I finally managed to get every last perennial into the entrance bed. It's only taken me something like 3 months but the job's finally done. Time to relax? Nope. Now I can concentrate on planting bulbs!!
I've had a few moments in the last week or two when I've wished the gardening season was over. Anyone else ever get that feeling? The thought of digging in 100+ bulbs just seems like too much right now.
Tuesday night I pondered whether to put blankets on my plants as the weather seemed overly chilly. But when I checked the Weather channel they were reporting temperatures would only go down to 6 degrees celcius.
The reality Wednesday morning was that temperatures went down to 2 degrees. I really should have gone out and covered up some plants. The squash and nasturtium are a bit fried from their chilly encounter. However, triumphantly, the dahlias and peppers all survived to bloom another day.
Bless their little pink hearts these hollyhocks are trying to bloom.
These were planted from seed this spring and generally they do not bloom the first year so this is a bonus. Unfortunately I thought these flowers were meant to be RED. Now my planting combination doesn't seem quite so smart. Worse, I discovered why there were yellow dots all over the leaves.
Turns out my new hollyhocks have rust. Of course. In a summer when it seems everyone in my community lost their tomatoes to blight it stands to reason that rust would also abound. Well, at least I now know it's a fungus and not just my lack of watering.
Does anyone have advice on how best to deal with hollyhock rust?
