Ahem... DC, your kindergartner is showing. Too much time spent with the child lately?

there is no such thing as too much time with the child!!!!

i STAY at a 2nd grade level....keeps the playing field much more level

Did you watch the TV show King of the Hill? If you did, do you remember the episode where Bobby decides he wants to grow roses, and he enters one in a rose show, and everybody there is sooooo weird? Yeah, it's actually a pretty accurate portrayal of a rose show lol :rofl:

---------- Post added at 01:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:07 PM ----------

I do very little to my roses except for a hard prune once a year in early fall or so. Depending on the weather on a given year, I sometimes still have roses in bloom into early December. Pulling the leaves off couldn't possibly do anything but harm the plant. That's crazy.

Daylily time...
http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3228.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3229.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3230.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3231.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3234.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3235.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3245.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3247.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3248.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3249.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3250.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...MG_3251_1_.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3256.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3257.JPG

And a couple of latana, just because I like them...

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3255.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3254.JPG

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[/COLOR]There's more, but I got tired of taking pictures for now. :biggrin:

Boom!!!
What a paradise!

WW, gorgeous!

And, you have all of them labeled, no? 😘

:dunno::whistling:chicken:badh:

why would you want to write daylily that many times???

:biggrin:

:rofl: He does have a point Dolly!

WW, you were in the business. You know that some people are VERY persnickety about labels! Having been in the nursery business and around suppliers, dealers, and growers, they have to be persnickety. (Ray is even persnickety about labeling orchids correctly, WW you are persnickety about punctuation.)

I can remember a customer standing in my parking lot screaming at me over a cultivar of Pennisetum alopecuroides (was it 'Moudry' or...?)The Terra Verde club was visiting his garden and he wanted everything perfect. I had been calling a hosta 'Savannah' for years. Last week I dug up the tag when I divided the plant. It read 'Moonlight Sonata.'

So, I get that you are trying to be funny, however, labels do matter. To some more than others. Since my daylilies came from a grower friend, I can pretty much tell you what they are. It doesn't matter to me much anymore but, if I wanted to buy a particular one, it would.

i was just trying to be hilarious


i also know that WW just DGAF about that and so i saw the joke opening and went for it.

I am the guy with tags on the orchids i mount in trees lol

After 35 years of on and off trying, I got a day lily to survive long enough to flower early this summer. I have to admit I don't much like the modern frilly polyploid hybrids that fall over without staking. I like the narrower-flowered oranges or yellows.

The flower buds and just-opened flowers are tasty dipped in egg batter, and fried. Like squash blossoms.

I think it's your climate. Mine are always upright. I don't like picking off the mush mummies every day. But I have some darned pretty ones!

Most folks who get into water gardens in my neck of the woods aren't that into labels. I knew more than was necessary most of the time, and made a lot of eyes glaze over.

And labels don't matter much to me... once I have it. Not that I wouldn't purchase anyway if I liked the plant. Now if I don't have the plant and want something specific, yes... it matters. I count on whoever is selling to know what it is if I ask for something specific. There's a local nursery here in town that's horribly bad about it... mislabels everywhere. Obviously they don't get business from me very often.

Actually, I do know the names of most of those daylilies. Not worth it unless someone wants to know. And I wasn't trying to be funny... I WAS funny. Just not so much to you. :biggrin:

Me? Persnickety about punctuation? Okay, don't forget grammar, dangling participles, prepositions at end of sentences, and the WORST... spelling! :blushing:

---------- Post added at 12:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 PM ----------

ES... I think it must be your climate as well. None of my daylilies are droopy. Speaking of which, I need to put up another, better, picture of one. You would like it, and it's an interesting story....

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Okay, first is one I forgot to put up. It's my second favorite of all of them. It's called Baja..

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3297.JPG

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3298.JPG

My very favorite is a dark purple yellow throat shown above (the big one, not little one. It's Bela Lugosi... and I'm not sure if it's my favorite because of the color or the name. Possibly both.

Then here's the one I was saying had an interesting story....

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3300.JPG

I got it a loooong time ago from someone who was trying to hybridize Stella d'Oro to make different colors with the same characteristics of Stella. Not a clue as to what was put with it. It came to me with a lab rat name like S2D1224X. It doesn't look the same as it originally did. More of the dark orange, very little yellow, and the shape of the petals got longer and skinnier. It didn't pan out for what this guy was looking for. Wanted shorter compact plant, more yellow.

This is THE most prolific daylily I've ever had. And past hardy. It's ridiculous. And tons of blooms... once it gets going (a little late to the party each year) it doesn't stop until long after everything else is long gone. I've divided, divided, and divided it. It's my third favorite daylily. I sometimes wonder if it was crossed with ditch lilies. If nothing else, it's a one-of-a-kind.

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And speaking of ditch lilies. Here's a sport of some sort of ditch lilies. I have a row of ditch lilies along front driveway... about 10' wide and 30-40' long. About thirty years ago I started seeing these guys pop up in them. Dug them up, replanted elsewhere. They stay true to this form... kind of a double ditch lily. Plants just never cease to amaze me...

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3305.JPG

This is a fun thread, I don't have a lot of room for flowers in my yard but I did inherit a few beds that I have tried to keep up when I purchased the house.

A few day lillies, some Asiatic lillies, peonies, and hostas were in place when I moved in.

I have added some native species in the last few years. Coneflowers, milkweed, bee balm, sneezeweed, and hyssop have been fun additions. These all attract tons of bees and other pollinators, it's been pretty dry this year so they aren't blooming as well as in the past. Ideally I'd ditch the non-natives and replace them but I have a hard time digging up an established plant to just throw it away.

Lily would be my favorite flower if orchid didn't exist. Though I love them both.

WW, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I have quite a few daylilies on order to ship this fall at the appropriate planting time. I've always loved them, but never got into growing them, but then I see all the really fine ones you have, and I decided it was time to give it a shot. I'll show you pictures next summer when they bloom. Off hand I don't remember any of the names of the varieties, although I could check my invoice and find out, but that sounds like a lot of work right now lol

You know reading this I think I've been spoiled through the years. I've been great friends with daylily hybridizers and growers, toured their fields, known people famous in the business. And I just take all this for granted. It's actually pleasant to hear the delight that you guys get out of what I've come to think of as fairly commonplace. No snobbery intended. There's just an irony here.

There are LOTS of things in this world we presume are commonplace which really aren't to others. That's why it's so fun to share. Ya never know what you consider to be common will be someone else's golden child.

Which reminds me Dolly... gotta go get some pictures of my ferns! :biggrin:

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Who likes cleome? A poor picture, due to wind, but you get the drift...

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...ium/cleome.JPG

And I pulled the wrong lotus from the pond this spring to put into my 100 gallon barrel in the flower bed. It was SUPPOSED to be one of the miniatures. Instead it's Lavendar Lady. First shot, me standing next to it attempting a picture... it's about 7' tall.

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...ium/Lotus2.JPG

Here it is with me bending it over almost in half to get a top view...

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/IMG_3324.JPG

And these are some water lilies called Colorado, which are waaaaay down there at the surface of the barrel...

http://www.orchidboard.com/community...m/Colorado.JPG

Not one of my favorites, but it's one of the favorites of most folks around here, as it's a very easy and prolific bloomer.

---------- Post added at 11:58 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:56 AM ----------

PS And yes, Dolly, that lotus... this is one of those times I should have looked at the label before moving. Hard to tell what it is when you're looking at dry stems and mud in the spring. :biggrin:

Dolly nods knowingly .......

I LOVE cleome. I didn't plant any at my new house yet, but I always had a ton of it at my house in Oklahoma.

ES suggested I buy my caladiums from Caladium World (I understand you can do this better in Florida, DC.) I think my boxes turned out well this year.

those look AWESOME!
very well done.

:bowing


i don't have any of those but i wish i did...

Those are some fine caladiums! I have some, but they're just he common ones you can buy as little corms in sawdust in plastic bags early in the spring at Lowe's and Home Depot. They're doing great and I love those, but yours are unique and lovely. I'm gonna check out Caladium World.

Thank you.

Nice one WW! I like lotus flowers a lot ..... and water lily flowers too.

Other than orchids, I also like Epiphylums but I don't have them as much as the orchids in my garden.

I just love Bougainvillea, tricky to grow in the UK climate so has to be in the greenhouse. A cutting was brought back from Spain, we think, early 1980s. We now have three plants two seriously pot bound and the third which I planted directly into the ground within the greenhouse, it has made a huge difference.

http://photographs.swain.me.uk/bougainvillea.jpg

Love the bougies!!

Nice color there!

Very pretty! :)

Two types of jasmine sambac are currently covered in buds and blooms...Maid of Orleans and Belle of India (elongated petal form) and every night, the fragrance is heavenly. My Brassavola nodosa is in bloom, too, but the fragrance, while strong, is definitely not nearly as wonderful as that of the jasmine.

I know this is an old thread, but I was thinking about how to properly care for my roses base on the information you gave me. At the time we were having this discussion, I only had one rose I had not planted yet, so I went ahead and planted the graft union below the surface of the soil as you suggested, and it did better than all the others which I have planted with the graft union level with the soil, although I still disagree with you about grafted roses being weak and short lived :) And I also disagree with your assessment of Jackson and Perkins. I've bought some very nice, long-lived grafted hybrid teas from them, as well as from Witherspoon Roses, but that's no matter, we all have our own opinions :)

My question is about pruning. You said to prune in late summer. I usually prune in about February just as the dormant buds are starting to swell to grow new canes. My concern is that my roses are still growing and blooming, and I'm worried that if I prune now, those dormant buds will start to grow, and then when we finally have a hard freeze, the tender new growth will get frozen and die. What are your thoughts on that? I've never had problems pruning in February, but you were right about burying the graft union, so you could certainly be right about the pruning, so I wanted your thoughts. Should I go ahead and do it now, even though summer has passed, or should I wait until February like usual, and then try pruning in the summer next year?

On established roses, I usually cut quite a few of the blooms and bring them in, which prunes them some degree throughout the summer, but since I just moved into this house, all my roses are new, and I like to give them a year to get established before I start cutting on them as they bloom.

You didn't ask me but, 5 minutes ago I read an article that said prune hip high in fall, knee high in spring. Since my roses are now pitiful because I can't use Three in One, I'm not a credible source.

Whether I asked you or not, I certainly appreciate the input. You always have helpful things to say and I value your opinions. That actually makes more sense to me than hard pruning in the summer. If you hard prune in the summer, they're just going to keep growing and get big again. Right now, my Midas Tough has a huge flush of new growth with lots of buds, and my Desert Peace has been growing and blooming nonstop all fall, and it has quite a few buds on it now also, and the fall flowers when it is cooler are as nice as the first flowers of the spring before it gets hot, so I certainly don't want to prune yet and cut off all those buds. I did prune on mine a little bit last week, just to remove canes that were too thin, and some wood that had leaves with black spot that I would have ended up pruning later anyway, but I left them mostly intact.

But why can't you use Three in One? I never had any disease problems on my roses in Oklahoma except for the occasional scale, and horticultural oil knocked that right out, so this is my first year to encounter any other disease. It isn't widespread, it's just on a few leaves on a couple of my plants, but I was thinking about using Three in One next year to prevent it from even beginning at all. Is there something wrong with Three in One? I try to avoid chemicals, but my roses are very important to me, so I don't mess around, and I'm willing to make an exception and use chemicals on my roses if that's the most effective way to keep them in top shape.

But I was wondering about ES's rationale for his pruning suggestion, and whether it might or might necessarily apply to my climate, as Dallas is very different from Phoenix, weather wise.

Our Indiana climate is not known for its great roses. I quit using anything systemic outdoors so as not to harm any pollinators. My garden is au natural now.

:bowing

It is a lot more work with out chemicals but strangely rewarding. Not in the flowers or fruits and veggies sense, but rewarding none the less

I joke but it is more work and I salute you bc the pollinators are for all of us and they are in danger

Roses grow and flower throughout our winters. We don't get enough frost to damage plants nor flowers. Their struggle is to survive our summers, when they hardly grow at all. Summer rose flowers here are about an inch in diameter and burn shortly after they begin opening. Roses need as many leaves as possible to make it through the summer, which dictates pruning just as it begins cooling down in fall. After the first strong flush of flowering around Thanksgiving, they grow vigorously all fall-winter-spring. January pruning often leads to rapid decline and death in a few years.

Sounds to me like y'all (JScott and estación seca) may have to prune at different times based on the differences in climate and best growth season.

My climate is similar to Dolly's (similar, not same) but we both have a climate where roses lose all their leaves and sit dormant. I prune similar to what Dolly says. Here, I'm lucky to have anything in spring to prune other than dead stalks from winter kill. Could I do better? Sure... like cover roses, etc. But for me there are other things that require more attention and it never seems to happen.

Here covering them is a crapshoot too. I grew teas, switched to Bonicas, then when I lost those, to Floral Carpets. They do okay for a few years but, in amended sand, only last a short while without Three in One. Since sandy soil needs highly frequent watering, spraying was not practical. When I was a much younger gardener, I was more up to the task. Much of my garden now is what will thrive in benigne neglect. However, my ferns and Forest Grass stir WW's envy.