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Lilies

We plant our lilies in the fall, much preferring the Orientals like the white ones above or the pink Star Gazers. We plant them twice as deep as the package says to, it keeps the animals from digging them up. Lilies flower in August, filling up the air with their fragrance. The Orientals smell wonderful, the more common day lilies have little scent.

When the lilies start coming up through the mulch in the spring any bulbs showing two stalks are dug up and split into two and replanted. Sometimes there are as many as eight sprouts in a group.

Our lilies grow to five or six feet tall, with 20 to 30 blooms on each plant. They can become very top heavy so we usually have to stake them as they grow.

Dahlias - A very prolific flower in our area, the dahlia is available in most every color and size you can think of from small two and three inch flowers to nine to eleven inch dinner plate dahlias. The Dahlia is a tuber that has to be planted after the last frost, if you are in an area where winters are cold and the ground freezes you have to dig them up and store them inside over the winter.

They are excellent as cut flowers, coming sometime in Late June and lasting through October in our area. They are also Japanese beetle magnets, so if you're bringing them inside make sure to get all the bugs out first.

Cutting the flowers off encourages more growth, so don't be afraid to cut them .

Babys Breath Picked up as a potted plant in a garden center while we were getting other stuff from the garden, we were surprised at how well this plant did in the yard. Besides being a flower the cat loves to eat, it makes a great decoration for the roses when they are cut and put in a vase. It's hardy over the winter, cut it back, mulch it just like you would do the roses, and in the spring when you are sure it died over the winter it will start growing again.

Coc ks Comb

Three years ago my wife attended a shower where these were the flowers on the tables. She took one home and we collected the seeds that form at the base of the flower (little picture). Each plant gives hundreds of seeds. The next spring we germinated the seeds, started them inside and moved them outside when they were big enough. Each plant yields one or two flowers. We collect the seeds and repeat the process the next year. The flowers are intensely red in color, we have seen them in pale green or white in buckets at the street vendors in New York. We have always said we were going to try the other colors, but have not gotten around to it yet. Dried, the flowers last quite a while. Cut in water they will last as long as the room is cool, if it gets too warm they droop over. The longer they are left on the plant the bigger and better the seed yield will be.

Morning Glory - One of my favorite flowers since I was a kid, the morning glory is also one of the easiest to grow. Toss a bunch of seeds on the ground, watch the plant climb to 10 to 15 feet tall, and in August you will be presented with hundreds of flowers with the morning sun. These look great growing up a mailbox, light pole, or an arbor. Against a fence they make a great privacy screen.

Morning Glories come in Red, Blue, Pink, and White. The red and blues come in both a light and dark variety. The vines produce hundreds of seeds at the end of the season to plant the next year, not to mention the ones they drop on their own.

Impatiens - A summer favorite, this variety looks like little roses. They start blooming in early summer, and continue until the first frost. We had not seen this variety before and they were in short supply this summer. We grew them in hanging baskets as we could not buy enough to put along the walkway. We used the regular impatiens for that.

Butterfly Bush - While not much to look at, the butterfly bush attracts butterflies on a daily basis. After we put the bush in the ground (it was available at the end of the season at Home Depot for something like ten dollars) a few small butterflies came by on a daily basis. In a couple of weeks we soon had between six and 12 of the larger butterflies like the one in the picture. The plant grew very quickly and continued to flower until the first hard frost. Our plant is blue, there are other colors available, we will be adding to the collection with different colors next year.

Iris - The iris plants fill in the flowerless void between the end of the tulips and the beginning of the summer flowers, like the Roses and the Lilies.

Iris plants come in many sizes and colors. The small ones (pictured here) are real easy to grow, they don't seem to care if they are in sun or shade. The ones in the shade come out a couple weeks later then the ones in the sun do.

Iris plants are with out a doubt the squirrels favorite of all my bulbs. A couple of years ago the iris plants all came up, in the back yard, under a real ugly tree. My wife thought I was nuts for planting them there, and didn't believe me when I told her I didn't plant them. A pesky squirrel dug up all my bulbs and hid them away for the winter, and they all grew there in the spring. The giant ones (bearded ones) are beautiful. If you notice the tops of the plants being ripped off it is just as likely it is the blackbirds pecking them off (don't know why, but there they were one day taking all the flowers off two of my plants) as it is the neighbors.