This large stand of rudbeckia had brought many smiles to the faces of our visitors, what a very nice summer it was!

This post was edited by twrosz on Sun, Nov 10, 13 at 23:11

Those are amazing!!!

Beautiful!

That last photo is the 'photo of the day' on the GardenWeb facebook page today.

Great pics Terry! I like my rudbeckias but I only get one or two here and there - nothing dense and showy like yours. Also they were yellow with a nice red central disc but every year the seedlings seem to bloom with less and less red.

"That last photo is the 'photo of the day' on the GardenWeb facebook page today." ... Pudge, thanks for letting me know that :)

Northspruce, I'm getting a very good mix of colors and forms mostly of rusty shades from the excellent 'Cappuccino' and 'Cherokee Sunset' strains. I do not recall what variety the yellows are from, but these have also been very good.

This was one of the most beautiful

This post was edited by twrosz on Mon, Nov 11, 13 at 17:44

Thanks for posting those rudbeckia photos...I'm a real sucker for color. And thanks for showing us your rose seedling portfolio on the other post!

Is that purple plant in the background of the first photo bee borage?

Beautiful, Terry! I had some several years ago and will have to grow them again, for sure.

This forum is doing pretty well with the "photos of the day" - this is the third one that i've seen. :)

I am curious to how you weed such a lovely dense garden.

Where do you find photo of the day?

You have to "like" the Garden Web on Facebook and you'll see the pictures they post.

Ooooh, those face books, like the younguns all have!
;)

Rosecavalier, on the left side of the photo are some trailing petunias and the dark purple bush is a barberry.

SCG, I had needed to do very little weeding in the rudbeckia patch, I think I went through there just once, the rest of the gardens were another story with constant weeding. I'm finally getting wiser now and gonna be applying a thick layer of grass clippings wherever I can!

Grass clippings don't heat up too much? I've put them around tomatoes but never thought about the flower bed. It would be great to be able to use them because the weeds are really bad in my flower beds and i need all the help i can get!

Man that is impressive only weeding once...I had a bed that size and I couldn't keep up. I am wanting to do some mass beds but I am afraid of deer and weeds (grass). I, too, never thought of grass clippings. I have a mulch mower and never bag as it helps build soil on top of the hard pan or sand I have....might think again...

SCG

Marcia, the clippings will only heat up if put on super thick. One needs to apply them on clean ground, otherwise any developed weeds that exist will just push through. A warning is that until the clippings break down a bit, they can become very slick underneath and a slipping hazard, I had learned the hard way, lol ... also, best not to apply to a pathway that has any slope to it. Now, grass clippings are beginning to sound a bit dangerous, lol.

SCG, I also prefer to leave the clippings on the lawn to break down and help build the soil, though more so, I need to lessen the amount of work, especially with weeding taking up a huge disproportionate amount of my time and energy. I had sown the best quality blue grass seed I could obtain, though the ground is sooo poor that it must be heavily fertilized to do well. With all the additional nitrogen, I need to mow more frequently than I'd like, but such is a welcome trade off to be able to smother out the weeds with the collected clippings.

Terry, that's good to know. Our grass grows like weeds in the spring - no wait, it IS weeds! I wonder if that would still work - our lawns aren't sown, just grass and weeds that look like a lawn when you mow it. What do you think?

Terry,

I, too, lean towards blue grass. I used others to establish my grass then over seed twice a year.

I got overwhelmed with my weeds this year. Thus am leaning towards roses, obviously, and perennials and the like I can mulch over. I might even do biennials but will hand seed or start indoors.

marcia, as long as they aren't going to seed you can use anything...I have copious amounts of ponderosa pine needles but I hate them such that I refuse to use them, even if free.

When is spring again?

SCG

Yes, as SCG mentioned, it really does not matter what your grass contains, as long thereâÂÂs no mature weed seeds. Really sounds like many of us could use a helping a hand with our weeding chores!

I love blue grass and am impressed with the quality of seed mixture I purchased from Pick Seed ⦠though, my silty soil is so nutrient deficient, that without copious amounts of nitrogen, it becomes VERY sparse and thin and a sickly shade of chartreuse. HereâÂÂs a photo from July after having been heavily dosed two years prior, I mean I had put sooo much fertilizer to it, there had been a two year lingering effect, lol. I fed it again this September and it turned a very nice shade of dark green and required frequent mowing despite the weather being very dry. The front lawn badly needs spraying, itâÂÂs full of huge patches of clover and a whack of other weeds, including some type of aggressive grass that arrived with a load of âÂÂweed freeâ peat moss, gggrrr!

Spring? ⦠ask again in three or four months, lol.

Great showing of your wonderful garden,..I can see, lots of work goes into.

Oh, lovely, Terry! No, my lawn doesn't look like that one bit! LOL There isn't a lot of lawn in the front where all the flower beds are anyway, but i do get a lot of clippings in spring from what there is. Your pathway looks nice and clear. I have flat rocks on mine and they're always full of grass.

SCG, cheer up -the seed catalogues will be coming soon!

Several hours later - i checked the mail and the Stokes catalogue is in! LOL

This post was edited by marciaz3 on Wed, Nov 13, 13 at 12:34

Marcia, those pathways are often full of chickweed and darn poa grass, gggrrr! I need to utilize the grass clippings on the beds so I have more time to get around to weeding and or spraying the pathways.

Good to know that the Stokes catalogue will soon be here :)

Pathways? Obviously you don't plant as thick as I do!

Stokes catalogue is just what I need! I was turned onto geoseed.com they don't sell really small packs but some prices are much less than half of stokes. If anyone wants to buy some bulk with me let me know. So far I am thinking of whirligig zinnia and those damn Cheyenne echinacea terry showed us.

SCG

I like the look of pathways winding through large beds. :)

The Dominion Seed House catalogue came in as well, with the name W. H. Perron on it. Guess they must have been overtaken. Between the two catalogues, a lot of things have caught my eyes, but no decisions made yet. Lots of time for that!

Hmmm, never heard of Dominion...another place to peruse!

Hehe, I, too, like pathways but always over plant and they disappear LOL.

SCG

SCG, I've learned the hard way, when it comes to shrub and perennials plantings, one needs to give each specimen adequate elbow room and break up the beds by using spacious curving walkways that lend definition and interest.

W. H. Perron ... many years back, I had come across one off their catalogues and it was jammed packed with all sorts of perennials, roses, trees and shrubs. Now that Dominion is under the W.H. Perron name, I hope they will again include an expanded range of plants, as of recent they had dropped most if not all perishable stock.

Geoseed.com ... I'll have to check into them.

Terry,

I agree so much...problem I am having is how much room to leave all my roses.....I do plan on filling in the gaps but dang, there is nothing even remotely close that will say how big everything will get in my zone

Yeah I can move them, blah blah blah...but I don't want to...My OGR/Antique order is supposed to be the backdrop for my gardens.......it is so hard with no experience...