Tags
A Morning of Balcony Gardening, Black Elephant Ears, container gardening, Elephants Ears, Euphorbia, Geraniums, Lobelia, Margaritte Sweet Potato Vine, Passiflora Caerulea, Salvia Guarganitica, Thunbergia, Verbena
This morning is a beautiful morning clear blue skies, cool in the 40’s a perfect day for gardening. Yesterday my friend and I was able to locate the Salvia type that I was hoping to find so they are all planted and hopefully will be blooming before long so that the little hummingbirds will have flowers to drink nectar from.
The pots of onions, lettuce and micro greens have been replaced with Creeping Jenny vine, geraniums, the blue and white lobelias have been planted, the 3 elephant ear bulbs, and a black elephant ear plant from the greenhouse planted as well a misty white euphorbia. and a blaze orange thunbergia vine. Part of the fun of planting mixed containers is to see how to plant, knowing that some plants like the elephant ears will be tall and vertical, in the open ground they can become quite massive with the proper care, watering and feeding. When potted they can be a good bit smaller. This season will tell all.
The only things left to pot up is one geranium and 4 Verbena plants to cascade over the balcony (well that is the plan) I opted for these over the wave Petunias this year, just to try something a bit different, the colors are striking, ranging from bright cardinal red, hot pink, bright purple and brilliant fuchsia!
My balcony garden is complete now. In the next week or two the last of the violas will meet their demise and give way to the geraniums, this season I can say that I have had blooming plants on the balcony since March. It all has worked as it should, gently over lapping of Spring and Summer flowers gradually giving way to each other so there is no time in which something is not in bloom! This should take me all the way up to October (depending on how soon Old Man Winter) wants to rear it ugly head and kill everything this year.
Unlike an open ground perennial boarder where I was able to have plants either in bloom or berries, something of color right up into November, which then gave way to the grasses for winter interest, the only thing I had always wanted in my garden that I never had time to get, was deciduous Holly a variety that has red twigs (brown until the hard freezes come) then they turn brilliant red. with red berries that the birds do not eat. (Never plant Red Twig Dogwood) which is very beautiful, but highly invasive as it spreads by underground runners. Then for early flowers I never was able to to get the Hellebores in my garden some varieties start to flower in February. So you see with careful planning you can at least in Virginia have or come close to a 12 month garden.
