annual keepers: things i’ll re-order next year

Phlox can be an easy grown half hardy annual suitable for any garden situation particularly a cottage garden. It’s compact bushy habit makes it ideal for planting as drifts of colour, as border edging or in containers. This Phlox differs from the perennial varieties that grow taller and have more scent. Never the less annual Phlox is worth the little effort that is required

I have made a list in my garden note book of what has performed successfully this summer. The multi-headed sunflowers have done exceptionally well and take up little space in proportion to the amount of flowers I obtained. I will definitely be growing them again despite trying to cut down on annuals from seed. The note book also records the failures of crops and in greater number my horticultural inadequacies. First and most distressing has been my tomato failures. Gardeners Delight and small cherry toms have produce in number but other varieties have let me down (or vice versus).

Here’s everything you need to know aboutHow Not To Kill Plants In Containers. Follow these handy tips to keep your indoor plants happy and healthy!

That bright green, grassy weed in your lawn this month could be annual bluegrass. It is a cool-season, annual weed that grows in moist and compacted soils and even in shady locations. It is a prolific seed producer even when mowed at low heights, with each plant producing over 350 seeds. The first step to getting this weed under control in home lawns is to irrigate the lawn properly. Always apply deep but infrequent irrigation to lawns during periods of inadequate rainfall. This will encourage the turfgrass to have a deeper, more robust root system and help it compete with the annual bluegrass for moisture. Wait until the lawn begins to show symptoms of drought stress before irrigating, especially in the early fall. Annual bluegrass seeds germinate in autumn when soil temperatures drop below 70 °F. Limiting soil moisture near the soil surface reduces the germination rate of annual bluegrass seeds in the lawn.

You may like to “put de lime in de coconut” or “pina coladas in the rain”, but these two products (pictured below), while both made from the flesh of the coconut, are NOT the same.

I don’t know about you, but summer squash and cucumbers are a necessity in my garden. Problem is, after a few years, the squash pests show up in greater abundance each year, and only a couple of weeks after harvesting your first squash, the vines are in decline, and production goes to zero in another week or two.

The pioneering American landscape architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said: “A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.” Aside from hiding things, vines are great for vertical accents. Unfortunately, perennial vines tend to have a shorter flowering period, and once planted, you are stuck with them forever unless you dig them up and plant something else. I do not mean this in a negative way; I love many of the perennial vines and have several in my landscape, but you may want to add some annual vines to your garden palette that can bloom over several months during the growing season.

The new red-foliage polychroma cultivar, ‘Bonfire,’ seems to stand up better to summer, so I’m not chopping it down. Will I regret it? Don’t know…only my second year with the plant, so it’s all an experiment.Which is what cutbacks are: You observe what is going on, and if it’s not looking good, you consider administering a haircut.The pulmonarias were shorn to the ground after flowering last month, and already have a new set of showy leaves (instead of tattered, about-to-mildew old ones). They would have grown a new set right up and over the old, but I prefer to just shear them, rather than fussily deadheading each flower stem.Perennial salvias, like the popular ‘May Night’ and the nemorosa varieties ‘Snow Hill’ and ‘Caradonna,’ can do with a good, hard cutback when they’re done blooming. A new rosettes of foliage will be emerging down below, and a lower-impact second flush of bloom will eventu

I got my first glimpse of what have become my seasonal favorites almost 25 years ago, in the Connecticut garden of Marilyn Barlow, when she was starting Select Seeds (which I’m proud is an occasional advertiser on A Way to Garden). Then, the “nursery” was Marilyn’s yard, and the “office” was her kitchen table. And then, I hardly knew any of the vintage plants, climbing or otherwise, that Marilyn was collecting.Though Select Seeds’ focus is on oldtime plants or ones with an oldtime look, the nursery has taken an increasingly forward-looking approach to environmental practices.On the path toward organic growing, says Marilyn, use of neonicotinoids and other systemic chemicals has been completely eliminated. “Right now we’re growing naturally, with the plants and with the seeds that we do grow here,” she explains. “We use predator insects as the main

OKAY, I WILL ADMIT TO A BIT OF A COMPULSION about edging. It is my contention that even a mediocre garden can look pretty swell with a clean edge on it (or at least you’ll impress people with your mastery of edging in and of itself).

THE 2010 SCHEDULE:Each Wednesday for the rest of the summer and probably longer, a group of blogging friends including Todd and Diane at White on Rice Couple; Shauna Ahern the Gluten-Free Girl, and Food2 will swap our recipes and tips about the following harvest-fresh ingredients. You’ll love meeting this year’s participants (a full list with links will accompany my post Wednesday and every week). The schedule:7/28: cukesnzukes 8/4: corn 8/11: herbs, greens, and beans 8/18: stone fruit 8/25 tomatoes more to come if we all want it — stay tuned! We each post something and then link to one another, so that you can travel around the combined effort, gathering the goodies.HOW YOU CAN JOIN IN SUMMER FEST:Giving back

1. That all the mail-order providers I have used send me my “slips” (pieces of vine sprouted off their stock sweet potatoes) much too early. Yes, I may have few hard frosts after late April or early May…but the weather is by no means as settled nor the soil as warm as a sweet potato would ideally have it. I want my slips to arrive a month later than some stupid automated calculation at the growers is apparently indicating, triggering my too-soon shipment. Just say no to early delivery; hurrying doesn’t help.D.I.Y. for Starters?2. If I had healthy, firm stock left from the previous year—and no sign of any disease or troubles last growing season—I could technically sprout my own slips, and it may just come to that. I’d need to get some of the stored potatoes to begin to sprout in