Busy time in the garden. I’ve been piddling along out there lately, doing little jobs and thinking strategy for the fall. This past week I had some time, the weather cooled down, and I was on a roll.
I have lots of potted plants, mostly succulents, that are tired and need to be repotted or pitched out. I consolidated some of them into bigger pots and I think I might have a little plant sale with the plants I’m not in love with anymore.
I’m trying to make a space so I can get a couple of chickens, but I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me before that’s going to happen. The big cedar tree in the front will provide one perimeter of the chicken enclosure, but right now the tree is surrounded by bicycles so I have to move some things around out there. I bought a bamboo fence and Mi Esposo helped me get it placed today. I filled in a big space with more gravel which cleaned up the area tremendously. I love crushed gravel! Instant fix.
Last weekend I got a lot of flowerbed cleanup and fertilizing done. The climbing rose beds got raked out and I applied Ada Perry’s Rose Fertilizer. I think Ada Perry’s fertilizer has been the secret to the big difference I see in the health of the rose bushes since I’ve started applying it. Walter Andersen’s Nursery is the exclusive nursery to buy Ada Perry’s if you are in the market for it. Anyway, I finished off the beds with worm castings from my own compost bins! Nice!
I still have things to move around out there but it was a good start. I’m loving the cool weather because I know it’s not going to last. It stayed cool like this last year until mid-August, then the heat hit with a vengeance for a few months. Threw my whole gardening calendar out of whack. Keeps things interesting, that’s for sure!
Tagged as:
Ada Perry,
Ada Perry's Rose Fertilizer,
fertilizing,
roses
A few days back I posted This Month’s Garden Jobs and made reference to a rose fertilizer I had purchased called Ada Perry’s Rose Fertilizer. I bought a bag of this months ago at Walter Andersen’s Nursery just because I hadn’t seen it before and it looked interesting. The name Ada Perry didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but since I bought the fertilizer, her name has been popping up on a regular basis.
A couple of months ago I was doing some research and I came across some old newspaper articles written by Ms Perry for the San Diego Union Tribune. She wrote her gardening column for over 22 years. She was a contributor to California Garden magazine as well. I’ve also learned that she hosted what was probably the first radio “garden show” in San Diego.
Ada worked at Walter Andersen Nursery for many years. Her first love was roses and she developed her own special formula for feeding them. She developed this combo over time after testing on her own roses. After her death, Walter Andersen Nursery pre-mixed the list of ingredients specified by Ada and they now sell it under the name of “Ada Perry’s Magic Formula”.
If you don’t have an opportunity to drop by Walter Andersen Nursery for this mix, you can create your own with the following recipe: 1 Cup mined gypsum; 1/2 Cup blood meal; 1/2 Cup fishbone meal; 1/4 soil sulfur; 1/4 Cup Sul-Po-Mag (0-0-22); 2 TBSP chelated iron or iron sulfate; & 1 TBSP Epsom salts. Multiply the above ingredients by the number of roses you need to fertilize. Feed each rose 2-1/2 Cups of this mix after your January pruning. Reapply in June.
Ada had some plants named after her: a begonia, an iris, a fuchsia, and a miniature rose that has been called one of the highest rated, hybridized miniature roses developed.
The latest issue of California Garden ran an article about Ada from its archives. It was a nice article to read and rounded out my knowledge of Ada Perry. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet this lady who sounds like she was interesting, a creative gardener and a good friend. But I can think about all this when I’m spreading Ada Perry’s Magic Formula around my roses.
If you haven’t read This Month’s Garden Jobs that I posted a few days back, check it out. There is work to be done!
Tagged as:
Ada Perry,
fertilizer,
roses
Gardeners tend to pick their favorite plants and then obsession sets in. We always need an excuse to buy more of our favorites. Bare-root season is coming and those catalogs are SO tempting, not to mention wandering around our favorite nurseries, so for those of you who are rose-obsessed, here’s a way to count your roses to your advantage!
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HOW TO COUNT ROSES -by Kim_SC at GardenWeb
1. Mini roses don’t count.
2. Floribundas, because they are not full-fledged hybrid teas, count as half.
3. Shrubs, Climbers, Ramblers, Old Garden Roses, etc. don’t count because they can be considered “landscaping.”
4. Roses not planted, or in pots, don’t count. (See the “Territory” Clause).
5. Roses that were discounted count as half.
6. Roses received as gifts don’t count.
7. Odd numbers must always be rounded off-if you’re out of room, round the number down. For every one-hundred, divide by two. This is known as a “stock split.”
8. Roses whose names you don’t know or can’t remember obviously don’t count.
9. Roses that are on Shovel Prune Watch don’t count; the roses that replace them also don’t count as they cancel each other out.
10. Duplicate/multiples count as one as they are considered a set.
11. Roses that are not planted in a bed don’t count. (See the “Landscaping” Addendum).
12. Bare roots don’t count because they are dormant when they arrive; once you plant them and they start to bud out-well, you’ve already done your count, so you will just have to wait until next season, by which time you’ll be sure you already counted them.
13. Mislabeled roses don’t count because you probably already have one of them somewhere, which has already been counted once-probably.
14. Anything less than Grade 1 counts only a fraction, and since fractions are not whole numbers they can be rounded off (remember the rounding off rule).
15. Roses that you think you might give away can be excluded from the count-makes it easier to part with them; if, by some chance you wind up keeping them, well-oh well.
16. Hybrid teas that get huge and wind up taking more than one space should be counted twice, but remember the duplicate rule.
17. Now if, after counting, you have under a hundred roses, you must immediately place some orders, and they don’t count because they’re in transit and therefore not in the ground.
18. Roses ordered on a whim really don’t count because they were never on a list. (This is known as the list rule: If it’s not on a list, it doesn’t exist -most likely).
19. If you cut many roses and give them away, this is considered Charity, and everyone knows that you get special allowances for Charity, which brings us to:
20. Tax Deductions: (See Claiming Roses as Dependants)
See? You really didn’t have as many as you thought you did -time to go order some more.
Tagged as:
roses
Bananas are one of those fruits that should never go to waste if they are past their prime. You can always throw them in your compost bin, but staghorn ferns love them and so do your roses. It’s the potassium in bananas that is the big appeal (no pun intended! ). The peels are over [...]
Tagged as:
fertilizer,
roses
Roses have been blooming heavily since mid-April so they are slowing down now, but a round of fertilizer would give them some nourishment they can use for a little boost. Suggested feeding is 1 tbsp of urea per plant every other week. Fish emulsion is another great snack for your roses this month. Deadheading is [...]
Tagged as:
Flowers,
maintenance,
roses
