The deck gets a few planters each year, but most of the beauty that is visible late in the season is courtesy of the plants that grow up around the deck.
I love growing cannas. Their large, mostly upright leaves and bright, towering blooms have such a tropical feel. Here's a shot from a week or two ago that shows the red canna blooms rising above everything, with upright foliage (just below the deck in the photo), and more in the foreground:
We've had a good amount of rain in August here in St. Louis -- not too much, but a bit more than is normal -- and the garden is thriving for it. It's been a month since I showed you the back garden in the patio area, but it's really time for another look.
Even though most plants are ahead of schedule this year due to our early warm weather here in St. Louis, a few of my plants have emerged late.
I spent some time digging more elephant ears and cannas yesterday just before dark. I left some cannas in the ground as an experiment, and thought I would remove half or so of one large planting.
Because it's been so mild, there has not been any urgency in digging up the tropicals. Yes I dug and brought into the garage some of the papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) and the upright elephant ears (Alocasia macrorrhiza) quite a while ago, but the plants with tubers or rhizomes I've not worried about. Elephant Ears (Colocasia esculenta and others) and various cannas have been fine out there -- the ground has not yet frozen.
With the first hard freeze expected Saturday evening, I thought give you one last look at the stars of my late-season garden: the castor beans (Ricinus communis).
My first Wednesday Vignette post -- a meme hosted by Anna at Flutter and Hum -- takes a look at the most vibrant color in my front garden right now: orange!
This might be my favorite time of the year in the garden!
So I've finally gotten around to pulling the last of the plants out of the garage, and for me that means the ones that were put into tubs. The ones that have been out of sight and out of mind for the past five months or so.
I'm currently showing you some of my overwintering techniques, important because as I type this it is 16ºF (-9ºC). Sunday's high is forecast to be 77ºF (25ºC), but that doesn't help a plant that has been killed by the cold -- so unless I want to buy lots of new plants in the spring I need to protect some of them.
Recently I've been talking about winterizing -- getting my non cold-hardy plants protected for the winter. Those two cold nights we had early this week (21ºF) were the only real problem nights, with every other night at 27ºF or higher. Those two nights were enough though to make me bring dozens of potted plants into the garage, dig up elephant ear tubers, and cover my in-ground winter greens.
Last year I grew cannas for the first time, starting with just a couple of 'Tropicana' rhizomes that I got in a trade and adding a mid-summer bargain with Canna 'Paton'. This year due to the expanding nature of Cannas I had more Tropicana and Paton plants -- I think the number of 'Paton' in my yard tripled -- and I added Canna 'Wyoming', the "regular" green-leaved canna, and this Canna indica 'Madeira':
I've noticed some cool and interesting things in my garden over the past week. Some more obvious than others.
A couple of weeks ago I picked up a few filler plants for my driveway border, and while at the garden center took a look around for any bargain plants. There are usually great deals to be found during the "bad" parts of summer, and I was hoping to find a few sun-loving perennials for a project I'm going to be starting soon.
The Canna cultivar named 'Tropicanna' is a beauty.
When I was in school there were always kids in the winter who came to the bus stop with wet hair. When it was cold enough, there'd always be somebody who said something like "your hair will break off if it freezes". I personally doubt this will actually occur, but I'm pretty sure I know who started this rumor (if it in fact is untrue).
A few weeks ago I got a couple of tropical cannas on clearance, and potted them up. They're both doing well, but one of them is doing a little better than the other, and has put up its first new flower stalk. (I expect the other one to do the same as I can see several developing, but they're not quite there yet.)
Last weekend I didn't do much in the garden, as I was focused on some projects around the house, but I did manage to hit the nearby nurseries to see what sort of late-summer bargains I could find. It was a bit early for one of the two nurseries, as they didn't have very many sales plants yet, but the other one had a bunch of red "sale" tags on all sorts of plants. Remembering that I still have a driveway full of plants, I restrained myself and only purchased a single plant.
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