June 26, 2023

Texas summers at all times take a look at me as a gardener. I dislike the warmth and humidity and usually view summer time as a holing-up season, a downtime to attend out, the way in which gardeners up north view winter. Besides after all the weeds don’t cease rising throughout my downtime.
However this isn’t a publish about weeds, or the news-making warmth that Texas is at the moment experiencing, or the rest I attempt to ignore. It’s nearly just a few issues I noticed and loved sufficient to drag out my telephone and take a photograph of whereas exterior watering pots and new crops.

Just like the toothy, speckled foliage of ‘Fiercely Fabulous’ mangave. Look how glad Fierce Fab is! She’s not minding the Loss of life Star’s glare one bit. What a trouper.

Different summer time lovers embody old-reliable purple skullcap (Scutellaria wrightii), ‘Brilliant Edge’ yucca, and ‘Peter’s Purple’ monarda. The monarda completed flowering per week or two in the past. A passing neighbor requested me the opposite day whether or not she ought to pull up her monarda “now that summer time has fried it.” Oh no, I assured her. Summer season hasn’t killed your monarda. Right here in Texas, ‘Peter’s Purple’ monarda blooms in early summer time after which goes to seed, and it’ll return once more subsequent Might.
I usually go away monarda standing after the flowers dry up as a result of I feel the seedheads are attention-grabbing. However you’ll be able to rigorously (don’t pull up the plant by the roots) snap off its blackened seedheads and scatter them the place you need extra crops, similar to you’d do with purple coneflower. Or should you go away them standing, as I do, they’ll do it on their very own.

Mullein is one other self-seeder in my backyard. This one seeded itself on the nook of the home within the decomposed-granite path, and it appears so fairly there, flowering tall and yellow.

I did do some “gardening” early this summer time: I rolled the battery-powered mower out of the storage and mowed the Berkeley sedge garden. So satisfying to mow simply as soon as all 12 months and benefit from the lawn-like look of my now-10-year-old sedge garden!
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