I can't answer your flower questions, but I'm posting a link below where you can resize your photos online, free.

What or who is doing the rejecting? What are you using to upload them? At photobucket.com (which I use) there's an option to re-size as you upload your pictures.

Here is a link that might be useful: website for re-sizing photos

Thank you so much! I will try that out after I get home. I have attempted to post them directly to this forum, and the gallery, but the Garden Web powers that be reject them, due to being too large.

So, I will try that link. Thank you!

Uploading directly means that you will upload only one pic at a time. Not a bad thing, but if you want to upload a number of photos at one time in the Gallery, do this:

Find Photobucket or Picasa or Shutterfly or Webshots online and open an account. You can upload slightly larger photos to these and then choose a size to show in your posts. There is a tutorial by Memo at the top of the posts in Gallery.

We all started where you are. (Well, maybe there are one or two geniouses here who were never beginners. I don't know their names.) It takes practice and asking questions.

I can't answer your questions about plants in zone 5. Is it past time you should be seeing emerging plants?

Nell

Hollyhocks and Foxglove are usually biennials. Meaning you start from seed or buy plants in year one.....they bloom in year 2 and if you don't let them self seed....you have to plant more plants or seed.

Some varieties of these plants are annuals or if you start seed early enough you may get flowers by then end of the first season. Even the varieties of hollyhocks that say perennial are usually short lived.

If you want them blooming every year you have to plant them every year for the next years blooms. I am not sure if the variety of hollyhock that you mentioned is an annual or not....but I suspect it might be.

Foxglove can't handle the freeze thaw in spring very well. If the snow melts off them early they will turn black and die. If the snow cover stays a long time, you have a better chance of them making it to flower in the second year.

Hope this helps,
Happy Gardening,

Sierra

I've never grown foxgloves, but I did have hollyhocks at my old house. They were one of the old-fashioned single varieties - I don't know the name, because I got starts from my friend's mom, who had extras.

Anyhow, I'm not sure if any of the original plants really lasted more than a year (and they usually bloomed the first year), but they definitely self-seeded. I can't remember exactly when I would start seeing the seedlings appear, but it might still be early for them to show up. I also tended to save seed, but the self-seeded ones usually did better. I also didn't have very good luck when I tried to move them around - not sure if that was my error or what.

I don't know if Creme de Cassis is a sterile hybrid - that could be a possibility, and then it wouldn't have viable seed.

Gotcha...thank you so much!

I've had several different varieties of foxglove (Camelot, Spanish Peaks, a peach colored one). I tried to make sure I wasn't deadheading so much & I saw seeds fall. Nothing has become of them.

I had the nigra hollyhock (among many others) last summer. I didn't think it would bloom then, but it did grow very large, looked so great, really big leaves. Then we had a ton of rain & much cooler temps than usual. I don't know if it got a fungus, but one by one, the leaves turned brown & it retreated. None of the others have come back at all.

*sigh* I have a fairly large garden and 98% of all the plants are just fine & beautiful, so far. Why do we mourn those plants that don't survive?

Anyhoo, thank you very much. I'll probably try again, though maybe not this year. The bleeding heart is wonderful (it's first full year in the garden, surviving the winter) and the bee balm (I planted too many, I fear) are threatening to take over. The blue flax is blooming. All is not lost!