Flowers and Blooms

Just a quick update on the flowers and roses!

Look how big the oriental lilies have gotten! Most have 2-3 buds on them.

The mystery lily has gotten so big. The bud has pointed downwards and seems to be turning yellow. Perhaps I will have yellow flowers?

Finally! This is the last blooming rose in my garden. The Grandma Nacogdoches rose.

Graham Thomas Rose

The first bloom on the Graham Thomas rose was May 10th. And of course, it was a rainy, dreary day. This event was particularly special since this rose didn't bloom last year.

Rose Cutting - 5th Week.

A moment of silence, please.

No pictures this time, just a news update. The rose cutting is officially dead. Since all the branches had browned and dried, I pulled it out of its pot to see if it had even thought about making roots, and it had not. Instead I found tiny maggot-like worms. Ew.

The dirt was tossed into the yard (waste not) into a non-garden spot, and the pot will be rinsed out before I stick anything else in it.

Some important lessons were learned.

Diagnosis of what probably went wrong (in no particular order of significance):

1. The cutting was from old wood rather than green wood, and it was very short.
2. No rooting hormone, which might have helped my chances a little.
3. I might have left too many leaves on.
4. I uncovered the rose too soon; should have left the plastic baggie on much longer than I did.
5. Becoming overly ambitious at the sight of new leaf growth, I moved the cutting into a spot with partial sun instead of mostly shade and bright light. Oopse.

I found a great link, here which does an excellent job at teaching you how to do rose cuttings. For me, the most important information this article had to offer that was not readily available in all my previous Googling:

1. Wounding the stem is good; taking all the bark off is bad. I should have wounded the stem in strips, one or two strips, down the cutting rather than stripping the bark all the way off. As the growth hormones are essentially in this top layer, I crippled my cutting without knowing it.
2. The cutting needs to remain covered for the whole time it's rooting, at least until the second set of leaves.
3. It's the second set of leaves you want to watch out for; any initial leaf growth, according to this article, will be as a result of energy already stored in the cutting. Secondary leaf growth, however, will be as a result of successful root production.

It was a very fun project to try, and now that my own roses are growing by leaps and bounds, I will probably begin experimentation to perfect my methods.

Rose Cutting - 4th Week

So. I don't really want to put a picture up, but for the sake of record keeping I will. Things... things aren't looking too hot.

 As you can see, my final set of original leaves is turning yellow. The new set at the bottom looks yellow in this picture, but I think it's just the light because they are, in fact, still green.

The lower branch, as well, has turned brown and dull, so I think it's dead.

For now, all my hope hinges on that tiny set of new leaves and one more potential leaf but I can spy if I squint.

I'm resisting the urge to go ahead and tag this and the rest of the rose-cutting series with an 'oopse' tag and therefore call it a failure.

I'll let it sit there til I'm certain it's all kaput.

It's been getting good morning sun, some afternoon shade. Plenty of water and the pot drains very well.

I'm not sure what other steps I should have taken, or if my method was okay and it was simply the plant itself. I've no idea how hardy the parent stock was, as I've never seen it in bloom.

It was a fun spur-of-the-moment gift, after all. We shall see.

Lafter in the Garden

First Day Lilly - Stella d'Oro. Bloomed 4/29/13. Since then, I've had as many as 5 blooms open in one day, I just didn't have the presence of mind to snap a picture of it. I even had blooms last two days, thanks to unseasonably cloudy and cool weather.

Lafter rose; first bloom on largest Lafter bush. Bloomed 5/2/13

Another bloom on the largest Lafter rose. Bloomed  5/2/13

First bloom on the smallest Lafter rose. Bloomed 5/4/13.

Rose Cutting - 3rd Week

The cutting is now 3 weeks old. I'm sad to say I lost that lower right hand set of leaves, which is turning yellow in this picture. But you can see on the left hand side a new set of leaves!

Aphids decided to take up residence in those tender new leaves, too, and I didn't realize it until I saw large ones crawling around the rest of the cutting. Luckily I had some rose spray left from last season, and now that's taken care of. On the lower branch to the right is another leaf bud coming on, so I hope it keeps going.

I'm still cautious about calling it a success yet, but it has been fun to watch!

Update on the Flower Garden

Roses

My Sarah Van Fleet roses have been blooming like crazy for the past week or so. In fact, we've had so many roses on the bush that, for the first time, we were able to bring in a bouquet of roses to sit on our kitchen table. 

Sarah Van Fleet on left; Lafter on right

 The rose cutting I was given is now a day or so shy of two weeks old. In the picture you can see there are no yellowing leaves on the main stem I've rooted (the yellow is coming from a tiny leaf branch I took a gamble on and stuck in the dirt too). Also present on the rooting are signs of new growth! I'm not sure if this is left over leaf budding utilizing energy from when it was attached to the bush, or if it's actually making roots, but I did pinch off all the visible unformed leaf buds still on it at the time of rooting, so these are definitely new.

Two week old rooting of yellow Peace rose

 And finally, the darling of my rose garden, my Don Juan Rose has opened up its first bloom. It's been open for about a week now, and as you can see, the color is wonderful. The petals are only now opening all the way out, and the fragrance is incredible. More buds are about to open.

First bloom on Don Juan climbing rose

 Oriental Lilies

So a week or two back I bought an assorted back of 12 oriental lily bulbs. They are now all sprouted! I think they're looking good.
Here is the first barrel with 6. Will definitely be watching these as the season progresses. I anticipate wonderful flowers... 

And here are the Walmart special, "Oriental Lilies." These are the ones mom and I bought last Easter. The research I did lead me to believe they were Stargazers, but after observing their growth and seeing more in the store, and with some subsequent reading, I believe they are in fact the Stargazer look-alike, the dwarf After Eight. All the impact of the stargazer... in a much smaller (read, 1/3rd smaller) size.

This clump started out as two. There are at least 8 now. Or more. 

Airplane Plant

So I adopted my grannie's Airplane plant last summer. If my rosemary was the second most root bound plant I've encountered, the airplane plant I retrieved from my grannie's house is the first-place winner. I couldn't get the plant out of its dry-rotted pot. I had to break the pot off of it, after which the whole plant sat on the ground and kinda went, "yea? And?" I stuck it in the biggest pot I had at the time, and it seems to like it so...

 I honestly can't take a stab at guessing how old this plant is. The dry-rotting plastic pot it was in leads me to believe... old. And when I was much younger (15+ years ago), my grannie gave me one of her airplane plants, and I'm absolutely certain those plants came from these. So. We're looking at a very... very matronly lady here.

When I got it, all of its airplanes had died and were a tangled mess, so I had to cut them all off. But late in the fall it made one or two more, and below you can see the oldest, from last fall. I decided to take a stab at planting it today.

The mother plant has about 13 more airplanes on it, and they look incredibly good. So this one will be my test case, and I hope to make some more pots for myself and others.

 

I checked the root growth on it and thought it looked good, so I snipped the stem attaching it to the mother plant, and pushed it gently into some potting soil. Then I gave it a good watering, and now it's sitting alongside my root cutting.

I've been wanting to give this a try for a long time, so we'll see how it goes!

Propagating Roses from Cuttings

So I had the great fortune to receive a cutting of the Peace rose from a family friend. I've been wanting to try to grow a rose from a cutting for a long time, and I've read tons of material on it, but I've never had the opportunity to before.

The cutting came to me at 9:30 PM Monday night; it had been cut earlier that evening. It appeared to be a hard wood cutting with softwood sprouting from the tip. I'm sorry to say I don't have any pictures from the procedure since I was in a hurry and it was so late at night.

I trimmed off all but the top most leaves, and I also pinched off some new growth forming lower down the stem. Then, with a very sharp knife, I scraped the bark off of half of the hardwood stem. I filled a four inch pot with fresh dirt, and planted the cutting in it.

I topped the whole thing with a gallon bag propped open with some paint stirrers, which will serve to create a mini green house for the rose cutting.

Peace rose cutting, 3 days old

So far, the leaves haven't wilted! I'm taking that as a positive indication of moderate success. I will definitely be keeping close tabs on this experiment.

Blooming now -

So the roses have begun blooming! In reality, I think these first blooms from my largest Sarah Van Fleet are a touch premature; nevertheless, the bushes are covered in buds! And I'm thankful for the beautiful flowers, no matter what time of year (early or late) they bloom. Also blooming are the hibiscus, the Aster, and the azaleas!

Sarah Van Fleet rose

Sarah Van Fleet rose

Hibiscus

Aster

Pink Azalea

White Encore Azalea

Strawberries and Roses and Other Things Too

So, an update! I've had several days off work, and I'll have a few more, and mom and I have taken the time to get our ornamentals planted this year.

We can't plant the garden for another two weeks according to the Almanac and the weather patterns we're experiencing, but we were determined to plant something. So we picked up some vincas, impatiens, pansies, and a very fragrant dianthus from the garden center to bring home some color to the flower bench.

I also grabbed a pack of 12 assorted oriental lily bulbs from the store. I love the oriental lilies, and I was going to pick some up from The Lily Garden, but I just couldn't bite the bullet on those prices. Perhaps in the future if there are one or two varieties I'm missing or I particularly like, I'll grab some from there. Nevertheless, that's a great site to browse for identification purposes.

As for other garden updates:

The tomatoes are up and growing strong! At the lower right, the pepper plant has made an appearance at 2 wks 3 days.

The strawberries are blooming! I'm honeslty surprised to see them do so, as I was certain transplanting messed them up for this year.

We've added a hummingbird feeder to the garden! It's standing next to my beloved Don Juan rose. We've had one brief visitor to it in the 24 hrs it's been up.

And finally, the roses are making roses! Pictured here is the biggest rosebush in my yard, a Sarah Van Fleet.