Tiny Tree has Transplant Shock, Roses, Campanulas Bloom

Between the Delphiniums and the Campanulas, Sara’s garden is ablaze in blue. These usually tall spires of clustered blooms are even taller this year than last. We had to stake some of them with thin bamboo sticks. But the overall effect on the garden is one of magnificence.

Sara is growing different types of Campanulas this season. There’s the Campanula Peachleaf Bellflower, Campanula latifolia, Pritchard’s Variety, and Campanula Chettle Charm Bellflower.

The official Latin name of Peachleaf Bellflower is Campanula persicifolia blue form. It’s light lavender bell-shaped blooms are of the heirloom variety. Although the average height of this plant is listed as two to three feet, ours are more in the four to five foot range.

It likes average to moist soil (I guess it thrived on all the rain we’ve been getting), but it must be well drained. Its spread is 12 to 18 inches. It is one of the most popular of perennials, having graced cottage gardens for hundreds of years.

The Campanula latifolia is more purple than lavender, but it’s also meant to grow up to three feet. Ours is way beyond that height, attesting to the efficacy of our basic ferts, Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, as well as all the supplements and additives we mix into our nutrient solution.

Plant this perennial in full sun or partial shade, and since it loves to grow near ponds it must like moisture. The English name of this flower is Great Bellflower, “Brantwood.”

The Chettle Charm Bellflower is also a Campanula persificolia variety. It has spikes of bell-shaped flowers, mostly white in color, with violet-blue around the edges. This is a new Peachleaf Bellflower that was recently introduced into North America by a British grower.

Hardy to USDA Zones 2-9. This one is true to its published height, around three feet at present. If Sara removes the faded flower heads at the end of July, she might be able to extend the blooming time of this perennial.

Campanula lactiflora Pritchard’s Variety likes sun or partial shade, but the soil must be well-drained. It needs to be watered well until it’s established and then you can cut back on the watering. It provides an explosion of small, bell-shaped lavender flowers that bloom from early to late summer.

Sara is very proud of her two types of Delphiniums. They’re growing especially tall, as well. The Magic Fountains Delphiniums (Delphinium x cultorum) is supposed to be a dwarf variety, but you could have fooled me. Instead of the two and a half feet mentioned on the label, ours is up to four feet and growing. And the flowers are towering and superb.

The New Millenium Delphinium is supposed to grow tall, from four to six feet, and definitely requires staking. It’s one of Sara’s favorites, since it was selected in New Zealand. On its stately spires grow flowers of deep sapphire to navy blue.

The Woodfield Hybrid Lupine was listed as among the top 10 varieties for 2006. It requires rich soil, slightly on the acidic side. It grows to around three or four feet, and produces distinct spires of multi-hued blooms. This plant already bloomed once this year and is now in its second flowering.

When you use Advanced Nutrients products, your garden outperforms those of your neighbors. We have people constantly asking how we got our blooms so big and how come theirs are so small. “100% organic nutrients,” we reply, “from a company that cares about living plants, by making them the best possible nourishment to guarantee beautiful flowers and large, robust vegetables.”

Advanced Nutrients makes Organic B, which is designed to reduce plant stress. They also make Colossal Bud Blast, a foliar spray that increases the size of your buds and flowers. Grandma Enggy’s Seaweed Extract contains natural hormones that help with food distribution throughout the plant, cell division, and root formation.

Hedgehog’s Roses are producing award-winning blooms, one after another. The Gentle Giant Rose is pink, with yellow highlights. All Ablaze is a deep-red climbing Rose. Cecile Brunner is a delicate, pink-colored Rose, which carries the nickname “The Sweetheart Rose.”

First hybridized in 1881, this Antique Rose will bloom from mid-spring, until frost. Ours took a bit to be established, but given the healthy diet of our nutrient mix, it is perky and we expect many more buds and blooms this year.

It usually stays a compact bush, while the flowers resemble Hybrid Teas in form and are lightly fragrant. Cecile Brunner is a very tolerant Rose. It can grow equally well in poor soil or in partial shade.

This weekend we’ll spray all our Roses once more with Scorpion Juice, in order to maintain the induced systemic resistance that this very effective product imparts to our plants. Whether they’re threatened by fungi, bacteria, or a viral infection, the salicylic acid in Scorpion Juice helps to restore full immunity to our plants, much like a flu shot.

Sara took the kids for a hike last weekend, and they found a tiny spruce growing by the side of the road. Hedgehog was worried that someone would step on it, so they dug it up and bought it home.

They didn’t know that it was a spruce, all they knew that it was an evergreen. When they got home, Sara planted it into a clay pot filled with rich soil. Ironically, the evergreen is suffering from transplant shock and it’s turning yellow.

Hedgehog is worried that it will die So I went to the garden shop and bought some Advanced Nutrients Revive. I’ve used this product before and it truly works miracles. If you have a plant that is stressed out and needs to be rejuvenated, don’t forget to get Revive.

Revive contains Calcium, Magnesium, and Nitrogen, along with Zinc and Iron Chelates. Stress also happens as a result of nutrient deficiency. Sara mentioned that the road where they picked up the sapling was pretty dry and had poor soil.
Evergreens propagate themselves by dropping their cones full of seeds. The seeds have little wings attached to them, so once they fall out of the cone, they can get blown every which way by the wind.

Nutrient deficiency is sometimes called the “yellow plant syndrome.” We pray that with the infusion of the macro and micro nutrients in Revive, Hedgehog’s little spruce tree will come back to being an evergreen.

I looked it up in a book about “Trees,” and I believe it is a Brewer Spruce, which is native to Northern California and Southern Oregon. It is not inconceivable that it has made it this far North, either as a Christmas tree or by way of cones or seeds transported by whatever means.