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Re: [PRIMROSES] Pulmonaria

Grow Primula denticulata from seed. It's easy, and you don't notice so much
when you lose a few. The native Podophyllum is a bit too enthusiastic for
me, but will admit that I bit on the Chinese one... If the Variegated
Solomon Seal weren't so pretty, I'd say the same about it. It does romp
around, with or without water. Almost any of the woodland ferns will take
dry shade. The whole batch of Dryopteris, the Broad Beech, Jap. Painted,
Christmas, of course, just stop and think about the conditions under which
they live as natives. Adiantum pedatum is surprisingly drought tolerant.
Incidentally, Athyrium niponicum has been used as my indicator. When it
goes flat on it's face, it's time to water the azaleas. It comes right back
incidentally. For the ones that normally grow in swamps, they just grow
smaller. My perfectly healthy, spore producing cinnamon fern is 1 foot
tall. Dryopteris goldiana incidentally grows more nearly it's normal
height, since it is a typical woods fern.

You couldn't duplicate my conditions, and you wouldn't want to.... I have
the only sandy hard pan I've ever seen. Surface subsoil. the clay is more
nearly kaolin, or in pottery terms, short or porcelain type. It can be
worked as the snow melts on it, and dries to sandstone in the summer. The
pH when I first started gardening here was about 3.9. Acid enough to fizz.
No plasticity, and no shrink-swell tendencies. If it is compacted, it stays
that way, and for the only bonus I have found, you don't have to put
footers under a wall. Forgot something, it doesn't stick to you no matter
how wet. A gardener who never gets dirty???? Sounds like an oxymoron. I
started terracing my hillside after over 3 inches of rain wet down 1/8 of
an inch. That incidentally is how I killed an oak tree. Tried my best to
make water run up hill. The clay, when dry repels water like talc. When we
attached a solar sun room to the house, our neighbors were afraid a big
cement truck would break their drive, so it came up our front lawn.... Not
only didn't kill the grass, it didn't leave a dent. Too big to see where he
was going, so he came down thru what I was calling a rock garden.... moved
a few rocks, or I couldn't have told where he went. The rock garden is now
in troughs, where I can control their conditions, and keep roots out.
Incidentally, the man who dug out for the sunroom said that road builders
would love to buy my hill. Being inert, it doesn't make ruts, and you can
crown it, and it stays there. Have learned that pine bark opens it up, and
have put innumerable dump truck loads of wood chips on it. Double trenching
is a joke, peat moss makes a bad situation worse, and I may be the only
person I know that adds lime to azalea beds. Tree roots are all surface.
Even my oaks didn't go more than 2 feet into this stuff. Interesting? The
P. denticulata has done the best in the bed that was excavated from the
sunroom. Not as well worked as most other areas, because I had to put
plants there right away... go figure.

>I have managed to kill P. denticulata a couple of times, but haven't given
>up, yet.  Nancy, what kind of conditions do you have your P. denticulata's
>in?  I ask, as what you're doing would likely work for me.



Nancy Swell                     | "I have the receipt for fern seed"
505 Baldwin Road                |  "I walk invisible"
Richmond, VA 23229          USA |          Henry IV, Act 1
Zone 7 - min. 5 (-15 C), max. 100+ (38 C), NARGS, AFS, BPS, HFF, HPS, RHS,
swell@erols.com
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