Berry Season!

So as strawberry season starts to wind down (you can still get fresh farm-picked strawberries or pick them yourselves for about 2-3 more weeks), it means the beginning of blackberry & blueberry seasons! Blackberry picking season opens today at one my favorite picking venues The Happy Berry Farm in Six Mile, SC. And even better than blackberries are blueberries, whose season is predicted to open in two weeks on June 18th!!

Now, you can grow your own blueberries, but it will take a few years till your plants get big enough to have enough for two people, let alone a family. We have 9blueberry plants in our yard, which are growing but we will still visit Happy Berry this summer for more blueberries. We have 4 different cultivars of blueberries including Sunshine Blue, Tif Blue, and Tophat (can't remember off the top of my head the 4th). Blueberries are relatively easy to grow in full sun in zones 3/4-7/8, depending on the variety. There are some dwarf/semi-dwarf varieties (eg Sunshine Blue and Dwarf Northland) that only grow to be 3-4ft and can be container plants as well as full size ones. Full size blueberry plants grow to be 6-8ft tall at maturity.

A great summertime treat is fresh blueberries sitting on the front porch in the summer time with some sweet tea or lemonade is a great evening treat! Also, a great summer date is going out to a local berry farm with your significant other and picking berries together ... its a fun, cheap date that's not dinner & a movie. Can't wait to get picking! :)

What are some Zone 7 shade loving plants?

This is a question that I've gotten several times over the last few months ... so I thought I'd post my response here. Our shade garden has 3 azaleas, 2 heuchera (coral bells) and two different varieties of hosta. It also has lilly-of-the-valley, which is lovely, white, and dainty in the spring as well as a hydrangea.

Enjoy!

Shade Loving Plants (filtered light (e.g. under a tree) or against a northern or eastern wall)

• Ajuga
• Astilbe (Red, white, lavender, pink)
• Aucuba (Evergreen shrub; appx. 4ft x 4ft)
• Azaleas (full shade to full sun)
• Beareded Irises (Full shade to full sun)
• Begonias
• Bleeding Heart
• Brazillian Fireworks (Porphyrocoma; Annual)
• Brunnera (most varieties will grow in zone 7)
• Camellia (large shrub growing up to 12 ft tall, but ½ as wide)
• Coleus
• Caladiums (annuals unless dug up and brought in for the winter)
• Coral Bells (Heuchera; Shade/Part Shade))
• English Primrose
• Ferns
• Forget-Me-Nots (6-8” tall w/ small blue flowers)
• Hardy Cyclamen
• Hardy PerennialLillis
• Helleborus (Lenten Rose; blooms late winter)
• Heuchera (Coral Bells)
• Hosta
• Hydrangea (can be planted in full sun to full shade in SC)
• Impatiens (annuals)
• Holly (multiple varieties)
• Hydrangeas (will grow in full shade to full sun)
• Ivy (Be sure to put this in a sunk container or get a non-invasive variety)
• Lavender (Delphinium; grows in full shade to part shade; Zone 3-7)
• Lavatera (Annual)
• Lilly-of-the-valley
• Liriope (Be sure to put this in a sunk container or get a non-invasive variety)
• Madagascar Jasmine (Stephanotis; climbing vine w/ white flowers)
• Mountain Laurel (flowering shrub)
• Pachysandra (ground cover; needs boundaries due to underground runners)
• Pittosporum (evergreen shrub or small tree; says zone 8-10, but will grow in SC in shade)
• Polka Dot Plants (hypoeses pyllostachya; annual if left outdoors; perennial if dug up in winter)
• Rhododendron (Deep shade to part sun; flowering shrub)
• Viburnum (large evergreen shrub – grows 6-12ft tall)
• Violets

Periwinkle (Vinca) will also grow in full shade, but due to its invasive nature (you can get vinca that is not as invasive), I left it off the list. If you would like invasive vinca, feel free to visit my yard :) We have lots that was planted before we arrived!

Hostas

So, one of the most abundant plants at our house is hosta. I love hostas. They make such beautiful displays of foliage. They do bloom late in the summer upon tall spikes, but I prefer them without the blooms (I always want to cut off those long spikes!) Now, don't get me wrong, I do love flowers, just not a big fan of the hosta's. When we moved into our house, we had several fully mature hostas. As with most perennials bulbs/tubers/rhizomes, once plants mature, they will need to be divided or split. This is relatively easy to do. Hostas are very hardy plants so they can essentially be divided anytime, but spring (just post emerging of leaves) or in the fall once they're past their peak are the recommended times. When we divide ours, we dig them up, lay them on a hard surface and use either a shovel or a machete (or large kitchen knife) to cut them apart. If the hosta roots have not become highly entangled, you may be able to pull them apart by hand, which is advantageous to the plant. You will need to be careful to water them for the first 2 weeks post-division as they have few roots than they previously did and are more prone to wilting in spring sun. If you have hostas, and you notice in the spring when they start emerging, that they have a doughnut shape (none emerging in the center), you know that it is Definitely time to split them! The reason there are none in the center is that they have died. We had this problem with all of our hostas that were present at our house when we moved in. We are dividing them up (the last one we divided into 8 plants and put into a new shade garden). While not recommended, and one must be Very careful if doing this, some hostas cultivars can be grown in the sun. We have a bank to the west side of our giant bonsai trees and we tilled, fertilized, limed and planted about 80 hostas (undulata) along it. Only about 80% of them survived and we have a few that we stored back as we knew this would happen. The hostas are ok once they have matured in the full sun, but hostas will always prefer part-shade to shade. The hostas in front of our house are full sun, however, they are also 2.5ft in diameter and have been there since several years before we bought our house. Enough ramblings about hostas! If you have questions, please let me know .... We currently have the following hostas in our yard: 'Francee' (green with white edging), 'Undulata' (white stripe down center of green leaves), a blue hosta with wavy crimped edges (unsure of variety), and two reverse variegated hosta (green with wide white centers) that resembles 'loyalist' or 'dancing in the rain', but I'm unsure of the exact variety that are planted on either side of our back door. Slugs enjoy hostas (as do deer). Slugs don't kill them, however, they do like to eat holes in hosta leaves (thick-leafed hostas are more slug resistant than thin-leafed varieties).

Garden start -- Spring 2007

So, I grew up with a garden ... it was how mom kept the three of us occupied after school ... and we learned a lot from it ... a lot that I don't think we ever really realized we'd use, but now both my sister and I have a garden.

So when we bought our house, it had very little curb appeal. The biggest curb appeal came from the 10 fully mature pecan trees that were planted with the house in the early 30s that make two lines down the property, one on each side of the house. There's also a row of cedar bonsai trees. strange, I know; that was my thought the first year that I lived here, but they're growing on me. There are 3 Bradford pear trees in the front of the property (near the road). And, finally, there were hostas in front of the house (not shown in the pictures below since it was March and they hadn't come up yet) ... yep .... that's it! that's all there was. It was a foreclosure property and had lots of work to do on the landscaping.

Our first project was to bring some color to the front porch, and to do this we used the 3 hydrangeas that were bought for our wedding. We put these in concrete planters from the wedding; though since then we've bought a 4th and planted them at the two front corners of the house and on either side of the steps leading to the front porch.

And, while not gardening, though completely necessary, we changed the color (both main and trim) of the house to give a better palate for me to plant against as well as we simply didn't like the old color scheme! (see photos below)