In addition to my plants, there are tons of handmade Christmas ornaments, homemade food stuffs (peanut brittle, breads, pies, cobblers, candies, and vinegars), handmade jewelery, and lots of woodworking items. It is fun just to come through to see all the creativiness within our community. So stop by and see all the great items and talk with some neighbors and friends that you meet there.

On a gardening note, the excessive heat and drought (which are now hopefully long gone) has given us a chance to evaluate all of our plants (not just our daylilies and iris), and we will be making some garden changes. Yes, I seem to be constantly moving gardens around and trying different things. I will keep you updated on all those happenings as we go through the fall and winter months.

For now, I am cleaning up the gardens and making plans on which plants to move where, and how to condense ro combine some of my ideas.

freesia

We are finally getting some rain!! The first two days for us were pretty minimal, maybe a tenth of an inch. This morning however we are getting a good steady rain. Oh I am sure that my plants are loving it.  I got my fertilizer and pre-emergents out just in time. One of the things with pre-emergents is you have to be careful where you put them. If you grow things from seeds directly in your garden – pre-emergents will stop your seeds from germinating and growing! You also have to check the list of approved plants for your pre-emergents – for example the pre-emergent I use “Snapshot”  it is not rated for iris; therefore, I don’t use it on my bearded iris beds. Now you ask – well where do you use it? I use it on all my daylily beds and anywhere else, like walkways and parking pads where weeds are always sprouting, and I can use it around beds where I don’t want weeds encroaching. With this new rain we should be seeing a lot of seedlings pop up (weeds and the plants you want). Well time to go up to San Antonio and see what plants are at the Garden Center (next to the SA Botanical Gardens) that I just can’t live without. Tomorrow will be working in the gardens and planting up some seeds.

H. Grateful Heart

  Well I thought that I didn’t have any daylily blooms, but I was surprised this morning by seeing H. Grateful Heart (see photo) opened up. What a beauty. I also saw several more scapes on daylilies that I have been waiting for. My freesias are also really starting to bloom. I looked at my beared iris and my deep purple ones are really going to town along with some pinks.

With the rain coming this week – I hope the weathermen are right – I had to go ahead and fight the wind and spray my Messenger on my plants. You spray Messenger every three weeks during the growing season. If I waited any longer it was going to be going into the 4th week. I use a pump sprayer and do a very heavy mist on my plants. It takes me 4 gallons to do all of my pots (iris and daylilies, 2 samll gardens, 1 large garden, and one long daylily bed). It does seem to be making my plants hardier. While I was spraying, I found the daylilies that the deer were nibbling on last week. The deer haven’t returned, but I am watching! Tomorrow I am going to do some clean up, and some transplanting before the rain hits. After the rains, I can really tackle some digging and weeding in some areas.