You you you coyote you.... stay out of my bog.
(....thats the cranes nest there in the middle, to the lower right just on the water...its huge! Cant tell for shure but think there are 2-3 eggs! Cant wait to see the babies, but taking pics of the adults has been a no can do so far.. I need a better camera... telephoto would do me a grand service...hello Verizon... you hear that?)
Ok, the newest snap....yano, I think I pulled most of the snaps out of the cutting garden thinking they were weeds.. oh how bad is that!
then to top it of, I post it under sunflowers.. how lame is that! LOL!...
NOTE TO SELF: READ THE HEADLINES.. after getting new glasses.. that might help too!
Like the snapdragon. Still have a few blooming here which is shocking for July. Usually they bite the dust once it starts to really heat in up mid May. Here they are today. Not tall like they should be, but not bad for highs in the low 90's and lows around 80 every night since beginning of June.
Oh drooooool! Slobbber slobber! Those are gorgeous!
I swear its the water around here and the dirt.. um make that sand.. its feast or famine in growing some kinds of flowers.
Thanks Blossom. Up until the early 1980's this immediate area was undeveloped, and was grassland on the eastern edge of the Florida Everglades. It's a pretty good mixture of dark soil and sand and not rocky at all. It's decent soil to work with.
I have a diversity of soils.. part is some good dirt, but the ph is funky and it has lots of calcium. Then there is the gold sand. They used to mine the sand off this ground mnay moons ago. Took the better grade and left the course clayish sand. Some spots you can dig down and find blue clay. On the praire, dont sneeze you will blow all of the topsoil away as there is only a fine dusting. There is no fertility and if one was to put like a commercial fertilizer like the farmes do on their fields, it does not help becasue it disapates really fast. The land needs humous to hold the fertility in and it is what it is, very poor soil,
In the bog, there is this awesome peat layer.. its weird and pretty deep. If you get out on it at certain times of the year it feels like its floating on top of the wetland.
The water table is very high being that the area is a former lakebed. Then the water sources run weird.. I think the quality of the water has dropped drastically in 10 years. And its fickle. I would say its higher in nitrates over what it was when we first came and then the calcium levels seem to go up and down. That makes it hard to water sometimes because some plants do not like the changes and sometimes I get plant kills for no explained reason other than the water is wild.
Only a short list of plants will grow here. You cannot force them to thrive. One ounce of neglect and some plants are done before you start.
It is what it is, a very fickle freaky ecosystem. You either love it or hate it.. I have grown found of it. Simply because it truly is unique.
Makes gardening a challenge. And the prairie, the bog and oh yes, the savannah, every changing, never the same vegitaion in the same area from year to year. The plant colonies seem to come in wafts where one year they are very large, next year, nearly fizzeled.
Poison ivy, clover, some grasses, raspberries, maples, oaks, sassafras and a few more are prevelant natives.
I am amazed the sunnies like it where we have them year after year, but then we ammend that patch of soil each year with a dosage of unadulterated horse manure.
The land here is nothing that a bunch of organic manure would not cure or kill... dependign on what you are trying to do. And the rare species, well we certainly do not want to kill those.
Not too many variables here, although this summer it's been WAY hot and unusually dry. This winter was the second coldest on record and we've followed that up with the hottest May and hottest June on record. The average temperature for June (averaging high & low temps each day) in Ft Lauderdale was 84.9 degrees. 15 of the 30 nights in June the temperature did not drop below 80 degrees for a low. June is normally the wettest month with an average of 10 inches of rain. This June we had 4.5 inches. More of the same predicted for July.
Anyway, the Sunflowers are "very forgiving" and adapt to anything. Took a photo this morning of Sunflowers "Apricot Twist" behind the "Black And Blue" Salvia.
And the bees were busy at work on the "Velvet Queen" Sunflower. Sunflower "Strawberry Blonde" is hoping for some attention lurking in the background.
Very nice....
Ok, Jon, here it is, the sunflower in the hanging basket.. and yep, it bloomed.. um, its one of those...a-hem cant say the name of it ... B_ _ _ _ _ O _ _ ones..
Oh and the cranes are back! Only one baby made it though.
That's a nice Sunflower. I guess its a dwarf variety? There are some big ones coming along down here. They're still growing/getting taller.
I dont know how tall they are sposed to get, but out in the big B.O. patch, they are blooming at waste high, so I would say the one in the basket is stunted. The one in the field are hurting now for water.
They'll grow 12 months of the year down here. They grow their best, and reach their maximum potential when they're grown to bloom at the very beginning on summer when the daylight hours are the longest. The best choice, in Florida, during the short days of winter are the "Pro-Cut" series Sunflowers. They're daylength neutral and grow just as well during the shorter daylight hours of early winter.
Wonder if I could get a second crop if I "babied them in pots? I think its too late though myself.
I think it's bordering on "too late" also.
Story of my life, always too late.
Alright Jon, is this a calendula? If it is I got two of them and one is orange and this one.
Found them blooming in the cutting bed.
It's hard to tell. Could be, or possibly an Osteospermum (Cape Daisy/African Daisy)
no. its not any African daisy.. the leaves are not right for that.. Guess I should tak a better pic of that and show you.. ok.. back to the garden..
Sunflower blooming today. The seed package was purchased at Agway and it's labeled "Sunflower Orange Mahogany"
Well that sure is gorgeous!
Thanks. It has some real good branching traits, so there will be quite a few blooms off of this plant.
Last year i got a few packages seeds with only the subscribtion 'Sunflower' on it. I like these ones and would like to know there names.
1.
2.
Helianthus annuus 'Velvet Queen' ????
This message was edited Jul 16, 2010 2:38 PM
3.
4.
Aww man flinter those are awesome!
They're nice blooms. Not sure about the names on any of them. A couple of them look like a crossing between two different sunflowers.
I agree there Jon!
I love them all, but the #4 is my fav. I like the light and dark in the petals, that is very unusual!
Here's Sunflower "Mongolian Giant" opening in the front yard this evening. It's about 10-11 feet tall.
Yummy! Real nice thar Jon!
We ar egetting about ready to mow our patch. Its about spent. Dont know if we will dave any seed though. The birds pretty much done them in!
Thanks Blossom. I was outside tonight planting more Sunflower seeds. They can be grown all months of the year here, but the biggest/best blooms occur in the summer. I can't let them go to seed down here or else the wild parrots trash the flower beds. They'll even land on the Sunflowers that haven't bloomed yet and the weight of those green parrots will snap the Sunflower stalks.
didn't get my sunnies planted this year but I do have false sunflower Lorraine's Sunshine"
Oooh pretty Red!
Oh poor you on the parrots Jon! I grow my sunnies for the birds so tell your parrots to visit Blossom! LOL! Saw bluebirds, finches and a few others that appeared to be in bird heaven with the feast.
The birds here pretty well "trashed " my plot now and I will be mowing it down soon. I hope they liked them!
Very nice Patty. Like that Heliopsis and what looks like Torenia in the background. This is what we call "Beach Sunflower" (Helianthus debilis) in Florida. It grows along both coasts of Florida and is hardy in Zones 8-11.
Well, if I had a beach, Jon, that purdy thang could come this way anytime!
yup...torenia,one of my best annuals
We know Torenia well since it's a tropical plant.
I met torenadio once... dint do me no good up here.
