie's post, I'll show you a rose that I grew from seed several years ago and continue to grow.  This semi-double pink rose, from an open-pollinated hip of Carefree Beauty, keeps a place in my garden because of the delicate and perfect pink shadings of the bloom.  It grows about 3 feet tall, not as vigorously as Carefree Beauty, but it does retain that blackspot-free foliage of its mother.  This rose is remonant, repeating sparsely about 3 times a year, moderately scented, and seems to be fully hardy in Zone 5B without protection.  I'm not fooling myself that it is worthy of commercial introduction, but at the same time, I also can't scrub it out of my garden.  That delicate shell-pink is just too stunning to wipe from the earth now. 

I don't think there's a rose-grower out there who hasn't tried, once or twice or three times, to grow a new rose of their own from the hips that proliferate throughout their gardens.  I've obviously fallen into the trap myself and, inspired by Connie, I intend to again.  The biggest issue for me has been the transition from chilling the rose hips to starting them indoors in the winter.  I know about stratifying the seed, as Connie details in another blog, but after that I have a poor germination rate and an even poorer rate of keeping them alive indoors until springtime. 

But, I have a long-standing desire to get some seedlings out of 'Rugelda', a yellow-red Rugosa that I worship, and maybe some of the other Buck roses such as 'Prairie Harvest'.   If the bumblebees do their job, somewhere out there might be the genes of a buttery-yellow rose of my very own.

Garden Grumblings (October)

Friends, we're going to try something a bit different this month with what I formerly called "Thirteenth Tribulations". Thanks to "Cathy and Steve" and to others who emailed me suggestions, I'm going to try keeping the linky thing open for an entire month at a time. 

I 've renamed it "Garden Grumblings" (by the month), and after it is posted here as a linky blog on the first day of each month, I'll put a semi-permanent link to it in the sidebar at the right, just above the search box, so you can easily find it and either post to it yourself throughout the month, or find it to check back occasionally to see other postings.  I'm hoping, of course, that as you post your miseries, mishaps, and mistakes in your own blogs, you'll remember to link them centrally here all month long for the benefit of others to learn from.

Why "Garden Grumblings"?  Well, you know how ProfessorRoush likes alliteration.  Keeping "Tribulations" as part of the name was just too hard.  I briefly considered "Garden Grievances", but that seemed a little too formal and snarky, and "Garden Groans" had that high-pitched constant complaining feel to it.  "Garden Grumbles" was my first choice, but there is actually a Wordpress.com blog named exactly that.  "Garden Grumblings" has a nice, quietly earthy, gardener feel to it and conveys the idea, don't you think?

We're all waiting to sob with you over your landscape design mistakes, your plant deaths, your battles with deer, or your horticultural Armageddons.  The motto of Garden Grumblings is "We may not garden together, but we can commiserate together."  So please link away for this month below!  And spread the word!

Perfectly Placed Pyracantha

I don't know how most gardeners deal with "Firethorn" or Pyracantha, but over the years, I've found it a somewhat difficult plant to place.  It's a great shrub for xeriscaped landscapes in Kansas, and semi-evergreen to boot, but most cultivars are enormous when mature. Even the most refined forms get pretty large and can overwhelm a border.  The form most often recommended to gardeners, of course, is Pyracantha coccinea 'Lowboy', a specimen that only grows about 3 foot tall.  Be forewarned, however, this cultivar still spreads like its brethren, however, often to 6-9 feet in diameter.  My 6 year old specimen is currently about 4 feet tall by 6 feet wide and still spreading.

Pyracantha is best known to gardeners for the really nice Fall display of bright orange berries as shown in closeup to the right, but this is a good multi-seasonal plant.  It is said that the berries attract birds and provide food in the Winter, but they seem to last on the bush till late Winter, so it seems likely that the birds consume it only in desperation.  In Spring, the shrub bears small white flowers that are enticing to honey bees, and it keeps the leathery, dark green foliage well through the driest of Summers (like this one), often turning a bit burgundy with late Fall and Winter.   Most sources list it has hardy to USDA Zone 6, but I've never seen damage to my Zone 5B plants. There are times in early Spring when I think it looks a bit ratty, but it quickly shapes up as the weather warms.   There are some wicked thorns, of course, but that attribute just makes it a good choice for planting below the windows of a young daughter's bedroom, in anticipation of her teen years and the creatures that may be attracted to the gardener's abode at that time.  Nothing is better than a barrier of well-grown Pyracantha or a stiff shrub rose for cooling the ardor of a teenage boy.

I initially placed a 'Lowboy' into my back patio border in 2000, but it grew quickly to smother several surrounding perennials.  The thorns make this a plant you don't want to have to thin on a yearly basis, either.  Then, in 2005, I noticed a small trail leading under the shrub, and in late winter, as the leaves thinned out, I realized that while Pyracantha is impervious to deer, the prairie pack rats think that it is a good foundation for a communal dwelling.  Since I detest the little creatures, providing them shelter approximately 10 feet from my back door was not a favorable idea, so I thinned and shortened the spiny branches at some risk to my dermal covering and then burned them out, protecting surrounding plants as best I could by a constant spray of water.  So much for Pyracantha in my borders.

But, since I like the shrub and the Fall display it provides, I decided to place another specimen out on its own, farther from the house where an occasional pack rat colony wouldn't give me conniption fits and where the beauty of the shrub could romp unrestrained without danger to more refined perennials.  It sits now in my far front yard, sited so as to obscure the electric box and water meter from view of the house, in a manner recommended by any and all landscape manuals that the Extension service provides.  See, you can't see the electric box at all in the picture above.  Nor the pack rat colony growing at its base.  I did warn you, didn't I, that there are times when it looks ratty?

Anonymous Aster

As I'm somewhat of a scientific mindset, I take some pride in being able to identify most of the plants in my garden and the surrounding prairie on sight, and each its proper (albeit often mispronounced) Latin name. So it is doubly frustrating to me when I forget to write down the position and name of a new plant.  Furthermore it is triply frustrating when the new plant turns out to be a keeper.

I'm quite chagrined, therefore, with this new very double white Aster-like thing that popped up in the very front line of my front border the past couple of weeks.  This was a small green blob most of the summer, growing slightly over time and requiring absolutely no care, and then recently, it stood up and shouted for my immediate attention with the extremely profuse bloom. 

At about 18 inches in height and width, it is undoubtedly well-placed in its site, prominently displayed now in fall in front of the  taller, and now spent, peonies, sedums, and various shrubs that make up the majority of this border.  But what, pray tell, is the variety?  I have grown a number of asters over the years but they are all blues and pinks, no whites ever, and most of them survive a year or two and then dwindle in a harsh winter or summer.  I have absolutely no recollection of planting this one, although it is obvious that I agonized over the site and potential size of the plant, and I evidently neglected to note down the pertinent information in a timely fashion.  My best guess is that this was a $6.00 gallon pot, grown by the KSU Horticulture students as a fundraiser, that I bought on a whim about this time last year while I was walking to the 2010 State EMG Continuing Education meeting.  If that is where I obtained it, I guess it stands as a good demonstration of the judgement of the Hort. students, but not so much as an example of the diligence of the gardener in recording his world.

Regardless of my consternation, my Anonymous Aster is a pretty little thing, isn't it?  Perhaps in this instance, I should let Beauty be a reward in itself, and not care so much about the name.