Can someone give me an idea of about how long it takes for Tall phlox to establish a mature clump?
~julie~
Tall Phlox - What can I expect?
Three to five years, depending on how big it was when you bought it.
Pam
If you need more I have plenty of the tall white one that doesn't get mildew: trade?
Thanks Pam...That's pretty much what I needed to know. This is the first time I've grown phlox and I've planted my new 'plantlings' in some pretty tight experimental locations. :-D I just needed to know whether I'd made a terrible mistake should they be very fast growers.
pirl...that's a sweet offer, and one I'd be tempted to take you up on *if* I had anything to trade. LOL
Thank you both for your responses...it's very much apprecated.
~julie~
If it's not resistent to mildew (the type of phlox you bought) then "tight experimental locations" will be certain to give it to you. They need a lot of good air circulation.
If it does develop you can dig it up, cut it back, and hope for the best. Just keep in mind that the roots are the important part, not the top growth, so even if you lose the flowers due to cutting back, you'll still have the plant for future years and it will be stronger than if you had let it flower! :-))
LOL
pirl...by "tight location" I'm talking about planting it closely with spring bulbs (Frittilaria to be specific). I stayed away from planting Phlox for a long time because I knew they could get really ugly very quickly with the mildew problem. But I think, since I won't be digging the frits like I would Iris or daylilies, the two plants should be able to coexist. (I *hope*!)
I bought several of the white (David) variety...those may be planted a bit too close to other perennials such as Shasta Becky and double balloon flowers. But if the phlox don't multiply too quickly there, everything should be 'ok'.
Thank you again for your response. It's nice to 'meet' people with interests in specific plants. (I get to 'pick brains' that way ;-))
~julie~
I'm sure I must have David but the nursery said it was it's own breed. Anyhow, make sure you mark where the frits are so if you want to move them (after the phlox grows) you'll know where (exactly) to dig.
Mine co-exists happily with Asiatics, the Balloon Flower and Russian Sage.
Half the fun (?) is in moving things anyhow! :-))
Boy do I ever *know* about moving! LOL Do you have any photos of the combination of the Russian Sage with the Phlox? I'd love to see an example. I have several different types of sage in the same bed with my phlox...although it's such a large bed I doubt they'll 'meet' each other.
~julie~
I know I have phlox photos but I think they show the orange Asiatics and blue Russian Sage and it could have been too early for the Balloon Flower to be showing off. I'll look right now.
So sorry, couldn't find it. I know another spot where I posted it so I'll try and hunt that down now.
Well, 15 minutes of looking and I still can't find it. Bet you can tell my photos are not organized as my index cards for my daylilies are!
The best thing to do with mildewed summer phlox is to take your glasses off and enjoy the fuzzy, impressionistic result. Any other garden defects will instantly disappear.
Also, don't forget to confiscate spectacles of any visitors for the duration of the visit. Shirley1md got loose in my garden with a digital camera last weekend, but she was very discrete with it. I'll let her keep her glasses on when she comes back.
That's so true! If all your guests can comment on is the mildew then "Don't let the garden gate hit you in the butt on your way out".
Karen I LOVE that idea! LOL Maybe I shouldn't have had those cataract surgeries after all. I could have enjoyed my garden even more. hehehe
Pirl...I've got this thread 'watched' so if you find those pics, or the thread, please let me know.
~julie~
pirl - so glad I wasn't slurping coffee over my keyboard when I read your post. There must have been an awful lot of butts deserving of a garden gate for me to laugh this hard. But I won't start. Needed that laugh.
Julie, we always get up to the ridiculous, don't we?
Woodthrush, nice to meetcha.
Karen you and I go *way* back with going from the rediculous to the sublime! :-D
pirl...don't pay any attention to Karen...she'll just get you mixed up with someone who has the same name as you. (hehehehe)
~julie~
Julie - I'm sure the photo was part of one of the many wonderful Color Echoes threads but I couldn't find it. Since we're supposed to have rain until Easter I'll have time to look.
Bluespiral - As far as I'm concerned guests should at least make an attempt to be pleasant. If they don't then it's "Love it or leave it and goodbye". I don't expect anyone to fall all over the gardens or to ooh and aah but at least they can find something nice to say. One neighbor, not finding weeds to comment on, asked, "And what have we here?" about some plants I was trying out as ground cover possibilities and I wanted to see how they'd perform. Her question wasn't just inquisitive, it was insulting - the look on her horrified face spoke volumes.
Since she's a collector, now when I visit I make it a point to ask, "What is this exquisite bush?" and she replies, "Just a weed we haven't gotten around to getting rid of yet". She has such a glorious collection of them. Grin. Smirk. Smile.
I guess my most trying visitor was someone I love very much: Dad. DD was an army inspector general, and would go from one weed to the next as if there were no garden anywhere in sight like a cat after a mouse. And the garden was where I exerted myself - not indoors. Indoors, though, considering his propensity for order and tidiness, he was a saint - just had a faraway, bemused expression.
But, pirl, I have a lot of fun "trying things out" like you - am always experimenting - surprises from Mother Nature just don't seem to be enough for me.
Some visits from other DGers are like visits from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Boy, does the trowel fly, and being around such gentle, sweet people with such a surprising passion for plants is such a trip - LOL. However, there is one DGer who says that when she comes to visit, she just wants to sit and visit. That will be great, too.
So, I guess that since the particular butt I had in mind for the garden gate thing has moved, there aren't any candidates right now. But, I'm sure, since I do my gardening off on my own planet, there may be some out there...
It makes me feel that God put some people on this good earth just to make the rest of us look great!
pirl, I really must stay away from coffee around your posts - ROFL. We like contrast in our garden. Since I prefer to get all grungy in private, it's the gardens in the back that get the most work, not the front. For the front, I like to cultivate the look of something ancient and abandoned, like this poem:
In an Abandoned Garden, by Han-Shan trans. Burton Watson
My house is at the foot of the green cliff,
My garden, a jumble of weeds I no longer bother to mow.
New vines dangle in twisted strands
Over old rocks rising steep and high.
Monkeys make off with the mountain fruits,
The white heron crams his bill with fish from the pond,
While I, with a book or two of the immortals,
Read under the trees - mumble, mumble.
So who makes whom look good? Does my garden make Dad's garden look good, or does his make mine look good? A lot shifts with a twist in perception, but I agree with what you imply - that manners - attending to how your behavior/comments make people feel - should be like bedrock.
Well, we have squirrels instead of monkeys, gray herons not white, and the house is above not below a wall not a cliff.
I enjoyed the poem and like the rustic look of gardens but seeing a much older neighbor's garden one day, when I went over to get a birthday card signed by her, was dismaying. It was a tangle of weeds and overgrown plants, dying plants and dead plants. They're too old to keep up and are afraid of what hired help would do to their plants. They have the money, that's obvious, but have left their gardens (on their waterfront property) go to a serious point of neglect. If the time comes for us I hope we'd sell rather than look out upon "what was".
Your question is an easy one: the people who point out what plant is in the wrong spot, or needs more or less sun, more or less moisture, how the colors are "wrong" together, etc. are the ones who put haloes on our head. They're the same ones who aren't too shy to scream, "What on earth did you do to this variegated holly" - okay, so I prune with an axe - just deal with it!
The ones I can't take, even worse than the ones who make judgements that I don't want to hear, are the ones who say, "How nice", two hundred times. It lets you know, loud and clear, they don't like gardens. They have no appreciation of the hard work involved keeping a garden neat, clean, tended to. For them: don't let the car door hit you in your broad beam upon your departure.
Sorry if I sound like I have miserable visitors but spit happens.
I'm so loving these posts! It really makes me appreciate the fact that I live deep in the woods with no neighbors or visability from the road! I love the look of a garden that has a wildflowery feel; like the plants occured there naturally. Here in a woodland environment it suits the surroundings, but I often wonder if it just looks like pure madness to visitors. But it is great not to have to worry about the wheel barrow or water hose being left in the yard for a few days while projects are completed a bit at a time. And when it comes down to it, the garden is for my therapy-so like pirl said, love it or leave it!
As for phlox, I was pleasantly suprised that mildew was'nt a problem for me. The drought, hot weather, and humidity I thought would surely give me grief, but I only have 1 clump that has a bit of mildew, and that just started in the last couple of weeks, and it gets better air circulation than some of the others. The infected variety is 'Prime Minister', but I have another clump of it with no mildew. 'David', 'Bright Eyes', 'Amethyst', 'Orange Perfection', 'Sandra', and 'Becky Towe' have all remained mildew free, and I'm bad for planting a bit too densely. Neal.
Pirl and Karen...you both have made me LOL at both of your attitudes. AND like Gemini_sage...made me feel SO fortunate that I live off the beaten path where no one but *me* has to look at my mess, my tools, my ineptitude (I think that's a word! hehehe) about knowing what to plant where, how to care for it, and if it will even *try* to grow for me.
I've just spent this whole morning sorting through my photos of my gardens from the very beginning (you know...where there's nothing but an outline dug in the ground) to the full beautiful fireworks display of the month of July...and on through the cutting back, digging out, transplating, to the wonderful feeling of accomplishment when I actually *see* the last 'hoorah' of the chrysanthemums and asters.
It's been a FANTASTIC year for me. Only the second year I've been able to have my garden. After 40 years of kids, a husband, and a job...now I can PLAY!! and God help the person who walks into MY yard and starts spouting their superiority attitude about what *I* have done in and with it.
IT may not be P. Allen Smith's garden...but it I live long enough (and the money and my DH don't give out on me before then!) I'm going to have a garden I can be proud of. And if the only people who see it are the ones that ride by on horses on a weekend afternoon...(they're the ones who never fail to comment on how *nice* my flowers look!) I'll be happy!
Now...where on earth did THAT outburst come from. hehehe
G_sage...Becky Towe is one of the phlox varieties that I'm dying to get my hands on. I just bought a couple of 'collections' (multiple plants of several named varieties) from Spring Hill. I've had really good luck with their plants so far...and I'm really hoping these will do well, even if it did take S.H. a little too long to send my order (ordered in mid-August...got them earlier this week...and *yes* they're planted. ~grin~)
I'm really enjoying this little conversation...hope you'll all be back.
~julie~
Spring Hill's plants always grew for me. Their Golden Marguerite, with the gold and yellow is so terrific with yellow daylilies. I've never had a plant of theirs die on me.
Some of the nicest compliments on my garden ----------- think I'll do a thread instead so I won't be hijacking.
HEY!!! Wait a minute! You're NOT hijacking!! I'm having fun here. LOL
Please give us the link if you DO start that thread.
~julie~
Lord! I did start the thread "Some of the nicest compliments.." but forgot the forum. I'll look it up.
Same as this one, right under it.
This message was edited Oct 14, 2005 2:13 PM
I do take some pride in our patch of "silvers" clothing the stones and tiny ponds out the back door. A brug Shirley1md traded with me last weekend has been blooming for 3 days and I'm beside myself with its wafting fragrance and fairy-tale pink against artemisia 'Powis Castle' over a low stone wall. Who would have thought evolvulus - velvety gray-green leaves cascading by the "waterfall" would be hardy to zone 4? Thanks to Critterologist, all sorts of thymes are spreading over the stones and low walls while rosemary and santolina set the herbal tone.
But! the Front. The neighborhood has become gentrified, and we are just a tad gleeful about selecting our rattiest jeans to hang out on the porch when we do laundry. We're behind in weeding, but would start to itch should all the weeds disappear. The pines and apple trees are beyond mature, but I selected them in the first place for the happiness they would bring to feathered friends. My reasoning was that if apple trees had to be sprayed so much in order to get any fruit, then there must be oodles of bugs to delight the birds, and we have had the most wonderful visits from golden warblers the past couple of weeks. So far, I have not heard any comments to the effect that I would wish for a garden gate to make a retort to anyone's butt.
I do like the contrast between wild and woolly and well-behaved goody two-shoe gardening.
Julie, I love hearing about your garden coming into existence after such a long time of being just a wish. It was about 10 years after moving here that I allowed myself to spend money on a plant "just for pretty" - white summer phlox 'Mt. Fuji'. The neighborhood was pretty uncouth and things had been getting torn up or trampled outdoors. No worries about how things looked then - so many things are mixed blessings aren't they? Did you just up and announce all of a sudden, two years ago, that you were going to have a garden? That's what I did. After growing up in a relatively authoritarian household, what a shock when DH let me do anything I wanted in the garden. :)
Everyone - anything you're especially chortlesome about or not? Pirl, that Golden Marguerite has an old-fashioned flavor about it, which I love. Is it one of those anthemis? I probably have too much shade for it, but enjoy hearing about it anyway. And Pirl, I do enjoy hearing about nettlesome visitors - my neighbors used to stand on the property line and shoot at me with their air guns and BB guns for their own amusement. I would ignore them - didn't see to where any kind of dialog could constructively lead. So, no apologies needed on my account. I'm having great fun with the "Don't let the hmmm swat your hmmm on your way out" theme here.
Neal, "bad for planting densely"? The reason why my phlox is a hotbed of mildew is that I planted tall sweet peas thickly on top of it last April. The phlox had just been transplanted to its new home, and I reasoned that since it was swimming in all that space that it would never notice - Not!
I hope this silliness continues - thanks for starting it Julie.
Blue Spiral: As much as I do complain about some folks, not many, with their haughty opinions, while they allow their own expensive trees to die because they delay too long in planting them and don't even water them, there are so many people who tell us how much they love our garden. Everyone who visited our gardens under the Garden Talk forum was so generous with their compliments.
Hi again Karen...you know me, I'm good at starting 'silliness.' LOL
I just love your way with words and the word pictures you paint to describe your garden. (hehehe "rattiest jeans to hang on the porch" I can just imagine that happening. Sounds like your neighborhood would fit my MIL perfectly.)
My garden(s) was/were started because I hated to look out from my screened porch and the most impressive (read that distasteful!) thing that caught my eye were the septic system standpipes and that nasty concrete tank collar. I *had* to find some way of covering them up. I honestly didn't realize that I was in the beginning stages of becoming a full-fledged garden freak. And I also didn't realize what a challenge I was setting up for myself. (You can't plant trees and shrubs over a septic system because the roots will cause no end of trouble.)
The main part of my involvement with plants started innocently enough. Only a couple of 1/2 barrel containers with wave petunias to hide the standpipes. That looked pretty silly. So I dug up a smallish kidney-shape bed between them and planted a dozen or so named daylilies. (I knew that daylily roots wouldn't go deep enough to bother the septic system and, since I'd be dividing them every few years, I'd be aware of trouble should they cause any later.)
They just weren't 'enough' so I added a little more, and a little more, and a....well, let's just say for some reason...It may have been because I found DG...it all got out of control. LOL
I found the following pics...I think they tell a good part of the story.
I went from this:
To this:
To this: (This summer)
...admittedly, it's not great. But it is a start. For now I just call it my 'Test Plot.' LOL It'll get better with time...and so will I.
Hi Pirl...we were posting at the same time. :-)
~julie~
Beautiful progression Julie! How proud you must (and should!) be. I see less to mow every year in your future! Glad to see you've been well biten by the gardening bug. Neal.
:-)
Thanks Neal. I'm not sure about the 'pride' part of it...but I do know I'm *tired*. LOL
And if less mowing was a consequence...why is my DH happy about that? ;-)
~julie~
I love what you've done and you must, too! Doss, from Stanford, CA, uses boulders to hide standpipes and such. It's worked for me, so far.
I, too, started the gardening here, to avoid Jack hitting a small standpipe that had been linked to a generator. I, too, made a garden around it. Now it's 28 gardens later......................and 1,364 hybrid daylilies, all we've bought, all I've received and am still receiving in trades........................
Have fun. You're doing a great job.
Pirl! 28 gardens later!!! I don't think I'll live long enough to do that! LOL
...I'd *love* to have boulders and stone in my yard. But, unfortunately, in this area all we have are the 'decomposed' kind. You know...it's called SAND! :-D
Thanks for the compliments but most of all thanks for the encouragement...it means a lot. (Oh, and thanks for the inspriation, as well!)
~julie~
Once you convince him that he'll have less mowing to do if you have more gardens, the rest is just plants and sweat. No problem.
Now I have to convince Jack that the driveway is just too large: he's admitted it in the past. I have a girlfriend with a pick axe and she's offered to help. Gee, I made him his favorite meal last night, so I'm wondering how I can convince him...............Hmmmmmmmmmm.
Just keep on going Julie. You can look up on DG for winter playtime with something like Super Turfa or some such name (I'm relying on people to chime in to help Julie out here!) and make pieces large enough to disguise the rock. It's done with some kind of special cement and kits seem to be found in craft stores.
Julie, you've done a fabulous job hiding those ugly pipes, your garden looks like it's been there forever! We have a mound system, and a big ugly round thingy I've been trying to hide for 5 years. Have some stella d'oros that are helping but I need something taller, last summer I put a strawberry pot right on top of it and that worked out pretty good. Since we have to dig up the bed that's near it every other year for pumping, I try to put shallow rooted bloomers in there, so they can be easily moved. Persuaded DH that the ditch lilies are a big pain so he donated them all to his buddy who doesn't care what grows as long as it blooms.
Next year..........will be better.........
M5 - so neat!!!!!!!!!! Your home and gardens look wonderful.
~grin~ Pirl...I just see you and your friend out there 'pick-axing' the edges of that drive way. LOL It kind of reminds me of something I did waaaay back in the mid 60's to something my DH thought was "So COOL". In one house we had, the evergreens in front of the house had grown far past "pretty' so he decided he'd make 'topiaries' out them. I think he worked all of one whole weekend triming those shrubs until they looked like 'out-of-whack' poodles. (I hated it!! ...but that was then, this is now.)
So when he went to work on Monday morning, I proceeded to go outside with a hack saw and an axe... The old retired guy that lived across the street sat outside ALL day and watched me do my thing. Late in the afternoon, he'd finished several glasses of Iced Tea and finally wondered over...shook his head...and said "Eric's gonna kill you." and walked away.
By the time Eric got home at 5 that evening, I had the whole thing clean as a whistle...new flower beds dug and even had a few little mairgolds planted where his work of art had been.
He didn't really say anything. UNTIL a few nights ago. I have no idea what brought it up but he said "I'm mad at you." I asked why. He got a funny look on his face and said "Do you remember when we lived in Illinois...and you chopped down the bushes I'd made into bonsai or something like that?" I just looked down at my lap...afraid I'd burst out in hysterical laughter...and said "Yep! I sure do!" (and all the time I'm remembering how GOOD it felt to work SO hard and I got what *I* wanted. hehehe)
So the pick-ax and the driveway definitely hit home with me. LOL
Thanks, Sheila...I *love* your back yard. It's gorgeous! Those decks...Terrific! And you've done a great job of hiding your 'unmentionable' under and behind those daylilies.
Your tank cover is UNDER the soil!?!??? Lucky you! I'd much rather have mine without the 12" above ground collar...but the code now tells us that we have to *leave* it above ground. Don't ask me why. It's a PITA *big time*. If mine was below grade, I'd just build some kind of portable planters or even put a gazebo area over it. And I wouldn't even mind if *I* had to be the one to dig it up when the mandatory clean outs had to be done.
Here's mine...just LOOK at where it sits!
Thanks for the kind words, DH is very helpful with the gardens. He's all for more flowers and less grass to mow!!
The septic lid where the stellas are is about 8" above ground, but the other one behind it, and closer to the house, is more at ground level, so we've made a shallow bed over it. Since mound systems require pumping every two years, we have to dig it up for access to the second tank. We don't have those stand pipes for the drainage field like a regular septic so all we have to deal with above ground is that big round one hiding behind the stellas..
Now if I can convince DH to finish putting up lattice under the deck,and make a gate for the mower to go in and out, it will be a better view. I like messy full-to-the-max flower beds and am gradually getting there. I only have one variety of phlox but hope to add some more next year. I have all winter to plan............! Garden catalogs start arriving right after Christmas, don't they?