Wildflowers in Virginia

May 2016

Its kind of fun watching what will grow on its own if you let it! I think the white flowers are some sort of aster. I'm not sure about the purple flowers. My husband believes it is a type of clover. Both types of plants are close to 3 feet tall.

March 2016: Here is a pretty ground cover wildflower that grows around my yard each year in late winter/early spring.

I will do better next year taking pictures of all the beautiful plants that pop up around my Virginia mountain home. The flowers below only represent a few of the many flowers I saw this past spring and summer. If anyone knows the names of the flowers, please let me know!

This must be "Common Evening Primrose" according to the USDA 

http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_oebi.pdf

New England Asters 1st year

May 2018: I didn't have any asters last summer and I do not see sprouts this year either. I have a lot of vegetation probably out competing them.

I ordered some seedlings (4) from ebay in spring 2015. They did great (zone 7)! I'm anticipating the plants to expand bloom beautifully each fall from now on.  These are native to the area. The flowers are a light lavender.

                                                                      June 2015

I pinched inside the centers of the stems to encourage more branching out. This may have made the flowers smaller, but I'm not sure. I'll experiment next year.

                                                    Preparing to bloom, mid to late summer.

   Closeup, getting ready for full bloom. The branches are numerous because of pinching.

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Starting its bloom. The 'bush' is about 2.5x3. The zinnias had been blooming for a bit. This is probably early to mid August. I was beginning to wonder if my asters would ever bloom!

              The asters bloomed! Wow. The plants were covered in flowers even in October.

The flowers were very popular with these little butterflies. The flowers and butterflies were only about 1 inch in size. 

Garden progress Aug 18, 2015.

Zinnias, California Giants...Flowers and Butterflies

Zinnias, California Giants

I bought a couple packs of zinnia seeds and direct sowed them into the ground mid May. They started to bloom in July. These flowers are beautiful and butterflies love them. I'm sure I will be planting some every year.

https://youtu.be/aiyqwHWK2SY

These were some of the most beautiful flowers. I had cut flowers in my house for months.

"Blaze" Climbing Rose - bug problems!

Edit: 3/19/2016 I put it in the fire pit the other day. All of my other rosebushes are turning green and getting bushy. This plant was still brown and very dead looking. For the record, it fought a good fight. It was transplanted 3x: the first planting in early spring (from Tractor Supply pot), 2nd to a container while I tried to determine the problem (probably some sort of mites, definitely a bug infestation), 3rd to another location in the yard. It did seem to establish itself even in the 3rd transplant, but a couple of very cold nights seemed to have been too much and she never recovered.

******* RIP Blaze, my 1st rosebush. You were loved*********  <3

I planted this rose (grafted) from Tractor Supply in March 2015. It is growing well, but about two weeks ago, I noticed a bug problem. I found small holes in the leaves, tiny black spots on the leaves, and soon the leaves began to curl. I am guessing some of the uninvited guests are thrips.  I used Sevin dust right away, but I purchased Bayer Advanced 2-1 Rose and Flower Care about a week ago. The new growth should be protected from bugs.

Here is the plant today (leaf curl, holes in leaves, and some new growth shown below). My camera wouldn't zoom in clearly for a close up of the tiny black spots, but there was still at least one leaf with the spots today.

For the record, I know bees are important. I do not use insecticides if I do not need to.

Update Nov 13, 2015: The plant just worsened as time went on. Finally I dug it up, put it in a pot, and heavily pruned. This happened in late summer. When I did that, I was able to identify the culprit - very tiny bugs that were crawling up and down the branches...too small to capture in a photo. I sprayed the remaining branches with a mixture of oils...I later bought neem oil and will be using this for such problems before I get so desperate. I replanted in a new garden spot early November. The plant had a lot of new growth at the time of planting. After planting, some of the leaves started to yellow and drop, but I think this has to do with the excessive leaf growth and the time of planting. I'm not concerned about it (now). I'm not expecting many blooms next year, but I have my fingers crossed.  

Trying to save some more Knock Out roses from Tractor Supply ($2)

Update 5/28/2016

Wow! 3 of the 5 lived and they are doing great. One is huge! I wasn't sure what I had actually bought, but I believe 2 of them are Red Drift ground cover roses and the other is the single or maybe semi double pink.

These pictures do not really do the drift roses justice. The new growth, now over 3 feet tall is covered in buds. One of the bushes is at least 5 feet in diameter. It is very full and dense.

One of the three has new growth so I guess this means it is established. Yay (3 of 5 so far). I gave it 6-9-6 fertilizer today (Bayer Advanced 2 in 1). It also has an insecticide in it. Future growth will be protected from bugs. I'm not big on bug sprays, etc., (I know bees are very important too) but one of my other rosebushes is already being eaten by bugs. The two pictures below show the new growth.

There were about 7 dying Knock Out plants at Tractor Supply today. I bought 3 more hoping to save them. $2 bargains. I really wanted to try and save them all! The others didn't seem to have any sign of life remaining. So here they are (I should have taken a picture before I took them out of the package)

There are a few flower buds on the plant pictured in the middle, but they are all on one very thin cane that is an offshoot of the root. The plant pictured last only had one large cane and it is fairly green. The top pictured plant is looking sad.

Here they are after clipping away some dead branches and trying to fix them up a bit (below):

The last picture shows the one small living cane. I had to balance it on the dead branches to keep it off the ground. It does have about 4 flower buds on it, and one is about to bloom.


Two of these plants are Rainbow Knock Out. I'm not sure what the other one (the plant with the large green cane) is because the plastic and label were removed from the pot.

I now have 5 Knock Out rosebushes planted in my backyard. All were near death. We'll see what happens. At least I can experiment with them with love and not fear harming them!  


I also should have taken photos of the roots. I am fairly certain these roses are grown on their own roots (not grafted) They were planted in peat pots (about 6 inches) The roots looked okay. One of them seemed a little moldy.

Tomatoes!

I had my first tomato sandwich of the season (June 10, 2015). These are Stupice (stoo peeka) tomatoes, an heirloom variety from Czechoslovakia. They do not look very pretty, but oh they were delicious! They were so sweet, 10x better than the perfect looking tomatoes from the grocery store: 5 stars for taste.  I'm in zone 7. These are early tomatoes.

I haven't yet grown a tomato from a plant I started. This year might be the first. These look healthy! I'll keep them in the pots a little while longer. These are Early Doll (hybrid) and Cherokee Purple (heirloom). I ordered the seeds from an ebay seller.

I'm getting a greenhouse next year, as well as a fluorescent light setup.

These plants were grown using only the sun, water, and homemade fish emulsion (minnows and water).

I'm pinching all of the suckers off my plants this year too. I've never done that before. I am also more aggressive about clipping the lower branches than I have ever been.

The sucker is just above the bottom branch, in the middle. Its gone from the picture just above.