At the Pearl Farmer’s Market on Saturday several people bought polka dot plants and I told them I would write up a blog on the plants for them. Polka dot plants started off as a house plant until people realized that they were a perfect plant for the shade out here. Polda dot plants have either pink or white dots/blotches on green leaves. They are a shade plant. They also re-seed themselves. They are frost tender, but with trimming they come back in the spring. They do need some water when the tempertatures are at 95 and above – they look a little wilted until they get a dose of water and then they perk right up. They grow to 12 – 18 inches tall. If you want to keep them shorter and bushier, just pinch back the tops of the plants. In the fall, I let them flower (an uninspiring flower) so that they will set seed and I’ll have a new crop of seedlings in the spring. In November, December or January, I cut the plants down to about an inch above the ground. Early the next spring you will get all new foliage again, and also a crop of seedlings for the previous year’s seeds.
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.
JD2 Ranch, Inc.
grower specializing in daylilies, iris, and seasonal cut flowers
Pearl Farmer’s Market
May 30, 2009
Our Spring Garden Day was a great success. Thank you to everyone who came down to Floresville. We will be back at the Pearl Farmer’s Market this Saturday. Our cut flowers are beginning to start with zinnias this week. If you have any specific requests, please e-mail me at jonelle@jd2ranch.com or call me at 830 393-5233. Please check out our website: www.jd2ranch.com to see photos of our plants. Our gardening blog will also have additional information on the farmer’s market and on gardening topics.
Daylilies
Potted: Bitsy, Chorus Line, Little Business, Winsome Lady, Fairy Tale Pink, our potted daylilies are beginning to bloom now.
Bare root: Bare root daylilies will be on hold until September. If you would like to request any of our potted daylilies, just give us a call or send an e-mail.
All I can say is WOW! What a fantastic Spring Garden Day this year. We ended up having over 500 people come through the gardens on Saturday. Our friend Rusty (the master griller) called me the “jackrabbit” because I just kept running back and forth through the gardens answering questions and digging plants for people. Marty and I didn’t get to take a breather until about 2:30 when we split sausage dog. The sausage came from Pruski’s in Adkins for those who have asked, as did the hamburgers.
I apologize to those who were looking for me, but didn’ t get to me. Don’t hesitate to send me e-mails with questions or comments. If there are ways for us to improve the Garden Day (other than cloning ourselves) we will take it all in.
This season has been a rather strange one, since most of our blooms are anywhere from 1 – 2 months later than normal. Peak bloom for daylilies is usually in late May – as you could tell, we haven’t hit peak bloom yet. Probably in another week. The blooms we did have were great – I think the most popular bloom on Saturday was Forbidden Fantasy, next in line was Pastel Inspiration, and then all the blooming mixes.
As a side note, the fish emulsion seems to have been keeping the deer and the rabbits out of the garden – and it is a great fertilizer. I have been using it weekly.
I also heard from the other Markets in the Country sites (Rhew Peach Orchards, Green Country Farm Blackberries, and Cooper’s Garden Place) that they also had fantastic turnouts. I would just like to say Thank You to all those who came to Wilson County and Floresville to all of our different sites. We loved having you, and we will let you know when we are planning the next Markets in the Country.
The rains we had 10 days ago were great for our plants, but they were even better for the weeds. Every place that we weeded before the rains hit, are now having to be re-weeded for this Saturday’s Spring Garden Day/Markets in the Country event. I even have Marty out there helping me and no, I will not get them all!
Since I do several areas with seeds, I cannot use a pre-emergent on all of my flower beds. I also have to wait anywhere from 2 – 4 weeks after transplanting daylilies to use a pre-emergent in those beds (you need to let them get established). I also cannot use my pre-emergent on my iris beds. I will say that where I have been able to use a pre-emergent, I still get weeds – just not nearly as many as an untreated bed.
I do use oak leaf mulch on some parts of my garden as well, and in those areas the weeds are a little less, but what I find is the bermuda goes under the mulch and comes up in another place without me seeing it expand.
We are going to try some white plastic mulch this summer on a couple of new beds we are planning. We have stayed away from the black plastic mulch, because we thought it would be too hot for our plants, since we have them in full sun. I also will need to put my flower beds in with transplants/plugs instead of seeds. I will also have to lay our drip tape under the plastic mulch. But if it helps me not have to weed – I’m for it at this point.
Yes I could use various herbicides to help get rid of the weeds, but I really prefer not to use that many chemicals. Ah well, weeding is good dirt therapy for getting frustrations out. On the good side, my daylilies are starting to really bloom and I even have a few straggler iris blooming!
JD2 Ranch, Inc.
grower specializing in daylilies, iris, and seasonal cut flowers
Pearl Farmer’s Market
May 30, 2009
Riverwalk Grand Opening
The Riverwalk Grand Opening looks to be another fun filled day at the Pearl Farmer’s Market. Here are some of the items I will be bringing to the market on May 30th. If you have any specific requests, please e-mail me at jonelle@jd2ranch.com or call me at 830 393-5233. Please check out our website: www.jd2ranch.com to see photos of our plants. Our gardening blog will also have additional information on the farmer’s market and on gardening topics.
Daylilies
Potted: Bitsy, Chorus Line, Little Business, Red Ribbons, Winsome Lady, Fairy Tale Pink
Bare root: Stella de Oro, Mixed and Mixed by colors (pink, purple, and apricot/melon).
Lately we have been having a rash of jackrabbits (5 -7 at a time) and deer going through our gardens. In fact at least one rabbit is so brave as to try and build a burrow in my main demonstration garden. When you get close he just looks at you and only moves a couple of feet away. Since we don’t have a dig to chase them off, I have started letting my kids run after them. Now it actually pretty funny to watch two 6 year olds running after jackrabbits throughout the yard. Now since I can’t always depend on my kids to be around when the rabbits come into the yard, we are going to try some other measures to keep them out.
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.
Yesterday was a very busy and long day. First Marty was at the Pearl Farmer’s Market and I was over at the Festival of Flowers. Marty did really well at the Farmer’s Market. I know he couldn’t answer a lot of questions – but for him even answering the simple questions is great.
At the Festival of Flowers, I gave the 10:30 am seminar on daylilies. It was a great crowd with lots of eager gardeners. The San Antonio Daylily Society was selling bare root daylilies at the Festival and they essentially sold out of their daylilies – hooray, since it is our club’s main fundraiser. For the seminar, I created and gave a power point presentation (a little different for me), but it allowed me to show a lot more flowers and garden settings using daylilies. I think that I will expand it a little more to include a couple of other items and then I will continue to use it in some of my club and nursery seminars that I give. At the Festival I didn’t take any daylilies to sell (since SADS was selling them), but I did take bearded iris and dwarf sunflowers (see last week’s blog). They went over great and it was a very successful day.
Next week at the Pearl Brewery Farmer’s Market, the Grand Opening of the Riverwalk Extension is occurring. So it will be another busy and eventful day at the market. Look for our plant listings on Thrusday night/Friday morning on the blog. I will also be giving a daylily and iris seminar at Schultz Nursery on Broadway at 2 pm. It is always great going to Schulz, since they continue to have a great array of choice plants.
In two weeks, June 6th, is our Annual Spring Garden Day here at the ranch, and Markets in the Country with Rhew Orchards (peaches), Green Country Farm (blackberries), and Cooper’s Garden Place. We are expecting a great crowd with lots of things going on. Some of the surrounding garden clubs will be having tables set up with information, and we will also some BBQ (hamburgers and sausage) plates available. We are already planning on what daylilies to have pre-dug for customers, and we will have some potted bearded iris, and other plants in 4″ pots, and 1 gal containers. See our listing of plants the week before the Garden Day. We hope to see a lot of you here even if you just want cruise through the gardens looking at ideas. Kids are more than welcome and we have lots of room for them to run around.
JD2 Ranch, Inc.
grower specializing in daylilies, iris, and seasonal cut flowers
Pearl Farmer’s Market
May 23, 2009
Marty will be holding down the fort while I am at the Festival of Flowers (Alzafar Shrine on 1604) giving the seminar on daylilies. Please be kind to him, since he is not a gardener – yet! These are some of the items he will be bringing to the market on May 2nd. If you have any specific requests, please e-mail me at jonelle@jd2ranch.com or call me at 830 393-5233. Please check out our website: www.jd2ranch.com to see photos of our plants. Our gardening blog will also have additional information on the farmer’s market and on gardening topics.
This Saturday will be an especially busy weekend. First Marty will be holding down the fort at the Pearl Farmer’s Market Saturday morning. Please be kind and gentle with him – he is NOT a gardener. He will have some bare root daylilies, some bulbine (see yesterday’s blog), some neat little sunflowers, some sedums, and a few other things. All in all it will be pretty simple for him. The sunflowers that he will have are shorties. The first one Sunbright Kids – only gets to be about 8″ tall, and the second one Sundance Kids gets between 15 – 17″ tall. Both are great for containers and for the front of the garden.
The reason Marty is taking over for me at the Pearl Farmer’s Market is because at 10:30 I will be giving the daylily seminar (featured plant this year) at the 2009 Festival of Flowers. I will then be at
Sundance Kid Sunflower
the Festival of Flowers until 5 pm, answering questions and selling plants. I will be taking mainly bearded iris to the Festival of Flowers. Since the Festival of Flwoers is one of the main fundraisers for our San Antonio Daylily Society, I will not bring any competing daylilies in. So I hope to see you at one or both of the events this Saturday.
When I moved from California to south Texas, there were a number of plants I had never seen before or worked with in gardening. To name a few – Pride of Barbados, esperanza, clump forming bouganvilla (in California it is always used as a large vine/tree on the sides of houses or fences – but that is another blog), Mexican ruella, and bulbine. When a friend gave me some bulbine initially – I was in such desperate need of anything green that I could garden with (our new house had very little garden space – that has now changed) that I took it, but I wasn’t very impressed. Well that has changed too.
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!
At the Pearl Farmer’s Market on Saturday several people bought polka dot plants and I told them I would write up a blog on the plants for them. Polka dot plants started off as a house plant until people realized that they were a perfect plant for the shade out here. Polda dot plants have either pink or white dots/blotches on green leaves. They are a shade plant. They also re-seed themselves. They are frost tender, but with trimming they come back in the spring. They do need some water when the tempertatures are at 95 and above – they look a little wilted until they get a dose of water and then they perk right up. 
They grow to 12 – 18 inches tall. If you want to keep them shorter and bushier, just pinch back the tops of the plants. In the fall, I let them flower (an uninspiring flower) so that they will set seed and I’ll have a new crop of seedlings in the spring. In November, December or January, I cut the plants down to about an inch above the ground. Early the next spring you will get all new foliage again, and also a crop of seedlings for the previous year’s seeds.
