Archive for the 'Flowers' Category
Roses seem to be some of the most diverse garden flowers. Roses come in a wide range of colors, shapes, and scents. They bloom over a long period from spring to fall, unlike many other flowers that just bloom in spring. Although, the most abundant and most beautiful rose bloom is always the first spring bloom.
Every April and May I am enchanted by the beauty of the 2 dozen or so roses we have growing in our backyard. Below are pictures of a few of them. The first picture is Sheila’s Perfume, which is an incredibly fragrant rose. However, the candy color of these roses tends to fade quickly in a few days.
This second picture is Ginger Snap, which has an amazingly bright orange color.
This third picture is Color Magic, which has very large flowers that darken from light pink to deep pink as they age over a period of about a week.
April 29 2011 | Roses | Comments Off on Springtime Roses
Late March and early April is lilac season in our area. We have several of the Descanso lilac hybrids including lavender lady and blue skies, which do not require as much winter chill as the standard lilacs. I took these pictures on March 31. Lilacs have been one of my favorite garden flowers for a long time because of their fragrance and beauty, even though they only bloom once a year. Our lilac flowers are fading now, just as our roses are starting to open.
April 16 2011 | Lilacs | Comments Off on Lilacs in Bloom
Spring may be just a memory in mid-September, but a few of our flowering plants are bringing back a touch of spring in our yard. Our roses bloom sporadically throughout the summer, but never as dramatically as they do in April and May. We have about 2 dozen rose plants in our yard, but the rose that has been a stand out this summer is our Surprise floribunda rose. Although the plant itself is not very attractive, it has produced clusters of stunning flowers at intervals separated by a few weeks from late April until now. Here is picture of it that I took today.
Another flowering plant in our yard that is looking particularly attractive right now is our princess flower. After nearly dying to the ground in late December after nighttime freezes, it has grown so vigorously that it is now a large bush covered with violet flowers. See picture below. The cold weather wasn’t severe enough to freeze the root system. If that were to happen, I am pretty sure it would have killed the plant.
Brugmansia is another frost sensitive plant that we have in our backyard. It died to the ground last December during the same bout of freezing weather. It has also grown back vigorously since the spring. It is now over 6 feet tall and full of flowers again. It’s a Charles Grimaldi Brugmansia.
September 19 2010 | Brugmansia and Princess Flower and Roses | Comments Off on A Touch of Spring in September
The gladiolas I’ve planted in the ground in past years have been hit or miss. This year, I bought a few small purple gladiola bulbs from a nursery and planted them in one of our raised beds, which is amended with compost and gets watered every other day. They seem to love it there. The flowers look perfect today when I took this picture. Gladiola flowers are beautiful when they are in bloom, but unfortunately, each plant only blooms for about a week.
We have 7 hydrangea plants, but the hydrangea shown in this picture is growing better than the others and has the most flowers. It’s growing under our yellow peach tree and only gets a little filtered sun for a few hours a day in that spot. One of our older hydrangeas is getting sun all day. That plant often looks wilted and the leaves tend to get sunburned. We have added aluminum sulfate around the roots of the hydrangea in this picture for the past few years. Aluminum sulfate is supposed to turn hydrangea flowers blue. Its flowers used to be light pink and now they are more purple, but they are still no where near being blue.
The white star jasmine that is growing up one of our backyard fences is in bloom now. Its flowers have a wonderful summertime fragrance. We often open the bedroom windows next to the jasmine to let the fragrance come into the house.
This picture shows one of our pink roses. It was at its peak bloom about a month ago when this picture was taken. I love this particular rose, because its flowers last so long. The flowers just started to fade a few weeks ago. Many roses open and drop their petals in about a week or less. But these flowers hold their petals for weeks without dropping them. In fact, the flower petals stay on for so long that they start to turn brown on the plant before they fall off. I don’t know what variety of rose it is, because it was planted by the previous owners and there’s no tag on it.
June 26 2010 | Gladiolas and Hydrangeas and Jasmine and Roses | Comments Off on Flower Gallery 2010
We have owned the two orchid plants in this picture for about 2-3 years now, and we have managed to get them to re-bloom again and again. Our current method involves filling a large plastic tub with about 7-8 inches of water, and then adding bloom and growth orchid fertilizers to it (1 TSP each). We soak all of our orchids in the bath for about 15-30 minutes every two weeks. We no longer water them in the kitchen sink because we have 4 orchids now, and they don’t fit in the sink.
They seem to love this watering and fertilizing technique. As soon as we cut back the old flower stems, they start growing new ones. The 2 larger plants never seem to be without flower stems. The purple orchid in this picture has two flower stems, and the white orchid in this picture has several smaller flower stems branching off of one larger stem.
Although one of our smaller orchids has not bloomed in about a year. I suspect that’s because it’s growing in moss which seems to be perpetually moist. Our larger orchids are growing in bark, which dries out much faster. We probably need to transplant this orchid into a larger pot with bark.
June 20 2010 | Orchids | Comments Off on Orchids Are Back Again
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