Daylily, Rapid Eye Movement

June is here and with it lots of record setting heat and virtually no rain. This year looks like it will be a record breaking year, but not the good records. Even the weeds are having a tough time this year. The good news is that daylilies and iris are both drought tolerant once they have been established. Your plants may look a little peaked, but they should be able to pull through to the fall when they will rebound nicely. There are a couple of strategies that can help them get through the heat.

The first is to make sure that when you do water, you water deeply. Water once a week and at least an inch water around your plants. If you use drip irrigation so much the better, because you won’t be losing water to wind or evaporation. Also you can help by watering either late in the day or early morning. I prefer late in the afternoon/evening because that way the plants will have all night to soak up the water.

The second thing you can do is to add a 2 – 4” layer of mulch around your plant (but not touching the fans). The mulch will help insulate and keep the plant a little cooler. If you have your plants in pots, move the pots where they can get afternoon shade. Your pots will need more water than your plants in the ground, but again drip irrigation will help.

I also know of a friend who trims his daylilies back to about 6 – 9” in the heat of the summer, so the roots don’t have to support as much top growth. I will be doing this on most of my daylilies to help them get through.

With bearded iris, moving or dividing is done in August and September, at which time you would trim them back before re-planting. If you are keeping your bearded iris in place, you can also go ahead and trim any brown tips off or just cut them back to about 4 – 6 inches now.

Polka Dot plants are a great addition to your shade garden. They can also be brought indoors as a houseplant. Inside they need bright light, and remeber to give them some diluted fertilizer.

A friend of mine who runs a good sized farm with lots of vegetables told us that they use fish emulsion 4 – 5 times to deter both the deer and the rabbits. Evidently other animals don’t like the fish smell (make sure you don’t use de-odorized fish emulsion). So today we stopped and bought 2 different types of fish emulsion. Over the next couple of weeks, we will let you know if it works. In addition to the animal deterent aspect of fish emulsion – it is a great fertilizer for your plants, and a great activator for your compost pile.

Bulbine

Bulbine (my husband likes to call it bovine) isn’t the showiest of plants but it is one of those workhorses in the garden for me. It is almost indestructible. It takes drought conditions like a champ, and it takes very wet conditions. I have it in full sun, and in partial shade. It forms a clump and after several years you can divide it and put it in more places. All those things are nice – but what I really like about it, is that when you look at a group or a row of bulbine (I am starting to use it like a small hedge – instead of boxwood) - you can have flowers on it for about 10 or even 11 months out of the year. The flowers emerge and bloom at the top of the stem, and they continue to bloom, and continue to bloom, and continue  to bloom with the stems getting longer and longer – eventually they fall over or you can cut them off with a pair of garden shears. But then, new flowers will have started, so you always have plenty of color. The flowers by themselves aren’t much to speak of, but when you mass them together you have a whispy type of flower that blows with the wind (similar to a gaura). When everything else is gone – the bulbine are still blooming and giving you some color.

The only drawbacks I have found is that bulbine may get a little frost damage (but not much and then you just trim it back). Bees really like it and are continually buzzing around. It only comes in 2 colors – an orange/yellow combo and a solid yellow (my preference). Snakes also tend to like to slither in it – there was a BIG rat snake in one this afternoon that we were moving.  Even with those minor things, I keep dividing it and using it in my gardens. I am now edging one of my gardens all the way around it with bulbine. It is one of those plants that you don’t have to do much to – but it will work hard for you!

Peacock Orchid/Absyyinian Glad

At the Pearl Farmer’s Market this last Saturday a lot of people were interested in our Peacock Orchids. Peacock Orchids, otherwise known as Absyyinian Glads, are really gladioli. The flowers look like they should be an orchid, hence one of the common names. These are a perennial glad in south Texas. They are also a very easy plant. Plant them in full sun to part shade (as low as 1 – 2 hours of sun). You can also plant them in large containers with other plants. They will come up in the spring, and the scapes should come up in the beginning of summer just like a regular glad. The scape will come up and then the flowers will open one by one. After it has flowered, you let it die back naturally over the summer. You can pull the foliage away to clean up the area when you can gently tug at the leaves and they pull away easily. Leave them alone and next spring they will reemerge with some new babies. Over the years they will continue to grow and you will have more blooms. If you want you can divide them, by simply digging them up, separating the corms, and replanting them. If you want to fertilize them – use a long term, slow release fertilizer, bone meal, or compost in the fall, in early spring, and/or just after they have finished blooming. You can also use liquid fertilizer (Hasta Gro, Miracle Gro, or Peters 20-20-20) or compost tea in the early spring and summer before they have bloomed. I think you will agree that Peacoc Orchids are an easy, carefree, and beautiful addition to your gardens.

Now on to more cheerful subjects. Last week we started planting our sunflowers. This year I am planting 4 different kinds. Sunrich Lemon which is 4 – 5 foot tall and a great cutting plant, Florenza which has red and yellow blooms and another great cutting flower. Additionally, I am planting some small Sundance Kids and Sunbright sunflowers which are more bedding and garden type sunflowers. We also started planting some zinnias, cosmos, and rudebekias (black eyed susans) as both plants and for cutting flowers for the Pearl Farmer’s Market. The Sunrich Lemon sunflowers have already started to germinate and I am looking forward to their sunny faces as summer approaches. My cosmos and my rudebekias have also started to germiante. My herbs (basil, thyme, chamomile, oregano, cilantro), scabiosas, lavenders, coreopsis, and dahlias have also started to germinate and are growing nicely.

On the daylily and bearded iris front I am getting more blooms, and I am seeing scapes really starting to pop up. It helped getting a 4/10ths of an inch of rain yesterday. Now if the rain will keep coming every couple of days, I’ll be very happy. Well time for me to go and prepare myself for some more weeding tomorrow – yes, I’ll be listening.

If you plan to make a lot of compost tea, you may want to invest in a small pond aerator to put into a large barrel – this will save you having to constantly stir the tea. Putting oxygen into the water with the compost activates all the microbes and lets them multiply. The compost tea as a foliar spray is one of the best fertilizers for all of your plants.