Are the hydrangeas blooming where you are? Here at the farm, my hydrangeas are putting on quite a show.
My hydrangea border is located down the carriage road from my tropical hoop houses and across from my chicken coops. It is home to a selection of colorful hydrangeas including mature mopheads transplanted from my former Lily Pond home in East Hampton. Over the years, I've added several more hydrangea varieties and other plantings, such as irises, ligularia, phlox, Aruncus, Euonymus, catnip, and more. And earlier this week, I added Hydrangea 'Twist-n-Shout' a reblooming lacecap variety of the Endless Summer series of bigleaf hydrangeas and Hydrangea 'Eclipse®,' a dark-leaved Bigleaf Hydrangea from First Editions.
Enjoy these photos.
My hydrangeas thrive in this border. Hydrangeas are one of the most popular ornamental garden plants because of their large spherical bloom heads that come in shades of pink, purple, and blue.
I love hydrangeas and have been collecting them for quite a long time. Hydrangea is a genus of at least 70-species of flowering plants native to southern and eastern Asia and the Americas. By far the greatest species diversity is in eastern Asia, notably China, Japan, and Korea.
Hydrangeas are long-lived, and extremely vigorous specimens that offer lavish and varied blooms. The most common garden hydrangea shrub is the bigleaf mophead variety, Hydrangea macrophylla. The name hydrangea originates from two Greek words – “hydro” meaning “water” and “angeion” meaning “vessel” or “container.” Together, the rough translation is “water vessel” which refers to their exceptional thirst for water.
The secret to the hydrangea’s color is in the soil, or more specifically, the soil’s pH level. Adjusting the measure of acidity or alkalinity in the soil can influence the color of the hydrangea blossoms. Acidic soils tend to deepen blue shades, while alkaline environments tend to brighten pinks. The Hydrangea “flower” is really a cluster of flowers called a corymb.
Most hydrangeas are shrubs, but some are small trees. They can be either deciduous or evergreen, though the widely cultivated temperate species are all deciduous.
In addition to the mopheads, there are also hydrangeas that bloom in lovely lacecaps in this garden.
The lacecap is very similar to the mophead, but instead of growing round clusters of showy blossoms, this hydrangea grows flowers that resemble flat caps with frilly edges.
Panicle hydrangeas are known for their more cone shaped flower heads. This is a dwarf Little Lime® Panicle Hydrangea shrub, loved for its light green summer flowers that transition to pink in the fall.
Most hydrangea leaves are relatively thick, somewhat shiny, and often heart-shaped with coarsely toothed edges.
Here’s Ryan holding a potted Hydrangea ‘Twist-n-Shout’ – a lacecap variety from the Endless Summer bigleaf hydrangea series. This variety features deep pink or periwinkle blue flowers
Ryan places the pots where they should be planted – for these, about three to four feet apart. Always consider the mature size of a plant when selecting where to put it.
This is Hydrangea ‘Eclipse®,’ a dark-leaved Bigleaf Hydrangea from First Editions.
This variety is a true dark-leaf mophead hydrangea. It has intense, dark purple leaves that hold their color, even in warmer climates.
Its blooms are bold cranberry or amethyst depending on the soil ph.
Sod is removed from the areas to be planted.
Holes are dug about twice the size of the original pots.
Fertilizer is sprinkled into the hole and the surrounding soil.
As with all our transplants, the root ball is teased before planting. Here, the soil is soft, so Chhiring uses his hands to scarify the roots and stimulate growth.
In the ground, the plant should sit at the same depth it was in the pot. All these hydrangeas will flourish in this garden and make nice additions to the beds. How are your hydrangeas this year?
It's berry-picking time here at my Bedford, New York farm and I have an abundance of these small summer fruits just waiting to be harvested.
I grow many berries - I love sharing them with family and friends, and freezing them for use all year long. Behind my main greenhouse are bushes of raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and currants. All of them are delicious eaten raw at the peak of ripeness, but can also be used for making jams, jellies, and other desserts. Yesterday, I along with my housekeepers, picked several trays and boxes of wonderful raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and pink champagne colored currants.
Enjoy these photos.
This is a great year for all my berries. And they are ready right on schedule. These fruits typically start ripening in late June into July.
I have several rows of raspberry bushes. Summer-bearing raspberry bushes produce one crop each season that lasts about one month.
One plant can produce several hundred berries in a season. Raspberries are vigorous growers and will produce runners that fill up a bed.
Once raspberries are picked, they stop ripening, so under-ripe berries that are harvested will never mature to the maximum sweetness. Only ripe raspberries will come right off the stem. The black raspberry plant is a high producing early variety whose upright growth makes it easy for picking.
Here, only one raspberry is ready; the rest need more time. The berries will ripen gradually throughout the summer, so it’s important to check the crop every few days.
This all-purpose fruit is firm, sweet, and full of flavor. It tastes great eaten fresh off the stem or made into preserves.
The raspberry is made up of small “drupe” fruits which are arranged in a circular fashion around a hollow central cavity. Each drupelet features a juicy pulp with a single seed.
The raspberry plant has spade-shaped leaves that are toothed along the edges. My bushes are several years old and remain so healthy. It takes about two to three years for a new raspberry plant to produce a significant crop of fruit.
But most raspberry plants also have small thorns, or prickles, along their stems and canes – they are part of the rose family.
My tip for freezing is to place a layer of berries onto a baking sheet and freeze them until they are solid, then transfer them into plastic bags or containers, so they store easily back in the freezer.
Here’s Enma picking a tray of black raspberries. I like to pick early in the morning before it gets too warm. There are more than 200-species of raspberries. In the United States, about 90-percent of all raspberries sold come from the states of Washington, California, and Oregon.
This is a tray of red raspberries. These must be picked and handled very carefully as they are very delicate. They should also be checked for insects – they love them.
This year, I also have blackberry bushes. This is one of the fruits. The blackberry is packed with vitamins C, K, and E, rich in dietary fiber, and low in sugar. Blackberries are juicy and delicious eaten raw. I can’t wait to pick more.
Some of the gooseberries are also ready. The gooseberries in my garden include ‘Pixwell’, ‘Invicta’, and ‘Hinnonmaki Red’.
Gooseberries are native to Europe, northwest Africa, and all regions of Asia except for the north. Gooseberries grow best in areas with cold, freezing winters and humid summers.
The color of gooseberries depends on the variety. It can range from red and purple to yellow and green.
Gooseberries are not difficult to pick, but the stems are thorny, so care must be taken when harvesting the fruits.
Here are some of the clustered currants. I grow white, red, pink, and black currant varieties. These ‘Pink Champagne’ currants are pendant clusters of fruits the color of champagne blushed with pink. These currants are less tart than the red and among the sweetest of all currants.
White currants are sweet and tart with floral undertones. Although the fruits are the primary source of food from the plant, the leaves, and tender, young shoots are also edible.
Currants are still largely unknown here in the United States. They are well-loved in many other countries, and here in the US, they are slowly gaining popularity, especially because of the high antioxidant content. They are now more prevalent at local farms and home gardens.
Look at these trays of fruit – so exciting, and not bad for a first harvest. And there will be many, many more…
This time of year, I always display lots of potted tropical plants around my Bedford, New York farm.
The Mexican Fan Palm is native to Mexico, but has naturalized in several states including Florida, California, Hawaii, and Texas. It's a beautiful palm tree with shiny, deep green fronds and a trunk that can reach up to 100 feet tall. I have several Mexican fan palms in my tropical plant collection. This year, I decided they would look great displayed around my pool where they can flourish in full sun.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
My pool was built to run north to south in this space, so I could enjoy all the gorgeous views of the landscape.
There were three fan palms that needed repotting into more suitable containers. Pete starts by running a hori hori knife around the inner edge of the pot to loosen the palm’s root ball.
Then slowly and carefully, Pete and Fernando remove the specimen from its vessel.
Mexican fan palms have large, three to five foot wide fronds that are palmate, meaning shaped like fans.
Here is the root ball once it is out of the pot. Fan palm trees, like other palm trees, have fibrous root systems that spread out horizontally.
Here’s another view of the root ball. Notice the base of the trunk of the palm. The Mexican fan palm, Washingtonia robusta, and California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, come from the same family and look very similar. One main difference is the Mexican fan palms have much slimmer trunks that grow taller than its cousin.
Ryan places a broken pot shard into the pot to cover the drainage hole. It keeps dirt from falling through the hole while making sure there is still room for proper drainage.
The shard need not be large – just big enough to cover the hole. Save shards from broken pots to repurpose the pieces.
The planter is filled a third of the way with a good potting soil mix.
We use Scotts Miracle-Gro Cactus, Palm & Citrus Potting Mix, which is fast-draining and is designed for both indoor and outdoor container plants. The mix contains a blend of sand, perlite, and sphagnum peat moss, which helps prevent soil compaction, improve drainage, and retain water and nutrients.
Ryan trims and scarifies the root ball to stimulate growth and to ensure the roots can spread in the pot and absorb nutrients from the soil. Teasing roots apart before planting is a good practice for all plants.
Ryan places the fan palm in the container, making sure it is planted as deep as it was in its previous pot and about an inch under the rim of the new pot.
Here’s Ryan stopping for a quick photo as he tamps down lightly around the base of the palm to make sure there is good contact between the soil and the plant.
Pete wheels the specimen to its location on the other side of the pool.
Here’s Ryan removing another palm from its old pot. Notice he is working on a tarp. Doing this helps to contain all the plant debris and any dropping soil and saves a lot of time in cleaning up.
Again, Ryan fills about a third of the new pot with soil mix and then combines it with fertilizer.
The palm is placed into its new container and Pete adds more soil mix to just under the rim of the planter. This is also a good tip – filling to just under the rim will prevent soil from falling out when the plant is watered.
These Mexican fan palms prefer full sun to partial shade – they will do well here pool side until they are brought back into their designated hoop house in the fall.
I always arrange and display my potted plants differently eery year. This season, the fan palms join potted Agave bracteosa, or Squid Agaves, around my pool’s edge.
I also planted six Ginkgo biloba Goldspire™ Obelisk trees around the pool last month. These trees are doing excellently.
Everything is looking so lush and green.
This is one of the best spots at my farm during summer – I look forward to any time I can spend by the pool. We’re expecting another warm day here in the Northeast – stay safe, cool, and hydrated.
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
