Passalongs and Reseeders Say Happy Autumn

DECEMBER 5, 2014: Are you seeing this blog post on blogspot? Or are you seeing it at TexasOutdoorsmen dot com? 
if you're seeing my posts and photos on the TexasOutdoorsmen dot com site, it is absolutely without my permission. This website has been copying my garden blog and garden blogs belonging to many of my garden friends, and we want it to stop.

This post, Passalongs and Reseeders Say Happy Autumn, was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

After August 2014 tied the tile for Second Driest August on Record in Austin, many of us gardeners were not looking forward to September! But then the temperature dropped a few degrees and in mid-September several inches of rain fell. That's all it took to divert September 2014 from the hot, dry path it had been following to a gentler trail - the path to a flowery September.

Many of the current flowers descend from plants bought years ago. The original plants are long gone, but seedlings can keep a strain going through repeated reseeding.
The original Gaura lindheimeri started in a patio container - it was a short-lived perennial, but eight years later there's a convention being held in the front center bed.

A 4-inch pot from a Sunshine Community Gardens sale in 2005 held one seedling Blue Butterfly pea/ Clitoria ternatea. I usually save a few seeds just in case, but this year's vine sprouted on its own.

Orange cosmos seeds gleaned from the courtyard garden of a long-gone restaurant produced plants that make several generations every year... goldfinches like them. The harsh freezes of March knocked off all the existing plants of Salvia coccinea/Hummingbird sage, and germination of what seeds still lay in the ground was slow. Now in September, the annual Hummingbird sage blooms in every corner of the garden, red, orange, pink, coral and white. Planting them together near the fluorescent 'Catawba' crepe myrtle was not my idea! 


Some seedlings are promises rather than Plants. Here are a few bluebonnet seedlings with cilantro. If at least a few of these sprouts can survive snails, pillbugs & cold freezes, we'll be very happy.



The passalong plants of September are not reseeders - they are houseplants, bulbs, native plants and perennials.

One small passalong Stapelia plant from my Aunt Phyll has supplied many rooted cuttings over the years - this one is blooming 25 years after she gave me the original plant.



Whether you call them Oxblood Lilies or Schoolhouse Lilies, anyone who gets a passalong Rhodophiala bifida bulb is a lucky Austin gardener. Most of the bulbs in my garden are offsets from the originals shared by MSS of Zanthan Gardens in 2006. The first flowers were open on September 8th this year

The last of the red bells hung on today, September 30th

Pam Penick of Digging and Lawn Gone fame gave me this passalong Mexican Oregano in February 2007 - it's happy with the recent weather

In May 2007, Marthachick gave me a sack full of unidentified Crinum bulbs - I planted them all over and one of them ended up in a large permanent container on the edge of the patio.
The very first bloom on September 19th was a lovely surprise.

From every angle, it's a winner!

In spring of 2008 my friend Ellen gave me a start from her Blue Butterfly clerodendron/Clerodendrum ugandense, one that's been seen in many a blog post. This well-established plant froze hard to the roots in March but recovered to start blooming in late summer. New flower heads should keep developing until a freeze stops the fun. And it's cool to know that Ellen's plant had been passed along to her from her mother-in-law. I've tried my hand at propagating Blue Butterfly from cuttings with very limited success, but I won't give up yet - it needs to be passed along to someone else.

A couple of years after we moved here, I bought a few bulbs of Lycoris radiata/Red Spider Lilies AKA Hurricane lilies and planted them. They made leaves, but I never saw a flower. Then in November 2008, MSS of Zanthan Gardens divided and shared some of her Red Spider Lilies. The Divas of the Dirt had made a sunny new bed in the front yard earlier that year so I tucked some of the bulbs in there. In 2009 every Lycoris produced leaves only, but in 2010 the remnants of Hurricane Hermine arrived with 13" of rain and tada! Hurricane lilies. This year a few inches of rain were enough to coax them out.

Some of the Lycoris were planted near the Sweet Olive but it was too shady. Last fall I transplanted the bulbs to this bulb bed and they responded like this.

Did you notice the dates on the above passalong plants? I really expected that by now the bulbs would have flourished and increased so they could be freely shared - but that didn't happen. At least some of each plant is alive, but year after year of heat and drought seems to have kept these plants from multiplying the way they once did.

The final passalong plant for September is a new one to me - GoldenEye Sunflower/Viguiera dentata. It's native to Central Texas.

Tina of the My Gardener Says blog sent me home with two starter plants last November, saying the finches would like them.
I planted them near the back fence and crossed my fingers.

The little plants were alive through winter, but the killer March deep-freeze knocked them back to below ground. I was thrilled to see leaves emerge in mid-April and watched the 2 plants slowly bulk up through the summer. Buds appeared earlier in September and then the golden daisies began to open

I like their sunny faces, and the plant is a good size for this spot.

Thank you for a flowery September to so many sharing gardeners! To MSS at Zanthan Gardens  to Pam at Digging, and Tina at My Gardener Says, thank you to MarthaChick, thank you good friend Ellen and thank you to dear Aunt Phyll.

This post, Passalongs and Reseeders Say Happy Autumn, was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day October 2010

This is a Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post from Annie in Austin, writing at the Transplantable Rose Blog

The days are still warm here in Austin, but the nights are finally cooling down. La Nina has kept us very dry - the 12-inches of rain from Hermine came fast and left fast and were not part of a weather pattern... more of a weather event. Handwatering and milder weather have made some plants happy; tall trees and lower sun angles combine to make other plants stall from lack of light.

At this time of year the partially sunny front yard has flowers that equal the shadier back yard bunch so on our once-a-month Garden Bloggers Bloom Day quest for what's in flower we should check there first.

The Lycoris radiata/Red spider lilies from the previous post appear to be making seeds now. This group is nestled into the front butterfly bed, a large oval border that was made by The Divas of the Dirt in 2008, on the spot where an Arizona Ash once grew. The imminent demise of that large tree inspired me to write the song in the sidebar.
Purple Lantana, Gregg's Mistflower, Blackfoot Daisies, Bengal Tiger Cannas, Black & Blue Salvia, Salvia Nuevo Leon, seedlings of White Gaura, self-seeded Pink Gaura, young plants of yellow-flowered Damianita and a large Rosa mutabilis are in full bloom. On the street side a Forsythia sage/Salvia madrensis struggles to become established... it's half the size expected, but the buds promise blooms later this week
Those are Blackfoot Daisies around the salvia - more of them brighten the parking strip to the west of the butterfly bed. They like good drainage and sun so until these two beds were made I didn't have much success with this pretty little evergreen native flower. Blackfoot daisies have a very pleasant scent if there are enough flowers open at one time and a swath like this can stop you in your tracks when you stroll down the sidewalk.

This parking strip garden was the 2009 Divas of the Dirt project - a year later the Gulf Muhly grass is so fabulous in bloom that the failure of the Mexican Feather grass isn't even noticed.
On the South side of the birdbath the Mutabilis Rose is really well established - it was pruned in late summer but is filling out fast.
In the Pink Entrance Garden on the North side of the drive 'Belinda's Dream' rose has a new flush of bloom, combined here with a no-name, rosy-colored gaura that was planted in February 2007.
In back the brightest color comes from Orange cosmos. The first sowing produced enormous plants by mid-summer. Those plants died but new seedlings are now blooming, backed up by a blazing Pineapple sage/Salvia elegans in the hummingbird border.

The previous post had photos of Scutellaria indica 'Dorota Blue', White ginger, Sweet Olive/Osmanthus fragrans and a video clip of Salvia vanhouttei, all still blooming. This time we'll look at a Firecracker plant - probably Russelia equisetiformis, a Passalong plant from my friend Ellen.
Now check out the Aster frikartii blooming behind the dwarf Greek myrtle. Why is it blooming back there, you ask? Why isn't it out where it can be seen?
Because this is the one that bloomed - the other two had more light and air, but have become tiny non-flowering remnants of what they once were.

The 'Julia Child' rose has flowers again - the new foliage looks pretty good but the older leaves show how insects have damaged it. These holes are round, so perhaps this is the work of leaf-cutting bees.


Here's the first flower on the Philippine violet. The plant is alive, but it had a bad year, reaching only 1/3 of its usual size.
I bought a large Malvaviscus 'Pam Puryear', AKA 'Pam's Pink' Turkscap in late spring. You might also hear it called Wax Mallow I'm not sure this variety will be hardy in my garden and after seeing Trisha Shirey's flower-laden Turkscap plants on Pam/Digging's blog wonder if it wants more sun to bloom well, but at least I've seen a few lovely flowers.


The white form of Turkscap-Waxmallow is blooming, too - but its leaves are tattered.

Mr Brown Thumb's post on the difference between Cardinal vine and Cypress Vine made me realize that Cypress vine is such a great reseeder its presence is taken for granted in my garden. Cypress Vine bloomed each year at our first Austin house and returns every year at this one, pleasing the hummingbirds, sending thousands of seeds out to sprout and be weeded out and growing into green, ferny blobs of foliage that can derail planned traffic patterns.

When they run out of support they twine together and make enchanting patterns against the sky

But Ipomoea quamoclit seldom gets photo space on my blog so to make up for that, here are the star-shaped, pure red flowers of the Cypress Vine
I'll leave you with the latest Moonflower Vine/Ipomoea alba photo. As long as it keeps blooming, I'll keep taking its picture.
This is the main post for May Dreams Carol's Bloom day event - head over to her blog to check out more than 100 other GBBD posts. To find an additional comprehensive list of everything blooming in my garden with botanical names look at the companion blog to the Transplantable Rose, Annie's Addendum. Happy GBBD from Annie in Austin

At-Ten-Ten-Ten-tion Must Be Paid

Attention has been paid to the design of the garden. Once that Mystery Tree in the last post was identified as a probable Mulberry, it was no longer allowed to overwhelm the new border and it was not transplanted into a pot and nurtured. According to MSS of Zanthan Gardens her almost identical Mulberry sapling has survived several winters and bounced back after being cut down over and over. This kind of weedy tree might be fine on a few acres or a farm - I've read that the berries are great favorites of pigs - but there is no room for it on our small suburban lot!


I dug deep, and think all the roots came out.
MSS gave me Bluebonnet seeds last month and I planted some of them in the now-empty space. In Austin we sow these seeds in fall and then hope the little sprouts make it through cold weather, attacks by pillbugs and constant uprooting by squirrels as they dig holes for pecans.

You can't help but pay attention to the squirrels - they're rampaging everywhere in their fall frenzy - breaking branches while tearing pecan husks from the pecan trees and dropping fragments of husk on every surface. The constant leaping and running and chasing is hard on other trees, too - young Loquat #2 lost several of its lower branches. I guess the squirrels aren't burying all the nuts but are eating a lot of them. This leads to poor judgment by the Tree Rat as to how large a bough is needed to support their weight
The squirrels didn't kill the Culinary Sage - it died not long after the prolonged drenching from Tropical Storm Hermine. It was interesting to see which plants gave up after 12-inches of rain. Although the Silver Pony foot doubled in size, many of the grey-leaved plants including MoonshineYarrow/Achillea, Lavender plants and most of the Lambs Ears died quickly after the storms. Some salvias, most of the Shasta Daisies, some coneflowers and most portulaca are gone, too. For now those blank spots have been planted with more of the bluebonnet seeds from MSS.

Blooming blue already is that Scutellaria 'Dorota Blue' from last year. It barely survived winter freezes and I kept in into a large pot under the overhang all summer, hoping the part shade could keep the sun from killing it. That overhang also kept the skullcap from being pounded by rain. Now the fall show has begun. The leaves show stress from the past year but the flowers are abundant and beautiful.

That last post about the mystery tree made me neglect some autumn beauties. One plant responded to the rain with an astonishing display - the first blooms ever from red spider lily/Lycoris bulbs, another gift from MSS. What can I say? She is a gardening angel!

The first bud was a surprise - so lovely on its ownThen 6 flower heads rose up and began to open in the center of verbena, Gregg's Mistflower, Black & Blue Salvia, Blackfoot Daisies, Rosa Mutabilis and Bengal Tiger canna leaves They opened over a period of several days, and it was really a smashing combination.
I can't help but pay attention to flowers that smell wonderful when I walk out on the patio. A few days ago one of the heads of White Ginger/Hedychium coronarium was perfect.
The fragrance of Sweet Olive is a sure sign of fall in my garden. My three shrubs didn't seem to mind the rain and are covered in tiny fragrant flowers. If other plants in my garden die, I might take a while to decide whether to replant them. But if I lost Osmanthus/Sweet Olive, I'd be scouring the nurseries for a replacement without a moment's hesitation. I don't want to be without it.

Yesterday was the last project of the year for we members of the Divas of the Dirt, our cooperative gardening group. I've known them since the first project of the 2001 garden season - so yesterday marked 10 years of Digging With The Divas. Most of the story will be on the blog eventually, but for the amusement of my fellow gardenbloggers in Austin, here's a photo of what we spent hours digging up yesterday:It's the alternately loved and despised Horseherb - a plant that came in near the top of the Austin gardenbloggers' Most Hated Weed List via Twitter last week, while at the same time it's sold in nurseries and recommended as a native ground cover by other Austin garden people.

There's something to pay attention to in the vegetable patch, too. Most of the tomato plants died soon after Hermine, but just a little liquid fertilizer on the pepper plants brought new fruit. We've enjoyed the sweet frying-type peppers for breakfast Peppers-and-Eggs, but these are a small, rather hot pepper called 'Garden Salsa'.
Philo roasted them, added garlic and turned them into a chunky hot sauce. Science fiction fans are having much fun with the fact that the all important decimal number 42 is rendered 10-10-10 in binary numbers. Philo considered naming his relish the Secret Sauce of the Universe, but instead called it "Thanks For All the Peppers ". There are a few more hours left of this day -think I'll keep my massively useful towel handy.

With the sapling mulberry gone, you can now see the amazing size of the Salvia vanhouttei in the new border. I raved last GBBD about the $2, 4" starter plant from Barton Springs Nursery that turned into a temporary shrub, but this plant needs more than photos - it needs attention for just a few seconds on video.