This year wan't all that bad despite the drought. My biggest problem was the leaf cutter bees. If anyone knows how to deal with them let me know please. They ate my roses, primrose, hosta and I even saw the tell tale signs on the maple leaves. I have Explorer roses and they pick one and seem to stay with it. Last year it was Henry Kelsey and this year it is John Franklin. I think we have a gazillion of the bees around. One good thing is that I never had the blackspot or powdery mildew that I usually get.
My ornamental grasses did awesome this year. Some of them are flowering beautifully right now.
I hope this warm fall weather stays around all winter, wishful thinking? Marg

Success~ transplanting alot of my perennials into planters for the move, and they still bloomed for me! Had 6 out of 7 of the Aquilegia variety's I tried germinate from seed!
Failure~ Aphids ate my rose bush, strawberry plants, and ordamental cabbages pretty badly. Dahlia's didn't bloom b4 it was time to pull the tubers up.

Successes...
I tried my hand at my own table at the farmer's market with selling perennials dividing out of the yard. Laurie joined me part way through and we had a great time organizing our table together and making a little $ on the side. I placed the perennials into little pots, labelled them each with their names written on cut pieces of venetian blinds, put their price on another piece and placed all the pots on the north side of the house, in the shade for the week until the next farmer's market. The email newsletter that I put out each week before the market is going over very well. People are reading it and clicking on the link to our photobucket albums to see the perennials we are bringing that Saturday. I have almost 85 people getting it now, all interested gardeners in the Brandon area. Having email and the internet is wonderful.

-Very little slug damage...not my doing but the dryness of the year and the frogs that made my perennial bed their home for the summer.

-Flax shives that I put down last year did a wonderful job of keeping the moisture in and weeds out. I will be using a lot more of it around the perennial beds from now on.

-Even though I had pneumonia for about 6 weeks in May and June I was able to plant up all the mailorders I received and managed to keep them alive. I am still planting out and have about 100 or so to do yet. This week's job...

Failures...
-The canna bulbs are still in the pit in the basement from last year (the pneumonia and resulting tiredness made me pick and choose my projects). I need to get them out now, plant them up if they are still alive and I guess grow them in big pots in the sunroom for the winter if I want them at all. I had some roots in the greenhouse all summer...totally dried out already. I planted them up 2 weeks ago and the pot is now bursting with new leaves. So, I guess they were okay.

-Some of the holding garden didn't get weeded at all. I need to go through, weed and then put flax down so I don't get inundated with weeds next year. Maybe if we have a long warm fall... Guess the other way of looking at that is that the perennials that I want to have self seed (so I have babies for next year's farmer's market) should have no problem in doing so.

But my first job is to get all the potted perennials planted up. The long range weather forecast for the week is supposed to be highs in the teens and low 20's. Perfect!

Brenda

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it's already mid-September. Yesterday mom and I cleaned off the rest of the flowers and dead stuff from the veg garden and the raised bed cutting garden. The whole time I'm thinking man, I just planted this - like yesterday - and it's time to pull it out already! My summer was too busy, I think, it passed too quickly.
We had a late frost that set some stuff back but most (except for zinnias) rebounded. Then there was a big hail storm and plow wind on July 31 that trashed an entire lily bed just coming into bloom - some of the stems broke at soil level so I'm wondering how they'll perform next year. Perhaps the saving grace here is that this bed is becoming a little too thick anyway. The wind also snapped the blooms off many of the glads and leaned the bed of various Rudbeckia's so far over that they became useless for cuts. Thankfully the trees in my yard didn't suffer, throughout the town there were plenty broken limbs and uprooted trees. Farmers, of course, suffered huge with many 100% losses to their crops.

Otherwise in my yard, no bug invasions - perhaps the many wrens who nested in the gourd birdhouses took care of that problem. Some birds - Pine Siskin - actually turned out to be a bit pesky as they were, for some reason, drilling little holes in the lily buds. They also really took a shine to the liatris and ate off a lot of buds.

Failures - that which didn't come back in the spring - are already a distant memory and obviously just made room as the flowerbeds look as full as they normally do and I didn't miss anything. Miscanthus Morning Light did not winter - I didn't think it would but was hoping (I didn't think the other Miscanthus's would winter either).

Successes involve ornamental grasses - Miscanthus Blutenwonder survived its 3rd (or 4th?) winter. Another Miscanthus in the front yard that is also proving hardy has me a little stumped - it may be Gracillimus. Panicum Virgatum is blooming at the moment and is quite beautiful, couple of its cultivars are also surviving (Prairie Sky is one - 2nd winter, and Squaw might be the other). Biggest surprise is Miscanthus giganteus (one of two clumps) wintered and grew well.

One of my big disappointments this year was my sunflower crop. I decided to plant more varieties for cutting and they turned out to be duds. Next year I'll know better.

Until the hail, selling bouquets at farmers market was a big success and well worth the effort and time. I learned a lot about growing, cutting and selling. Next year I'll make a few changes to what I grow - less of some and more of others. I'm already looking thru last years seed catalogues, LOL. (BTW, Excellent idea about the email newsletter, Brenda).

I'm waiting on the peony (Parkland) and lily (Lily Nook) orders. I see from the other thread that some have received their Parkland orders so I'm hoping I'll get mine this week. I expanded one backyard border over the summer and just yesterday sprayed more roundup to kill the grass for another expansion. LOL, old bones, don't fail me now...

Pudge, I cannot take credit the idea for sending an email newsletter. I was reading in the Garden Web forum 'Market Gardening' and there was a thread on that topic.

Do you have a local garden club? Ask members there if they wish to get the newsletter. There is, for sure, lots of people there who are interested in gardening.

Those who stop and purchase something we (Laurie and I) tried to remember to ask if they had email and if they wished to be on our list. People were just thrilled that we were doing this. It has also been a way of getting to know people and their names.

I always have a little blurb at the end that if the person receiving it wishes to not have the newsletter anymore then just email me back and I will remove their name.

Back to successes and failures....

Brenda

With the rather cool summer and 3 week heat wave in July, plus having surgery in June, my flower garden was not what it could have been. Sometimes things didn't get watered when they should have, and I was a little lax on the fertilizer. Plus the weeds have tooken over everywhere.

My rose and lily beds were my biggest prize this year. And I was quite pleased with my new daylilies that I planted this spring.
My favorite rose of the year was Prairie Peace and my favorite new lilies are the Oriepet. I really am hoping that these lilies thrive in my garden.

One of the biggest annual hits for me this year was my Dianthus. They were absolutely stunning this year. Another plant that I will be growing again is Scarlet Flax. I mixed the flax in between my lilies and once my lilies were done,they started to flower and I had a sea of red which really caught your eye.

My misses were my Cannas and Callas. The Callas bloomed lovely, but honestly they were not a big enough bang for the buck IMO. The Canna's never bloomed, the frost recently took the buds.

Shelley

Oh, I like that idea about the flax in the lilies. Did you direct seed, and will they self sow? I have at least a couple of areas I could incorporate that combo.

I wintersowed my flax in milk jugs and then transplanted them into the areas where I wanted them. But you could easily just direct seed as well.

Shelley

Pudge, I'm sure your lilies will be fine next year. One year of being snapped off won't set them back noticeably.

My successes this year were - in general - daylilies and lilies - most of them put on a great show and had no problems. Some of my older types of both are really starting to clump up. Also, I was blown away by my new Canna 'Cleopatra', not only was it true to name, it put out two full flower spikes and bloomed for two months solid. I just loved it. A lot of my annuals did well too, the phlox took a long time to get going but it looks like a multicoloured quilt right now.

Failures were - in general - roses. It was too hot for them in July and they were stressed from being moved, plus like Marg I had bad problems with either leaf cutter bees or sawfly larvae. John Davis and Polstjarnan especially got chopped up pretty bad. Mr. Lincoln died during the heat wave even though I was watering regularly and the soil didn't dry out.

I feel like I didn't have a gardening season at all, even though a lot of things did well. I wasn't up to getting most of the overgrown beds in order because of the pregnancy. I really don't like not being able bodied! That creeping charlie better look out next spring...

Thanks Shelley. I planted some Charmer Mix flax this year, but not in the lily beds. I did like it, though, so I think I'll let it seed out as well as harvest some of the seed to add to the other beds.

Gillian, when I read the last line of your post I immediately thought oh, maybe her little Charlie (or Charley) will be creeping by then.

Our summer started out hot and wet and gradually became cooler and drier as time went on.

I didn't have a lot of time, so I mostly seeded in an annual wildflower mix as a border along the house, and those germinated and flowered beautifully. My zinnias performed really well (as usual) until the frost.

My vegetable garden had some success stories and some failures. I planted some herbs, and the basil, catnip, and thyme came up quickly. The basil is done now, but the catnip and thyme are doing great. The rosemary I seeded never showed. I'm not sure why.

My cucumbers, green beans, sun flowers, and corn all did pretty well, and my biggest success were the tomatoes which performed very well for being put in so late (June 15th).

As far as landscaping in general, the summer was great. I put in quite a few shrubs (gray dogwood, lilac, kay grape, highbush cranberry, pee gee hydrangea, mugo pine, Dwarf Alberta spruce, Rugosa Rose) and planted lots of trees.

Other than the Rosemary, there were no major failures. I guess we'll see how all this new stuff handles the winter!

I have a new yard so not many plants were planted last year, but I did have trouble with a couple daylilies that didn't make it. However it just gave me more spots to fill with my spring shopping spree!

I am pleased with the way my mail order plants from Fraser Thimble Farms have settled in. I was a little disappointed in spring since I didn't feel that all the plants were truly a 1 gallon size - however they have taken extemely well and seem to be a respectable size now, and in fact I plant to order a few more things from them next spring. I did have some fern leaf bleeding hearts I think go dormant in summer - so I hope to see them return in spring.
I was extemely pleased with my Rosanne Geranium - they stared out very tiny and now they are probably 18 inches in diameter and they bloomed like crazy this year. I'm already thinking of moving one of the plants to another part of the bed since I think they will get a bit bigger than I originally epxected.

The trees that I planted in the summer of 2005 really started growing by leaps and bounds this year so hopefully only a few more years until we have some decent privacy in our city yard :)

The aphids that decended on us at the beginning of September put a damper on even wanting to be outside. I sprayed my roses and mockorange bushes which seemed to be their favorites, and so far at least my plants don't look too much worse for the wear.

I was very pleased with all the lilies that I planted, although most of the oriental lilies have just finished blooming or the buds already were nipped by frost, so I don't think they will be back next year since this was their first year in the ground. But I will look on the bright side, this winter I can plan all the different things I want to plant there if they don't return!

I will have high hopes for next year now that my yard is "finished" - what I really mean is now that all the plants are planted in their 1st spots and they are mulched.

Janet

Hmmmm not sure if I should start a new thread for this or not....but it is kind of a success story.

When I put in my new garden beds a while back, I moved my pathetic looking little purple beebalm into a front bed from the side bed. It had been in the side bed for many years and really was just struggling along to survive. I was going to shovel prune it, just never got around to it. When I moved it to the front bed, I divided it into 3 small clumps. This year....even in Aug, I was still thinking of shovel pruning it, but again, didn't get around to it. By the end of Aug, it was 3 huge clumps, tons of flowers, large flowers at that, and some even double decker flowers. What a nice surprise!

Also as mentioned in another thread about monkshood, I have the late blooming one. Again it was in the side bed for years, just kind of doing its thing late in the season, and pretty much ignored. Again, with the move to the front bed, its much taller and has spread quite a bit. Again, I am quite pleased with the new vigor of these older plants.

I guess the point is here....if a particular plant isn't doing well in one spot in your garden, try moving it around and give it a second chance. You may be surprised with the results.

My garden had some interesting things to deal with this year.....but I have to say, I think considering, it was a pretty successful gardening year. Things did flower, even if only for 5 minutes before the hail or frost or heavy down pours got them.

Ohhhhh another thing I should mention is that I accidently bought a package of zinnia seed, not my favorite flower. I threw the seed out in the back garden,(well I had them, so might as well pretend to plant them), and forgot about them. The next thing I knew, there were all these ugly...errrr I mean, bright coloured flowers blooming like crazy, out there. :O LOL!

Sierra...who much prefers annual poppies to zinnias. ;))

Isn't that always the way, Sierra? You're just about ready to get rid of something and then it comes through shining. :)

So... successes and failures... The first thing that didn't work out quite well this year was winter sowing. I didn't have the right containers - mostly strawberry clamshells - and they kept drying out on me. And there seemed to be a LOT of weeds that came up instead of plants. Frustrating.

Though most of my lilies were fine this year, there were quite a few whose foliage turned black and died on me. I dug up African Queen and there were no roots on the bulb. Who knows what happened there? Shrug. And then there were the numerous daylilies that never sent up scapes this year. But on the other hand there are daylilies like Peach Stella which has a new scape right now, believe it or not.

Once again, my white lilac failed to bloom. No clue, no clue, no clue. Another shrug.

And then there were the roses - most of them eventually came through but there was so much dieback on them. Miss Sunrise's baby grew but the mother plant is dead. Henry Kelsey, well, i thought he was dead and gone but when i dug him up, there were shoots coming off one root. He's in a container now and i'll sink it into the ground for the winter. But how about the White Kosters? They're zone 4 but were absolutely fine this spring.

And Clematis Jackmanii - who can kill that? Me, apparently! LOL And i seem to have killed Cardinal Rouge as well. But then there was Ville de Lyons who put on a real show this summer, and Nelly Moser which bloomed very nicely for her first year in the ground.

Successes... Besides the White Kosters, Ville de Lyons and Peach Stella, there are plants like Echinacea Big Sky Sunrise, var. Heliopsis 'Lorraine Sunshine', Tiarella 'Spring Symphony' and the beautiful Hawkeye Belle who did so well this year.

And there's always next year! :)

Success - Valiant grapes! Bought 3 vines about 6 years ago, tried them in a spot of limited sun for 3 years with pathetic results. Moved them to the back of the veggie garden in full sun, and after getting established for the first two years, this year they yielded 20 lbs of grapes. Kind of small and seedy, but very tasty, much like a Concord but stronger flavour.

I'm trying to make wine out of them. I'm not expecting a super vintage, but if it's half drinkable and I can say I made it out of grapes I grew in Edmonton, then I'll be happy. The batch is fermenting away happily now, and seems to be doing fine... guess I won't know the final result for two years though...
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Way to grow Don, those look delicious!

Reminder to myself to get some Valiant vines next spring!

Sharon

Don those are beautiful! I want to plant grapes... one of these years I will get around to it.

Did you have to add sugar to make the wine? I hope it turns out for you.

I had great success with Winter Sowing - all my veggies, even tomatoes, all my annuals, they all did super.

My biggest dissapointments were the critters nibbling at my tomatoes and cleaning out the insides of each and every one of my melons!! Be they rabbits, gophers, mice, whatever, I hope they overate themselves and keeled over.

I had very few cukes, but the lemon cukes went nuts. Go figure.

I found out which end of the garden that is not so fertile, as my pumpkins, beans, and corn experiment was something to be embarrassed about.

Over all, for only my third veggie garden, I give it a thumbs up, if not only for the learning experience. Lots of do's and dont's for next year. Now, where's my favorite seed catalog sites??

Northspruce, I set up 5 gallons of wine, so I didn't have nearly enough grapes to get 5 gallons of pure juice... I think the pure juice taste of these would be too intense in wine anyway. I crushed the grapes and put them in a nylon mesh bag from a wine store, then I added water and about 10 lbs of sugar (plus a few other ingredients) to bring the volume to 5 gallons of liquid, with a specific gravity of 1.100, which is supposed to yield wine with about 13.4% alcohol. I hope it works too!

And thanks for the compliment.
-Don

I think I may have to get some grape vines too! Your's look wonderful Don.

☺Successes

Yes, deciding to join into the Farmer's market with Brenda, turned out to be great idea. I've met lots of new people and made some coin as well.....surely a win/win situation.

Most of the plants made it through last winter, so that's always a plus. I think I only had one iris die, so that was pretty good.

Most of the roses bloomed well. Whether the alfalfa tea that I gave them was the cause or not, I'm not sure, but I liked the end results either way.;0)

The lilies bloomed really well this summer too. 'Red Dutch' and 'Fancy Crown' didn't do well this year. Fancy Crown just didn't come up at all, so I may have to replace it yet.

Forever Blue iris bloomed in the beginning of September.

The Pineapple Lily that I thought was rotten this spring and then just tossed into the veggie garden to be tilled under, I found growing in the peppers. So now, it's potted up and will grow happily in the living room for the winter.

Got my first seeds from a Tet daylily 'Quest of Dreams'. And I also got a few seeds from Red Ribbons and a noid pink daylily too. I'm not sure why Tets are harder to set pods on, but hopefully I'll be able to get a few more next year.

Failures

Dahlia barely got blooming before frost. And the cannas never did bloom at all.

The veggie garden didn't do overly well at all. I think that the poplars and spruce that we planted on the east side, are taking too much of the water and shading it for too long in the morning. So next spring, it will be time to re-evaluate where things will be going.

There were quite a few daylilies that had spring sickness, and for some it extended into the summer as well. There are maybe 3 or 4 that I'm not sure if they will make it through the winter or not. Keeping my fingers crossed on those. So therefore, the amount of daylily blooms was a bit disappointing.

Cabbage worms did a number on my ornamental cabbages....grrrr.

All in all, it was a successful year for me in the garden. I added quite a few new perennials this year, so I'm quite excited to see how well they all do next year.☺

Laurie, what is "spring sickness"? I had a few daylilies whose leaves went black and they and some others never put up any scapes at all.

My cannas never bloomed either, and the vegetable garden on the whole wasn't that great. For some reasons, a lot of the onions didn't mature, which is weird because we just about always have good onions. Maybe it was all the rain in June and July. Dunno.

Marcia, I've added a link below that tells of spring sickness. A lot of my daylilies also had lots of yellowing leaves, and of course, these also didn't send up any scapes. I think it may have been due to a wet spring.

That's interesting, Laurie. None of mine seemed to grow sideways, but maybe i should go out and look at them again to see. I don't think they had ragged edges either, but that might be something else to check more closely. I'll let you know. :)

My yard has definitely had its challenges this year, starting with that big snowfall at the start of June that broke so many trees and bent so many bushes. I have a few very shabby looking lilacs that sat in water for too long because we had such a wet spring, and then July was so hot and dry of course. We got a lot of spray drift when our renters had to spray with airplanes, because the fields were too wet. That killed all my dahlias, made all my apples and raspberries drop, and set everything else back. Peas and beans didn't do well after the spray. My onions were terrible, but the garlic was great. The snow took out the saskatoon blossoms, but my Evans and Nanking cherries were loaded, and strawberries were good. In the flowers, the only things that were outstanding this year were the hollyhocks and heliopsis. The other flowers were okay, but not outstanding - that chemical was nasty. I'm supposed to send them a bill for my vegetable shortages, but time will tell if I lose any trees or perennials. The sprayer says he can't figure out how all the drift happened - he was still spraying with a thunderstorm minutes away, flying through the lightening - duh!
Connie

Connie, you made me remember that my Nankings were awesome this year too and i made a whole lot of jelly!

That my artichokes bore this year was a most pleasant surprise. I have tried them several times before, starting them from seed and got maybe 1 or 2 very small artichokes. This year I was given 3 plants from a local greenhouse that was unable to sell them. The voles dug one plant up, one plant had fantastic huge leave but no artichokes but one plant bore 10 eating size thistle bud fruit in spite of the voles almost defoliating it. Not the most beautiful addition to my new rose bed but quite delicious.

My biggest disappointment was that the Grape Leaved Anemone didn't make it through last winter. It had survived 5 winters and was the star of the garden at this time of year when everything else has stopped blooming.

When I saw what you had to say about delphiniums, Sharon. I had to chuckle. We say the same thing every fall but never seem to get to it. Actually, the delphiniums are looking nicer now than they ever had because we had to cut them off so early.
We are expecting frost tonight, so we walked around the garden, smelling the last couple of roses enjoying the dahlia that finally bloomed and remarked how much pleasure gardening on the prairies brings in spite of all the challenges. Or is it because of them?
Leo