Re: New Plants for spring

What a story!
    Trials and tribulations abound in your garden! I do notice the one thing
you have not mention here is soil pH. Did you have a soil test to determine
the pH? See where Frank says you would be very acidic. Do you know. Sure
would make a bit difference in what plants do well and which ones just fade
away over a year or two. If the pH is too far out of line for the plant it
can not feed... starves to death.
    My congratulations on sticking with it and coming out on top.
    Gene E. Bush
Munchkin Nursery & Gardens, llc
www.munchkinnursery.com
genebush@munchkinnursery.com
Zone 6/5  Southern Indiana

----- Original Message -----
> Hello Gene,
> Hmmm...my soil problems.  To start with, it's pure sand, and it's
extremely
> deficient in nitrogen and phosphorous.  That's all I can figure from
> standard soil tests; though I also paid a private soil consultant for
> specialty tests, nothing special showed up.  Despite soil amendments, the
> first three years here many flowers refused to bloom at all--columbine,
> tiarellas, iris cristata ( a native in the area), geraniums, epimediums,
> heuchera.  Each year I have poured into the gardens a fortune in colloidal
> or rock phosphate, dried blood, purchased compost (I could never have made
> enough and what I had went to the vegetable garden), and Planters II, a
> trace mineral supplement.  Strange wilts and blights killed many
plants--for
> three years peas withered and died, tomatoes died from what I think was
> verticillium, root crops were stunted and bitter, a planting of vinca
minor
> blighted and almost died.  Colchicums I planted one fall came up the
> following spring with small leaves and then just dwindled away, never
> blooming again.  Cimicifugas didn't bloom for four years after I got them,
> though they were in bloom when I purchased them.
>     Even now, I cannot grow Heucheras (except for H. Raspberry Regal),
> either for flowers or foliage.  They simply don't thrive, no matter what
> garden I  move them to, and the purple foliage ones like 'Velvet Night'
have
> always been real favorites.  Liatris spicata will not bloom for me, though
> Liatris aspera and L. squarrosa do very well.  Corepsis verticillata
> 'Moonbeam' will not grow at all, though Coreposis tripteris is
magnificent.
> My asparagus bed has fusarium wilt and I lost two Cotinus last summer to
> verticillium wilt.  Roses, fortunately not a favorite of mine, will not
grow
> at all.
>     However, after six full seasons and more money than I ever dreamed I
> would spend in soil amendments (as well as hundreds of bags of autumn
leaves
> scavenged from friends in town and a permanent mulch of hay on the
vegetable
> garden), I am seeing results.  Since I could not grow many of the plants I
> had been growing in all my previous years of gardening, I was forced to
> learn a whole new palette of plants that include various agastaches,
> phlomises, callirhoes, dracocephalums, pardancandas, penstemons, though I
> still haven't been able to get P. strictus, supposed to be easy, to bloom.
> I also depend heavily on achilleas, salvias, ornamental grasses,
baptisias,
> siberian iris, sedums, and my native garden is a mass of huge plants like
> Eupatoriums, ironweed, Persicaria polymorpha, patrinia, and asters.
>     Because of the deer, I avoid hostas, using Brunneras and Pulmonaria in
> their place, and have only a few daylilies, though they do well here.
> Fortunately, most of the new plants I grow, are not especially interesting
> to deer, and gardening in deer country has become a specialty of mine.  I
do
> workshops on it locally.  It is indeed, much more than having just a list
of
> deer resistant plants.
>     I could go on and on about the peculiarities of my soil, but by now
you
> probably have the idea.  Oh, I have forgotten to mention the huge boulders
> that dot the gardens, very picturesque, and the huge ones just below the
> surface that make nonsense of a plan worked out on paper, not so
> picturesque.  And I have lots and lots of moles with whom I live in an
> uneasy detente. They don't eat plants or bulbs, but they do push bulbs
> around and make them disappear.
>     In over 40 years of gardening, for myself and others, in three states
> and two zones, I have never encountered soil like this.  I tell people
that
> the gods of gardening decided they better give this piece of land to a
> really good gardener because it would completely discourage anyone else.
I
> am grateful for their faith in me, and they have forced me to become an
even
> better gardener.  I bloom where I'm planted.
> Merri Morgan
> Zone 5b, WV
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gene Bush" <genebush@otherside.com>
> To: <perennials@hort.net>
> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 8:48 AM
> Subject: Re: New Plants for spring
>
>
> > Hello Merri,
> >     Please... we all have "soil problems" since we all want to grow
things
> > that are not native to your backyards. I am always building raised beds
> and
> > mucking about with my soil. I would be interested in what you see as a
> > problem and what you are doing about altering reality;-)
> >     Deer resistant is a deer with a full tummy for the neighbors
yard....
> >     Gene E. Bush
> > Munchkin Nursery & Gardens, llc
> > www.munchkinnursery.com
> > genebush@munchkinnursery.com
> > Zone 6/5  Southern Indiana
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > > Many thanks, Gene.  I'd forgotten I had asked the question, but I am
> very
> > > grateful you went to the trouble to find the name tags.  I have such
> very
> > > difficult soil--I could go on forever describing its problems, but
I'll
> > > spare you--that I am always looking for plants that will thrive here.
> And
> > > be deer resistant to boot!
> > > Merri Morgan
> > > Zone 5b, WV
> >
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