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You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Zinnias Forever, Part II

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Zinnias Forever, Part II

by Anne Laurie|  September 20, 20205:31 am| 39 Comments

This post is in: Garden Chats

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Sunday Morning Garden Chat:  Zinnias Forever, Part II

Following up on last week’s post, from commentor Misamericanthrope:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the other event of the gardening season. Here she is:

A pair of Robins decided to build a nest under the stairs to my 2nd floor back porch. She (I named her Gretchen) was not a big fan of me! She would regularly dive-bomb me when I watered and would land nearby and give me a terrible stink-eye! It was simultaneously hilarious and harrowing. She never actually touched me but I could feel the air move from her flapping wings. She really wouldn’t bother the other tenants; only ME! Granted, I am the one out there most often. I even attempted a disquise at one point. It didn’t work. After they hatched, I would leave bowls of mealworms out for her and the Papa to feed the babies. The peace offering failed to impress her. Only after the babies fledged and she moved on did I realize that I kinda enjoyed our drama!

Here’s a still from a grainy video of one of her attacks:

Sunday Morning Garden Chat:  Zinnias Forever, Part II 2

My perennials certainly did their part to add some fullness to the overall garden. Here’s my Amsonia and a Brown-Eyed Susan (a new addition; a gift from a friend).

brown-eyed susans & ansomia

And here’s the Brown-Eyed Susan in pre-dawn light.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat:  Zinnias Forever, Part II 1

And my Coleus ‘Campfire’ is still going strong! I take a cutting each year and over-winter it indoors and take a new cutting in the Spring to put back out. I put additional cuttings in other more Full Sun planters and they didn’t do as well. It really loves this spot as it gets some late afternoon shade.

Sunday Morning Garden Chat:  Zinnias Forever, Part II 3

Late season is now producing blooms on my Morning Glory “Flying Saucer” vine. Nice to encounter in the AM!

morning glories

The final shot from this year’s garden will have to go to another new addition. It’s a Sambucus called “Laced Up”. Unlike other Sambucus, this one is columnar, only getting 2’-3’ wide but 6’-10’ tall. It seems well-established and should be a star of next summer’s garden.

Sambuca

***********

On the one hand, last night’s cold snap probably finished off my last straggling cherry tomato plants.

On the other, maybe I’ll be able to spend more than half an hour in the garden without suffering from heat prostration!

What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?

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Previous Post: « COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Saturday/Sunday, September 19-20
Next Post: You hit me with a flower »

Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 20, 2020 at 5:53 am

    Morning, glories!
    ?

  2. 2.

    WereBear

    September 20, 2020 at 6:05 am

    Coleus love shade. One of those reliables for shady gardens. Tender, though.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    September 20, 2020 at 6:10 am

    Morning glories… A blech in my garden.

  4. 4.

    Misamericanthrope

    September 20, 2020 at 6:19 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: I understand! Fortunately, this variety does not reseed heavily. Only one sprouted in a nearby planter. The other variety that I tried about 5 years ago (“Grandpa Ott”) reseeds like crazy; I still get hundreds of unwanted sprouts each year.

  5. 5.

    satby

    September 20, 2020 at 6:29 am

    Misamericanthrope beautiful garden and pictures! The extremely dry summer made my garden results very poor this year, in spite of almost daily spot watering. The weeds did great though.

    I usually keep the tomatoes going until the first real frost, but since I got small regular ones and only the grape tomatoes are still fruiting a tiny bit, I’m clearing them and the back bed out this week. The back bed is getting a dig out to salvage what daffodils and iris may be left and then new soil and a heavy mulch of Preen, then cardboard, then cedar mulch on top to try to break the out-of-control weed cycle back there. I’m afraid most of what was planted there except the daffodils are a total loss. But the squirrels have gifted me several walnut saplings as a replacement ?

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    September 20, 2020 at 6:36 am

    @Misamericanthrope: Every year I engage in yet another losing battle with the misbegotten miscreants.

  7. 7.

    Misamericanthrope

    September 20, 2020 at 6:40 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yeah. I usually am pretty diligent about pulling them early on, but by mid-summer I have given up and they are on their own. I wouldn’t mind if they just did a job of covering the unsightly chain-link fence, but they inevitably invade deeper in the bed and wrap around my annuals. Ugh.

  8. 8.

    Misamericanthrope

    September 20, 2020 at 6:42 am

    @satby: Sounds like you have a solid plan for how to proceed. I hope next year’s results are much better!

  9. 9.

    Mousebumples

    September 20, 2020 at 7:05 am

    Such beautiful photos – thanks for sharing! My garden is a mess this year – so many weeds. Having a baby (now 1 year old), there’s just not enough time in the day!

    OT: Found this good explainer thread of the history of Supreme Court seats, which dovetails nicely with the argument that we should expand the Court –

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1307294185918271490.html

    Reminder: the Constitution does not specify the number of seats on the Supreme Court. This power was left to Congress, which set the Supreme Court’s size at one chief justice and five associates in the Judiciary Act of 1789. It was legally changed seven times. (thread)

    It underwent five full legal implementations:

     

    1789-1807: six seats

    1807-1837: seven seats

    1837-1866: ten seats

    1866-1867: nine seats

    1867-1869: eight seats

    1869-present: nine seats

    There’s more, but that was history I had heard at some point but had forgotten the details of.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    September 20, 2020 at 7:11 am

    Flowers are pretty.

  11. 11.

    raven

    September 20, 2020 at 7:18 am

    Blood, Sweat & Tears “Morning Glory” –
    I lit my purest candle
    Close to my window
    Hoping it would catch the eye
    Of any vagabond who had passed it by
    And I waited in my fleeting house
    Before he came

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    September 20, 2020 at 7:21 am

    Love the story of the fierce mama birb! Also, all the plants, especially the coleus. Such an unusual color. I am nearly in Zone 11 now and can keep them out all year, but they get leggy and straggly. I should just keep planting cuttings like you do.

  13. 13.

    Mousebumples

    September 20, 2020 at 7:27 am

    Another ot follow up – i finally found a source for RBG apparel that puts some of their profits towards charity. I think they had been some interest from others for this sort of thing?

    https://www.feministapparel.com/collections/ruth-bader-ginsburg-1

  14. 14.

    rikyrah

    September 20, 2020 at 7:28 am

    Good Morning, Everyone???

  15. 15.

    Baud

    September 20, 2020 at 7:33 am

    @rikyrah: Good morning.

  16. 16.

    Central Planning

    September 20, 2020 at 7:37 am

    I haven’t heard them called Brown-Eyed Susans before, but that reminds me of when we were having kids that one of them wanted to name the new sibling Black-Eyed Susan. Or Firetruck.

  17. 17.

    raven

    September 20, 2020 at 7:37 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: Garden girl has them growing on my 66 chevy weather vane!

  18. 18.

    SiubhanDuinne

    September 20, 2020 at 7:42 am

    @Central Planning:

    My cousin’s kid wanted to name her new baby brother Hasbro.

  19. 19.

    Lapassionara

    September 20, 2020 at 7:43 am

    These are lovely. Great way to start a Sunday morning. Thank you!

  20. 20.

    Geminid

    September 20, 2020 at 7:43 am

    A frost this morning in Greene County Va. Unusual for September. I think my peppers will be ok, but it could do in my landlord’s tomatos.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    September 20, 2020 at 7:48 am

    @raven:  I have them growing all over any # of things I don’t want them to grow on. Ugh.

  22. 22.

    MazeDancer

    September 20, 2020 at 7:53 am

    What a beautiful coleus! Your garden is obviously well loved and tended. And love the bird story.

  23. 23.

    satby

    September 20, 2020 at 8:00 am

    @Misamericanthrope:  I honestly am over high maintenance gardening, since every summer the heat and humidity leave me barely functional. It’s why I do mostly bulbs and shrubs. The raised beds in back were the previous owner’s pride and joy, but had been badly neglected for the 2+ years this house was empty. And the sweet autumn clemantis planted to decorate the back fence has become so invasive that it’s sprouting across the street in the vacant lot there as well as next door and in the yard behind. Pretty, but it co-exists with poison ivy and hides it well.

  24. 24.

    Immanentize

    September 20, 2020 at 8:35 am

    Thank you @Misamericanthrope:
    That coleus is gorgeous. I have shied away from them since I was in Texas and just saw the ones that one sees everywhere. Yours has inspired me to rethink that. What zone are you in?

    We’re looking at a low around 40 tonight here N of Boston. But no frost yet. Then some warming. Lots of tomatoes still on the plants. I am going to have to do my Bana-mato trick again this year when the frost does come.

  25. 25.

    Misamericanthrope

    September 20, 2020 at 8:47 am

    @Immanentize: I live in Chicago which is a Zone 5b. That coleus will stay alive until early November. It gets about 4-5 hours of sun a day in that spot. I think it’s my 4th year of over-wintering a cutting indoors.

  26. 26.

    debbie

    September 20, 2020 at 8:48 am

    It’s almost gotten down to freezing the last two nights, but I see next week will return to humid, almost 80-degree weather. I’m hoping it will encourage the zinnias and impatiens (which are humongous this year) to stick around a bit longer.

  27. 27.

    Immanentize

    September 20, 2020 at 8:50 am

    @Misamericanthrope: thanks.  Our zone is changing and I think I am now in a 6b area.  5b 20 years ago when I moved back here.

  28. 28.

    O. Felix Culpa

    September 20, 2020 at 9:06 am

    @Immanentize: Please to describe this Bana-mato trick. I have many many many green tomatoes and winter is coming. Well, frost might be here soon.

  29. 29.

    Immanentize

    September 20, 2020 at 9:17 am

    @O. Felix Culpa: I learned the Bana-mato trick here in garden chat.  It can also be called the Tomanana box.  You take your green tomatoes and put them in one layer in a cardboard box.  Throw in two to four ripening banana (green yellow, not yellow black) and seal all the edges with tape.  Top and bottom.  Then wait two weeks or so and see what you have.  Many of the tomatoes will have started to ripen, some will not.  I take those starting to ripen and put them on a window shelf for further ripening.  The ones that haven’t started I put back in the box (with new bananas) and seal it up again for another two weeks.  I got probably 60+% ripening of pre-frost picked tomatoes. A good deal considering how many there were (dozens).

    Now someone will come along and say, just makes fried green tomatoes.  I thank them for their suggestion in advance, but I do not like them.

  30. 30.

    WereBear

    September 20, 2020 at 9:37 am

    @Mousebumples: Thanks! The whole site looks worth exploring :)

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    September 20, 2020 at 10:27 am

    @Mousebumples:  This pin made me cry:

    Sunday Morning Garden Chat:  Zinnias Forever, Part II 4

  32. 32.

    O. Felix Culpa

    September 20, 2020 at 10:27 am

    @Immanentize: Thanks! I will give it a try. I will eat fried green tomatoes, but they are not my favorite.

  33. 33.

    laura

    September 20, 2020 at 10:40 am

    The zinnias in our raised bed over performed this summer and are just spilling out of their home. They made up for the no show dahlias and are giving the cosmos stiff competition.

    It’s been nice seeing a riot of color and steady stream of pollinators of every kind. They deliver joy and cheer and that’s been a boon and balm for.the soul.

    I love seeing all these garden offerings.

  34. 34.

    debbie

    September 20, 2020 at 10:43 am

    @WaterGirl:

    Hmm, preorder and in stock at the same time? Whatever, it’s in my cart!

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    September 20, 2020 at 10:47 am

    @debbie: Looks like yours is from etsy and the one I saw was direct from the feminist site linked above.

  36. 36.

    debbie

    September 20, 2020 at 10:49 am

    @WaterGirl:

    Yes, exactly the same, but yours is out of stock. I will not be deterred!

  37. 37.

    Gvg

    September 20, 2020 at 11:02 am

    If you want to gain a coleus acquisition habit look at https://rosydawngardens.com/
    They sell out sometime in spring, Even in non pandemic years, so order early.
    I found them looking for a really unusual coleus I saw in an article, called bonefish, with pink and fancy edges.

  38. 38.

    opiejeanne

    September 20, 2020 at 1:12 pm

    @Misamericanthrope: I was going to ask where you are, so thanks for providing this information. Beautiful morning glory, just gorgeous. Thank you for sharing with us. I especially love the robin story.

    I currently have the wild morning glory here in western Washington. When we lived in Anaheim we struggled with a big dark purple one the previous owner had planted to hide the cinderblock wall in part of the garden.  It can be just so beautiful climbing a commercial building (several examples of the dark purple one doing that in Orange County, CA), but it’s just so invasive I’ll never deliberately plant the stuff.

    We haven’t had a frost but we had two weeks of really terrible air due to the west coast fires, and I wonder if that’s why all of my tomato plants are turning black. They’re covered with green tomatoes and we’ve been picking the ripe and nearly ripe ones for a couple of weeks now, but the vines are dying in a very dramatic way.

  39. 39.

    Vikki

    September 20, 2020 at 8:07 pm

    Gorgeous pics. Love the battle with the birds.

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