Whether she knew it or not, Skybird is giving me a chance to draw some thoughts together and make note of them here. It isn't a wonderful story of blooming plants but rather a tribute to tough, gritty roots.

We are so focused on the vibrant foliage, delicate flowers, and delightful fruit that the hidden roots where the vital, life-force mostly resides - tend to go unnoticed. A gardener takes this attitude to the detriment of success. And, balancing the equation should go a little beyond working in some amendments and fertilizer at the base of our plants.

My backyard garden is tiny but we make important use of it. Certainly, there's no room for a compost pile so all compostables end up in buckets and off they go to one of our larger gardens. But, one use our little annual herb patch has is to serve as a "rootcellar" for carrots every Winter. So, I pull out the frost-killed basil and such, dig a hole and fill it with carrots. They are covered with both the soil and a thick layer of tree leaves.

One Spring, we pulled lots of quack grass roots out of a perennial flower bed in the yard. I would usually place something like that in the garbage can but it was only a single bag full and all the leaves were needing to come off the carrot cellar at that moment. So I just sat the bag in the corner of the yard and covered it with leaves (kind of the outdoor version of sweeping things under a rug ;o).

Too lazy to carry this material away, I thought the roots would compost inside the bag and I'd be able to make use of both leaves and roots after 12 months. Not to be!

One year later, those quack grass roots were alive and reasonably healthy! After spending one full growing season unable to produce a single leaf - they were still waiting for the opportunity to grow after 12 months of heat, cold, and darkness trapped inside a black plastic bag.

Certainly this testifies to the nature of quack grass but all roots have amazing qualities. Even annual plant roots persevere in our compost and soil far longer than other plant material. Therefore, simply growing plants and their roots each season can be of great benefit to the soil and succeeding crops. Conscientiously replacing nutrients taken off the ground preserves soil fertility but actually growing the plant material, especially the roots, improves soil tilth.

I'm still not likely to do much composting of quack grass roots but my efforts to maintain my growing space every year reflects the value I place on other plant roots. Grow, grow, and grow some more! I can even look appreciatively at weeds as compostable material - I just need to make sure that they are out of the ground before they produce seeds and aren't those amazingly tough perennial guys who will take advantage of all my efforts as a gardener. Somebody needs to  just not them.

DigitS'

Skybird, I am very familar with that and bulbs. My mother-in-law bought some deal that was a clear glass "pot", some stones and a bulb. She kept two, gave two to my sister-in-law and I received the last two. Both my in-laws threw theirs out after they bloomed last year, but I thought I would see what happened if I left them alone (ok I was too lazy to clean everything out, it was easier to keep watering them). This winter they had one sad, ugly leaf that died about January. About March, they leafed out and started blooming again. I have to figure out how to fertilize them in water, but they each gave me another flower this year. Too cool!
digit, I have discovered the tough nature of roots. Ever try pulling a weed? Actually, the roots are always the last thing recognizable in my compost pile.

B

I have a couple of them this year, a gladiola bulb that hasn't come up for 3 years, never dug up for the winter, now showing up. And I mentioned elsewhere two clematis that, if I recall, were $0.99 Walmart Wonders that 'died' in a pot in the greenhouse, so I just chuck the soil and 'dead' plant out the door into a convenient flowerbed. Again 3 years ago.

Re roots, around here we have brome grass, which will put a root through a potato. I expanded a flower bed this February, laying down 2 -3 layers of cardboard over the sod, then piled a rock border, then put a foot of soil on top. I have brome grass popping up everywhere in the bed.

My glads are coming back up, but they often do.
What surprised me a few years ago was having Salvia Patens come back after a particularly mild winter. It's supposed to be something like zone 8 hardy.
Years back a frind of mine was surprised when he saw my Darlow's Enigma and Cecile Brunner and I told him they were rooted from a bouquet he had given me.
Having known me for years, he really shouldn't have been so surprised. I used to root every rose I got my hands on.

Wow! Salvia patens coming back really surprises me too! Just goes to show that anything is possible!

My glads are coming back up, but they often do.
What surprised me a few years ago was having Salvia Patens come back after a particularly mild winter. It's supposed to be something like zone 8 hardy.
Years back a frind of mine was surprised when he saw my Darlow's Enigma and Cecile Brunner and I told him they were rooted from a bouquet he had given me.
Having known me for years, he really shouldn't have been so surprised. I used to root every rose I got my hands on.

Skybird - just ran into a similar issue. I have an area near my front door where I planted Agastache cana a few years back - very xeric. It was a beautiful patch - hummers loved it. Unfortunately I sited the patch in a place where we pile the snow from the walkway on it every year. In our drought/dry years, this is OK because the snow wasn't too plentiful. But this year we had a normal/good snow year here in Monument and got over 17 feet of snow. When the snow melted, it totally staurated the area and, I thought, drowned the A. cana.

It hadn't even started to sprout as of this past weekend even though the rest of my Agastache elsewhere in the yard is up about 6 in, so I proceeded to start digging at one of the clumps to see if the roots were rotted. Lo and Behold, the plant was still alive - there were tiny little shoots starting to pop out. So I guess I'll leave the patch alone for awhile to see if they fully recover.

Yes, I LOVE surprises like this!

I also had several clumps of ornamental grass that the voles decimated this winter, but I just saw new sprouts from the decimated areas yesterday. I guess enough of the plants' crowns survived to regrow :)

Nancy

Datura
Bletilla
Hibiscus
African Foxglove
Crocosmia

My amazing plant this year is my Miss Kim Lilac. It contracted some type of fungus or wilt last year and lost all of its leaves in June. I didnt bother to remove it since it is yards away from any other plant in my yard and a delphinium self seeded amidst the dead sticks. I was absolutely stunned when buds appeared in April, followed by the healthiest growth Ive seen it have yet. It should bloom soon, what a wonderful surprise!

My two hybiscus syriacus (Rose of Sharon) 'Freedom'. When I planted them late last summer they were only about a foot tall, and as soon as the leaves fell off, the stems blended in with the mulch. I stepped on one, and my son AND one of his friends both stepped on the other, which left a tiny stick about 4" tall. Just last week they BOTH started to sprout leaves. I'm glad they had happy roots.

I love all the stories! Plantladyco, did you really have a datura come back that was outside all winter? ThatÂs amazing!

For those of you with the "root" stories, I have one that I still canÂt believeÂeven though I lived it!

Back in the 70's, my husband at the time and I bought a small commercial building and had to add more space, so for the addition, a concrete slab was poured for the floor, immediately adjoining the existing concrete floor. We finished the new part of the building and I moved in. The wall where the two pieces of concrete were joined was in my storage room, and I had very large boxes of stuff stored against that wall. The spring after I moved in I was in the back room reaching behind one of the boxes to pull it out and I reached into something that was cold and damp and poked me. I jumped and thought there was an animalÂor an alienÂor something back there, and VERY slowly and carefully pulled the box out the whole way so I could see what was going on. When I could see it, I found a whole row of wimpy yellow thistles coming up thru the "non-existant" crack! They certainly werenÂt big bushy thistles, but they were "thistle" enough to be poky! I pulled all the other boxes out and "weeded" my back room! And this area was at least 5 or 6' away from the exterior wall. That first summer I had to pull them out several times, and every year after that, though they got fewer and fewer every year, I had to pull out more. When I packed everything up and moved out more than 10 years later, some of them were still coming up every spring! I still donÂt know how they even knew it was spring where those roots were! So for anybody whoÂs been fighting thistles-----keep fighting! IÂve been fighting with a few of them in my front grass for three years now.

Keep the nice stories coming,
Skybird

This thread needs a bindweed story. Last summer, a friend bought a fixer-upper old Victorian home in town, the kind where you set a marble down by the front door and it will roll around the entire house if you, the marble-setter-downer, lean to the left and right of the door jam. But he only paid $40,000, and is young, single, and it had a huge garden.

Anywho, in the fall he found some bindweed growing up behind the tv, and tracked it down. The stem ran under the rug, down between a wide-ish space between the floor and the wall, though the foundation, and into the garden outside, a length of about 10 feet.

Well, I didn't think anybody could beat my thistle root story, David----but I think you've done it! ROFL

BTW, is it snowing out there yet?

Skybird

Azura, any advice on how to take care of Miss Kim? I have one I bought three years ago, and it has not done well. I think it got too dry, because some tall perennials blocked the sprinkler from reaching it. It has a few tiny leaves and some little vestiges of blossoms were on it last week, but it's nearly dead. Do they need anything specific in terms of fertilizer? Average water?

I'm wondering if I should dig it up and move it somewhere else, but I'm not sure if it will survive the transplant shock now! Any advice?

I have a whole list:
-walmart hyacinths
-several on-sale walmart "bag o' lilies' that were moldy by the time we got them (they were gifts from kids so I let them just stick them in the gardens where they wanted. Never saw anything last year, but lo and behold this year I keep finding them! I'm at about 60% so far!!!)
-my little red alliums that got washed away by the flooding right after I planted them last year...never saw them again, but here they are this year!
-Pansies! (NEVER happened before!)
-and one tiny yellow delosperma that was planted in my rock wall 2 years ago, and last year had only four leaves all year. So far this year there are 12 leaves!?

Keep us up on your leaf count, J! ;-)

Yes...I have Daturas that come back.
They're on the South side of my house that gets lots of sun in the Winter.
So far this year...I have 2.

That's amazing, Plantlady! How far, if at all, do you cut them down in fall? How big do they get in summer? What color are they, and are they singles? Do you know the species?

I wouldn't expect that to come back even on the south side!

If I cut them down, it's after the foliage has frozen.
They get pretty large...at least large enough to flower!
They are single whites.
I'm not sure which species (I've planted several kinds over the years) but my guess is metaloides.
Kathy

Stevation,
My Miss Kim gets a lot of water, it lies in the direct path of the overflow from my half-whiskey barrel water gardens and I overflow the barrels every 3 days or so in the spring and summer. It is also watered via my drip system that I run for 7 minutes every 3rd day in the dead heat of summer but I have yet to turn on my drip system this year. The lilac is heavily mulched with pine bark and mushrooms keep popping up amongst its bottom branches. I amended the native clay with 30% compost when I planted the lilac 2 years ago but I havent done a thing to it since. It gets at least 8 hours of sun per day.
It is not a fast grower for me, it has doubled its size in 2 years and now stands 2 feet tall and 2.5 feet wide. I hope this information helps but I would say this plant's survival is more about luck than doing the right thing. :)
-Azura

Here is a link that might be useful:

I always thought pansies and viola were annuals. I bought a bunch at the Denver Botanic Gardens last fall and planted them out by my stump. Fall came, winter came, snow came, more snow, more, lots of snow....

I pretty much assumed they were dead under the snow and cold, but when the snow *finally* melted, there they were. They looked a little sad and droopy, but they were alive, and they even had some blooms, looking a little the worse for wear.

The weather warmed up, and the pansies perked up and started blooming like crazy.

My assumption was that four feet of snow served as an effective mulch, keeping them from freezing.

Thanks, Azura -- I think I'll give mine more water. It's nearly dead, but there are half a dozen small leaves and two tiny little blossoms were there last week!

Hey, Lilacs, the thing about pansies is that they're best as winter annuals. They'll probably die this summer, but they might reseed. I learned from the gardeners at Temple Square in Salt Lake City to plant my pansies in the fall. They live under the snow, happy as can be, and pop out bright and cheery in March. Here's mine with tulips back in April:

I've also read you can do these fall planting for spring blooms with wallflowers, Iceland poppies, and maybe stock. There are a few others, but I can't remember them right now.