Thursday, August 26, 2010

One of the Ladies Needed a Freshening-Up

geraniumleaf
Geranium 'Ann Folkard' in late July...a bad case of rust

Well, it's that time of the season...Mid-August hits and some of the plants are looking a little stressed and tired. I gave up trying to keep the 'Lime Frost' Columbine green, it has disappeared completely (hopefully it's just dormant, not dead...time will tell). Many plants that were lush, full and green a month ago are now looking a bit scraggly. One of the worst offenders has been Geranium 'Ann Folkard'. For the first part of the season, it was growing rapidly in every direction and looked great, lovely foliage and a constant show of magenta flowers. Right after our first blast of heat in July, however, it started to get more and more stressed. New leaves were tiny and few and far between. I finally had to admit that they needed to be cut back, even if it meant untangling their wandering stems from other plants. Perennial Geraniums often need to be cut to the ground after their first flush of blooms, as their foliage then becomes a ratty mess. Apparently, 'Ann' is one of those. Here it is below, with a new crop of nice, fresh foliage!

Fresher
'Ann Folkard' after being cut back, now growing a new crown of foliage

To contrast, Geranium 'Rozanne' has been growing and flowering since before 'Ann' and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down or decline. I'll see what next season brings, but if the same thing holds true, I may move 'Ann' to some slightly less-conspicuous spots in the garden and replace them with 'Rozanne'.

Rozanne-fresh as a daisy
Geranium 'Rozanne', fuller, not sprawling, and constant blooms

7 comments:

  1. Hi there! Thanks for commenting on my blog so that I could find yours. I checked out your "a year later" post....nice work! About the Verbascum, it's V. 'arctic summer’...from Xera. I recently saw it at both Garden Fever and Portland Nursery for about $2.99

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  2. Hi, just stumbled on your blog. Great photography!

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  3. Thanks Danger and Andrew!

    Danger - Love your blog and it's always nice to see a fellow Portlander's garden!

    Andrew - 2 blogs...how do you do it...they are both cool and pretty informative!

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  4. Thanks. Technically only one now though, zone 5 sort of closed down when I realized that I wouldn't have a lot to talk about if I limited myself to only hardy zone 5 plants. I suppose it wasn't a huge problem though I guess I should merge my posts from the old to the new at some point just to have everything all in the same place...

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  5. Rozanne is a trooper that's for sure. Well at least your other one looks better after the trim. ;)

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  6. How many plants of that Rozanne did you start out with? Like that; do you have Johnson's blue also?

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  7. Hi Betty! I started with 3...that picture is those 3 plants (planted this spring) interplanted with catmint (which I'll remove and put somewhere else next spring). I originally thought they had slightly different coloring...but are almost identical...you can't tell where one ends and the other begins! I used to have Johnson's Blue (at the old place) but it just didn't bloom for as long and tended to get scraggly later in the summer. So far (knock on wood) Rozanne has been a real trooper, so I'm planning on adding more next year (maybe replace some of the Ann Folkard). Thanks for commenting!

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