June 2011 – Page 3 – variegatagal

A Saturday in June

That time of year again when all the remaining plants you had left on your to-do list finally get planted. Since the temps in North Texas warm up in the vicinity of 100, anything not in the ground tends to bake in their thin plastic pots. I got around to planting the rest of the Purple Star verbena, the majority of the ornamental pepper seedlings, felicia, tricolor sage cuttings, leftover marigold seedlings, and a few of the lemon thyme cuttings. And because I couldn’t bore a hole in my last ceramic pot (a freebie from Kathy), I had to transplant the Aztec red verbena, a dusty miller and the last red-eyed white vinca into a planter box.

I spent the day ducking in and out of the heat, clearing debris and dried out plantings (leftover violas), trimming vigorous plants (zealous Thai basil), and weeding wherever I could. In some places like the tree ring, I tamped down loose and exposed plantings and filled holes dug by industrious squirrels. Tons of the cosmos seeds are coming up now, and I am waiting eagerly to see the results of this week’s cosmos sowing.

While gardening, I made some exciting discoveries. The one remaining thai chili pepper is bearing fruit. It had been flowering for the past week, and today I found 3 fruit on it, with several more nubs showing.

A couple more of the vincas have bloomed; one from my February starts, while another from the outdoor starts. Both seemed to be in the pink color family. Several more vinca seedlings are already budding, including the two I left in my planter box. The neighboring Confetti lantanas have nearly tripled in size since planting, as well as the Purple Star verbena which get the most exposure in the front yard bed.

The daylilies are still flowering strong. An observation I made of the front bed Dallas Stars is that they are a good 1-2 feet taller than the Dallas Star in near-full shade. Still a no-show however is the Hyperion daylily, though I did notice it had a single scape on it. Whether it had already bloomed or planned to bloom is a mystery.

I’m so disappointed that none of my home-started Easy Wave petunias are red. I was hoping for a patriotic planter bowl for the Fourth of July, but currently everything in the bowl is either blue or white. I expected at least 1 out of the 10 seeds I purchased to be a red petunia (I sowed 9, and 8 are currently planted), but it seems that this wasn’t the case. Next time I plan to purchase the colors separately–and yes, I will grow them again since they were relatively easy to start and grow as it warmed up. (Just keep them covered during the first month as tiny seedlings.)

I hacked down a lot of the wildly growing pineapple mints and hot & spicy oregano. A shame I didn’t get to use most of them, but right now they are strictly ornamental. I have to wonder: if I took a purely cream-white cutting of the pineapple mint, would it continue grow white or will side shoots revert to green or variegation? I’m intrigued because despite the heat, this solid white shoot remains happy, if a little crisped on the edges.

New wishlist plant: variegated lantana camara Samantha aka Lemon Swirl, lantana camara Greg Grant, and variegated lantana montevidensis.

Cosmos, hostas, marigolds, petunias and more

My Stokes seeds order arrived. It had probably been sitting in the mailbox a few days before we finally got around to emptying it. Since something had been digging up the tree ring bed, L had to replant a few uprooted marigolds so proceeded to sow the cosmos anyway. The first wave of cosmos seedlings are of course up and growing, some faster than others. I’m hoping at 500 seeds a packet, the tree ring will now get full coverage on cosmos. Now if the Ladies in Red will start blooming already. I’m beginning to think that starting them from seed so late might have been a mistake; but impatience isn’t a good trait for a gardener. I’ll have to satisfy myself with the coral nymph blooms for now, although I’m worried they’ll overrun the other salvia. I’d also like to get that outer ring improved with the remainder of the marigold seedlings and thyme cuttings, but they’ve been slow to propagate. I might have to take some golden oregano cuttings to add to the tree ring.

The hostas getting afternoon sun are taking a beating. All three varieties has suffered some damage. Combined with the daily buffet assault, they are half their foliage since spring. Even the supposedly sun-tolerant Gold Standard hosta isn’t able to withstand that grueling afternoon sun. I am thinking about installing some sun-friendly perennials in that corner of the shade bed to see if it will provide some relief. But can a sun perennial survive there given the brief afternoon exposure?

What’s up with all these ornamental kale? They’re about 2 feet tall now; they seem to like the mostly shade front door bed. Our poor gardenia, still struggling all these months, is making the stand of kale look bad. Of course, the dried out pansies are doing a better job of making this bed look unkempt. I need perennials in this bed, getting weary of switching it out every season.

Check out the chili pepper–it’s loaded with blooms. I expect a good harvest of chilis from this thing. The cinderblock herb garden is filling out nicely, while the purple bed is starting to look overrun. I need some ornamental black peppers in there! I wish my seedlings weren’t so puny.

More of my petunia seedlings are blooming….but what’s the deal? Are the rest of them purple??? I was expecting to see at least one red seedling, but so far I’ve seen one white and nearly half a dozen purple buds. So much for my patriotic planter. At least the caladium is looking good, even if one of the leaves appears half eaten.

The thai basil is flowering. I really need to snip it down to size…they are making the other basil look puny. They look lovely with their red-purple stems and bud crowns, but they seem to outgrow the other basil. Very much suited to our hot Texas summers.

And here’s what’s left of the azaleas in the lily bed. I kept the dwarf gumpo white and the Hot Shot red azalea. The gumpo azalea didn’t produce any blooms this year, whereas Hot Shot produced a handful. Is this typical of $2 shrubs? The gumpo gets one more shot at impressing me next year; otherwise it’s out of there. I did like that Hot Shot came out of the winter with dark maroon foliage before it lightened up by the end of spring. I must remember to keep the neighboring Hot Lips salvia pruned back to give the azalea some more light.

More ways to unban an IP from iptables

Since my iptables keeps growing, listing the whole table can take more than a few minutes these days. I dug around and found a couple of options that will do the job faster:

iptables -D chainname -s theipaddress -j DROP

Alternately, you can list:
iptables -L -v --line-numbers

Then delete:
iptables -D chainname linenumber_of_IP_to_delete

This will make cleaning up the Fail2Ban tables a lot easier, especially if one of your users decides to ban himself and you have to sift through a ton of numbers to find his IP.

First week of June

It’s hot. Pushing 100s hot. I was crazy to work the garden this weekend in this weather. But I got a lot accomplished and made some observations. For example, my first petunia seedling to flower (which I failed to photograph) was an Easy Wave white bloom.

A couple more marigolds, yellow and scarlet–though the scarlet wasn’t being photogenic–also
made an appearance in the tree ring. Except that yellow marigold is the same one that first bloomed. The tree ring’s first salvia also bloomed, but it is the coral nymph and not the Lady in Red that I’ve been waiting for.

Because it’s been sweltering, the man decided to water everything today…including the freshly mowed lawn. Methinks he cut it too low this go-around. He’ll let it get an inch or two next time. But the dry conditions gave him incentive to plant my purple pastel and mulch the hostas. I didn’t see, but he said the hostas were having a bad time of it.

The half inch cutting of Lanai Purple Star verbena grew about an inch long in opposite directions and produced flowers! This was a throwaway piece of verbena and it decided to take root and bloom barely a month later. The heat also agrees with the lemon verbena that I almost killed with neglect. It’s coming back in leaves in its original pot. I’m still debating on where to plant it however.

All my toiling yielded me my first and only bouquet of flowers from this year’s lily garden: 2 stems of Navona asiatic lilies which I had knocked down while working the lily bed (and running for my life from raging wasps). Nice to have home-grown floral arrangements for a change.

And it’s also nice to see the tiny nubs of the planter bowl caladium–White Delight–making a showing. I imagine the other caladiums in the shade bed should be popping out about now. Well, that is, if the cedar mulch hasn’t covered it back up again.

I coaxed more seeds out of the white nymph salvia I installed in a planter box. I’m hoping that as the weeks progress, I’ll have a nice size baggy of seeds to plant next year in the front flower bed, or perhaps the tree ring.

Ugh bugs!

Slaving away in the high 90s…it might as well have been 100 degrees in the shade. This was a searingly long hot day to be working in the garden, but worked (and sweated aplenty) I did. I managed to plant many that had been waiting quite a while for their new homes: both Dixie Chip ajuga, variegated geranium, 3 more Origami Red columbines, all 6 of the red spider lily bulbs, 8 Lanai Purple Star verbena, 2 Calico ornamental peppers. I also transplanted a few of the Navona lily bulbs closer to the back wall, relocated the 2 Charmed Wine oxalis, tore out 3 of the under-performing azaleas (Delaware, Macrantha and Crimson), and cleaned out much of the dead/dying pansies. I also gave the red and white dianthus in the lily bed a good haircut, while pulling out as much of the weeds as I could. After intermittent breaks and drives to the local Home Depots, I also picked up another bag of compost and MiracleGro garden soil, and 3 bags of cedar mulch. The cedar went to the lily bed and part of the purple bed, including my delicate geranium. I hope to use some of it to protect the hostas in front.

Of course, some of the gardening had to be interrupted by some unwelcome guests. Wooly aphids and nest-building wasps caused me a great deal of stress–especially after I came close to smashing into the wasp nest while moving the lilies. Of course, I just had to take the soap to the wooly critters–but the wasps did send me running after I tried (and failed) to jar both nest and wasps in one fell swoop. Luckily, my man fetched a wasp killer from the grocery store–thereby ending the rampage.