{"id":166,"date":"2009-09-15T03:42:23","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T11:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=166"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"the-holding-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/the-holding-area\/","title":{"rendered":"The Holding Area"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE HOLDING AREA
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The time has come to empty out the plant holding area.\u00a0 It’s the end of summer and some of the plants have been hanging on valiantly since the spring, waiting for their turn in the soil.\u00a0 I have watered them, trimmed them and felt extremely guilty about them.\u00a0 In fact, I have done just about everything but plant them.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Why this slovenly gardening behavior?\u00a0 Lots of reasons.\u00a0 The calycanthus, for example, needs a special place, and preparing that place involves moving some deep-rooted plants.\u00a0 The prospect of this work has never been particularly appealing, and the recent spate of hot, sticky weather has made it less so.\u00a0 The new variety of double Shasta daisy is a victim of daisy fatigue, which is a human malady, not a plant ailment.\u00a0 I haven’t even finished cutting back the hundreds of spent single Shastas in the front bed.\u00a0 The thought of encouraging one more Shasta daisy of any kind is anathema to me now.\u00a0 However, the plant came free from one of the big wholesalers and I really should try it out.\u00a0 It might actually have better manners than its single-flowered cousins.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have an Iceland poppy that was gorgeous when I bought it, but languished in the pot through the many spring and summer rainstorms.\u00a0 I have nursed it back from the brink of death and now it deserves a space in the garden.\u00a0 I just don’t know where that space is yet.\u00a0 A discounted Japanese anemone has a similar story, having gotten thoroughly waterlogged in the deluges.\u00a0 It is hanging on and probably hoping for a permanent home with good drainage.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All the rain should have been a blessing to the water-loving Japanese iris, skulking in a nursery pot by the garage.\u00a0 However, it hasn’t responded happily.\u00a0 It deserves a chance at life, even though it too came at a deep discount.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I love the spicy fragrance of carnations and when I saw a couple of plants on sale for $1.99 each, I couldn’t resist.\u00a0 At the time, I didn’t have the faintest idea where in the garden they would go and I still don’t.\u00a0 I am sure there is a corner for them somewhere, and today I am going to find it.\u00a0 My track record with members of the dianthus family–carnations, garden pinks and sweet William–is pretty bad.\u00a0 Maybe these two survivors will turn things around.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Heuchera is always with us these days, showing up in every garden center, mass merchandiser and nursery from Maine to Hawaii.\u00a0 For the past two years, I have had at least one in my holding area at all times.\u00a0 This year I am trying to convert the patch of straggly grass by the front sidewalk into a shade bed, so whenever I see a heuchera on sale, I buy it.\u00a0 As the result, the cast of heucheras in the holding area has changed since early spring.\u00a0 The last heuchera standing is one that I bought only last week.\u00a0 It has ruffled green leaves that show a bit of red on the undersides, making it look a bit like leaf lettuce.\u00a0 When it goes into the front bed, my neighbors will probably think I am another one of those trendy people growing produce in the front yard.\u00a0 It doesn’t matter; the heuchera will be installed by nightfall.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve never grown veronica before, which is reason enough to start doing so now.\u00a0 The little veronica in the six inch nursery pot is begging for a chance.\u00a0 I may put it near one of my rambunctious stands of thread-leaf coreopsis.\u00a0 The blue and yellow will be a nice contrast, and I am hoping that the veronica will be so grateful to be freed at last from the pot, that it will flourish with no further encouragement from me.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I have to pot up two bargain geraniums and a variegated ivy in an ornamental pot.\u00a0 My geranium-addicted daughter bought them on sale the last time we were at the garden center.\u00a0 Of course, they will have to be over wintered inside in the dining room, along with the eight other potted geraniums of various types and colors that she has brought home over the past two years.\u00a0 Of the many substances to which she could be addicted, geraniums are far and away the most harmless.\u00a0 They brighten up the back porch in the good weather.\u00a0 The dining room may look like a cross between a Victorian conservatory and the Amazon jungle this winter, but it will make the cats feel as if they are outside.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I still have to deal with a pot of cosmos that I planted from last year’s seeds and a healthy dahlia that hasn’t dared to bloom yet because there hasn’t been enough sunshine.\u00a0 I will plop the dahlia into a decorative pot and find a hole for it in the planting scheme–possibly in one of those spots recently vacated by the spent Shasta daisies.\u00a0 I expect great things of this dahlia come fall–as long as we have a few hours of sunshine in the next few weeks.\u00a0 I am sure there is also space somewhere for the cosmos.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Clearly my horticultural reach has exceeded my grasp once again this year.\u00a0 I would resolve to change my ways, but I am pretty well convinced that such a resolution would be futile.\u00a0 Fortunately for the plants, there hasn’t been a year yet in my gardening life when I haven’t gotten everything in the ground.\u00a0 Right now I am especially motivated, because it’s time to put in the fall bulb orders.\u00a0 It’s important to empty the plant holding area before the bulb holding area starts filling up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE HOLDING AREA \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The time has come to empty out the plant holding area.\u00a0 It’s the end of summer and some of the plants have been hanging on valiantly since the spring, waiting for their turn in the soil.\u00a0 I have watered them, trimmed them and felt extremely guilty about them.\u00a0 In fact, I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions\/1619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}