ToyTrains1’s Garden Journal

Tropicana has bloomed (a photo is below), leaving only Garden Party yet to bloom this year.  Its first bud has been mangled by some insect, so we will have to wait.  Its growth seems to be OK so I suspect it will just be a matter of time.  I've begun to look for a replacement for Sunbright but was disappointed by the selection at Home Depot.  I will check there again and at Lowes, and will find something nice to plant.  Otherwise, the garden is doing quite nicely.  We've had about a week of showers and rain, so everything is well watered.  Most of the roses are still in bloom and providing a dazzling spectacle.  Most of the other garden plants, such as the rhododendrons, have faded, leaving the roses as the main attractions, though the hydrangea is getting ready to bloom. I've updated the web site with many more photos of the roses in bloom.  Here's Tropicana.

The garden has been quite active.  Unfortunately, not all of the activity has been good.  Since I've been lazy, the dreaded black spot fungus has gotten hold on many of the roses.  I've started my weekly sprayings with Immunox and Mancozeb.  Alternating with Banner Maxx and Funginex, and including Mancozeb for a few weeks, I should be able to bring it under control.  Most of the roses have now bloomed, with Louise Odier, Zephirine Drouhin, and Madame Isaac Pereire (my three Old Garden Roses) putting on quite a show.  Sweet Juliet, one of my David Austin English roses, is also putting on a spectacular display.  Since my last entry, Queen Elizabeth and Pierre de Ronsard have bloomed and Tropicana is getting ready to bloom.  Other than Garden Party, which has yet to bloom, I'm afraid that's all that there will be this year.  Fragrant Cloud, Moon Shadow, and Sunbright all appear to have bitten the dust.  I will definitely replace Sunbright with something else as that's a good spot for a rose.  As for the others, I will have to think long and hard before I replace them.  Moon Shadow is next to both Louise Odier and Lagerfeld, which are very strong, large growers and they shade the spot mercilessly, no matter how I prune them back.  The same holds true for Fragrant Cloud, shaded by Lagerfeld and Melody Parfumee.  I may just leave those spots empty in deference to their larger neighbors and be happy with only two dozen different varieties of roses.  The web site has been updated with literally hundreds of new photos.  Here's a teaser, showing the view of Dr. Huey from the street looking into the side yard.

I really do love Spring! The garden is alive with roses, so many on some of the plants (Louise Odier and Pat Austin for example) that there are simply too many to count.  Most of the roses have bloomed; all of them are shown on the "Roses in the Garden - 2009" page that I've created and posted today.  Of those remaining, I'm afraid that this past winter was the coupe de grace for Moon Shadow and Fragrant Cloud, both of which had been damaged by previous winters.  Sadly, it also seems that Sunbright was badly damaged by this past winter and may not survive.  It lives in a good spot even though it faces north, so if it doesn't survive, I'll plant something new and exciting there. In the meantime, here's a perfect Peace and, for me, a rare sport, a totally snow white Double Delight!  These are just examples of the many photos that I added to the web site today.

At long last, I've posted this spring's photos on my web site, all 250+ of them!  All of the various pages have been updated, as found on my What's New page.  Enjoy!

I went out into the garden today (beautiful day here in New Jersey) and discovered that, as expected, both of the well-established Old Garden Roses, Louise Odier and Zephirine Drouhin, had bloomed, tying for second place this year.  Louise Odier has totally snapped her stake (a 1×4 no less) and is in danger of falling over, so I'm restaking her with a pressure-treated 2×2 that will hopefully be able to take the strain.  She gets to be a big girl!  I've also uploaded more than a hundred new garden photos to the web site and now I just need to edit the various pages to finally get things up to date. Photos of Louise Odier and Zephirine Drouhin are below.

It's not fun to admit but it's true.  I've been very lazy about keeping up the blog.  Over the last months, since that wonderful first-day-of-spring snowstorm, the garden has come alive.  The bulbs, what are left of them from the great planting of 1999, have bloomed, as have the forsythia, the cherry trees, the maple tree, etc.  The lawn is a brilliant green that won't be duplicated for the rest of the year.  It's just a really nice time of year in the garden.  Over the next few days, hopefully, I'll get off my duff and post all of the photos I've been taking on the main web site (I've been lazy, but not so lazy that I didn't take photos).  One photo is the reason I've finally started to blog again.  Today, 11 May 2009, I have my first rose! :-)  Though Louise Odier produced the first rosebud of the year, as expected, much to my surprise, t'was Gertrude Jekyll that gave me my first incredibly sweet rose of the year.  Here she is!

At 7:44 AM EDT this morning, spring arrived.  After a thoroughly miserable winter, I thought you'd enjoy seeing what the arrival of spring looks like here in the Garden State.  I don't even want to think about the poor daffy daffodils that have been trying to get ready to bloom!

… why do I keep getting hit in the head by cherry pits?  That's a rhetorical question, though I did get hit in the head by a cherry pit while walking under the cherry tree in the back yard (I think the resident cardinal has it in for me).  It's the middle of July, I've been under the weather, and since I last wrote, much has happened in the garden, much of it not good.  The weather has turned very hot and very humid, the damned Japanese beetles arrived to munch away on my roses, and, with the humid weather and me indoors and not spraying, the dreaded blackspot fungus got hold of a number of bushes.  I'm convinced that the Japanese beetles spread the fungus spores; wherever I have a bush with skeletonized leaves, I have blackspot nearby.  I've started dusting with Sevin to keep the little monsters under control, but seeing my beautiful roses being munched is enough to get me to overcome my distaste for bugs and happily squash them with my fingers.  As for the blackspot, I resumed my spraying program today with Banner Maxx, adding a full dose of Mancozeb to help control it where it's run rampant.  With Mancozeb added to the weekly systemic sprayings, it should be under control in a few weeks.

In the interim, a patch of ground at the side of the house where I've been unable to grow grass for the last 15 years is now covered with a thick layer of stone as I had the stone path at the side of the house extended.  A similar patch under the circle of trees where the side yard merges into the back yard now has a series of large bluestone pavers surrounded by peastone, forming a bridge between the two yards.  The beds around the foundation of the house have been renewed with quite a few tons of peastone so things are looking rather nice.  After being unable to grow anything green in those two small areas, the hardscape looks quite nice and that's the end of the frustration … and the mud!  The roses have done well though, as mentioned above, the two plagues of rose growers, Japanese beetles and blackspot fungus have arrived, as has the hot and humid weather that they love.  Everything that I expected to do well this year did and the last of the Daylilies, Plum Perfect, is now bearing its final blossoms (a photo is below).  In fact, all of the Daylilies, Asiatic Lilies, and Oriental Lilies did quite well.  Most things have grown well, including the new mini-rose that I planted in the deck planter this summer and I was pleased to see Mme. Isaac Pereire repeat flower this past week.  I've been taking a photo here and there during this past month (yes, I know I've been remiss in making Journal entries and updating the web site, but when you don't feel well it's hard to feel motivated about these things) and this evening I've posted close to a hundred on the web site.

As it does every year as the roses start to fade from their first flush, the lily patch has erupted into colorful bloom.  The daylily Double Cutie was first and now the daylily Leebea Orange Crush (shown below) has, as always, come in second.  Next to them, the oriental lily Mona Lisa has also started to bloom with it's lusciously scented large blossoms.  It's the second photo below.  With the spring flush over, the roses will now bloom sporadically throughout the summer and fall.  I've posted a bunch of new photos on the web site.

… none left to bloom, that is! As expected, Garden Party has bloomed, becoming the last of my roses to do so, even though it's been living in the shade of Louise Odier.  It's nice to have a year where all of the roses have survived and, yes, even thrived.  It's been a very good year for the garden.  Zephirine Drouhin has been in continuous bloom for one solid month!  Many other roses are in bloom and I've posted a ton of new photos taken over the last week to the web site.  The hydrangea (the snowball bush) is getting ready to bloom, with the snowballs just starting to show their blue color (I feed the hydrangea with Miracid, hence the blue color; were I to feed them Miracle Gro and add in some lime, they'd be pink as they react to acid/base in the same manner as litmus paper).  The daylily Double Cutie remains in bloom and Leebea Orange Crush is getting ready to bloom.  Here's the first bloom of Garden Party.