Clematis: Summer clematis chat, 2 by pirl

pirl wrote:
Cathy/Marcia - are you still waiting for some group 2's to bloom. Last year a few did bloom for me in July because of the cold spring. I love the heads! Some are golden but Pauline is silver and so pretty. Insect damage on clem's for us is usually due to earwigs so I use Ortho's Bug Geta Plus. It kills snails, slugs and earwigs - a home run. I've never had a chipmunk here and the squirrels and rabbits haven't damaged anything so the best I can advise you to do is use Blood Meal to deter the rabbits but if you have hounds or they are in the neighborhood you might not want to do that!

John - I'm also surprised at the different times our plants bloom. I'd guess we're at the peak for Japanese irises but on the second go round for many of the lupines sending up smaller stalks but just as welcome. I should check the dahlias but I just finished with 8 hours of weeding and then mulching in the vegetable garden. Jack planted well over 100 onions (yellow) in addition to the many red ones he planted a few weeks ago. Tomatoes are looking good as is the broccoli, lettuce, peas, green beans, cukes and shallots. The local foxes in our town look well fed and that may account for the decrease in rabbits here.

Oh, no, Marilyn! From all I've heard, though they are sweet looking, no one needs chipmunks. The poppy fell apart in the breeze today as I watched. Nature is fascinating.

Another of my favorite JI's - Dark Desire.