Cottage Garden Party #16
I hope that you enjoy browsing at one another's gardens and floral ideas in the landscape & please do invite your friends (always looking for new gardeners to join in)! I encourage you to comment on other posts submitted by Fishtail Cottage followers & if you are not already a follower of my blog – please become one!!!
You can follow Fishtail Cottage on Facebook & Pinterest xoxo, ~tracie
Comments
Rob
Thank you for hosting our party!
Thanks for hostessing this garden party. Hoping that you have a great weekend.
Yael from Home Garden Diggers
Thanks for hosting.
I always enjoy visiting the various garden blogs. Love all the pretty flowers, garden projects and great tips.
See you next week!
Elizabeth
Nancy
Thank you for hosting your lovely Garden Party. It is such a pleasure participating with all the other wonderful blogs.
I love your blog. Your delightful header draws me in each time I stop by.
Thank you for your kind comments and visit, my friend,
Blessings,
Carolynn
No big secrets here! I use sluggo as a preventative for slugs on the hostas and of course that is totally safe for all creatures. We also have a tremendous number of toads in the gardens that take care of a lot of slugs as well. We do have an earwig problem in mulched areas which tends to draw in raccoons, possums, and skunks. This year I spent $500 on 'nite gards' which are solar powered lights that flash bright red all night on the perimeters of our two acres, setting off the fear response in the critters and keeping them out of the gardens as they were doing a tremendous amount of damage past seasons. We generally are quite dry in the summer (drought this year) and I'm sure that is a big part of why there aren't a lot of slugs. The delphiniums were new small plants this spring and many are blooming for the first time. I also lost many of the new starts due to the drought. In our climate we generally get a second shorter bloom out of delphiniums in August... a bit of fertilizer and cut-backs encourages that. As far as the annuals, half the battle is choosing the right varieties. Our petunias this year are all Proven Winner Supertunias... in my experience the pink is the best (it may be the finest and best performing petunia of all time) and is called Vista Bubblegum. The whiteish ones are Vista Silverberry and are doing well for me as well. The Vista Fuchsia aren't doing as well. The secret to containers here is lots of fertilizer whenever I think about it throughout the season... I incorporate a liberal amount of Triple 14 Osmocote initially and I mixed in five year old horse manure with my sterile bark mix as well as moisture retaining gels. I really seldom fertilize the plants in the ground as our soil is very rich. The Vista series are the first containerized petunia plants that I haven't had to give a renewal haircut in August. I generally do have to treat many of the petunias in containers with iron occasionally as they can at times get chlorotic... our water is very hard and very alkaline. The secret to Vista Bubblegum is heavy feeding I'm told. The other annual that I used a lot this year is Lobularia Snow Princess, also a Proven Winners offering. These are basically sterile white alyssum and take the heat well but demand more moisture than petunias when in baskets. They get huge and do revive well if forgotten... I've learned this from experience. I hope this helps... I am not adverse to dumping on any fertilizer with a high 2nd number from time to time... there are no concerns about run-off where we are located. I don't however follow a schedule... if a basket strikes me as blooming less, I may give it a feed when I think about it.
I greatly admire your wonderful home and gardens... absolutely beautiful and always a pleasure to see.
I'm a 63 year old with a pace maker and congestive heart failure and a ton of other ailments... but my mind remains as inquisitive as a teenager... my son says I have more ideas than years and he's absolutely correct about that... I love change and creating new things in music, gardening, woodworking, and art glass. I never quite get to the small details because I take on way more than I can possibly handle... and I love every second of the process. They're going to have to haul me out of the garden in a wheelbarrow! I'll never quit!!
As you well know, gardening is a way of life and I honestly feel badly for those who don't appreciate what it can do for person's life and bottom line... who they really are as a human being.
I always appreciate your kind comments and the fine taste exhibited so exquisitely in your posts... and I hope I answered your questions somewhere in this rant! Take care and my best to you and your family... Larry
So sorry to miuss your garden linky party this week --I'll try to link up in the future as it looks like fun!