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Columbine ::
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04.27.08 ::Better Start...
Well the Columbine I bought in '05 by mail died before it ever got out of the pot (see earlier post below). I was pretty bummed out since I went to so much trouble to get it and trying to keep it alive. I don't think ordering this plant by mail was the way to go. If I had to do it over again, I would have bought it at a different time in the year when the plants were larger..or despite the cold weather, I would have put it right in the ground as soon as possible. These plants are pretty tough when it comes to the cold. The other thing I now know that I didn't know then is that you can't really just put out one plant. You need to have at least 10-20 of them to get any kind of real effect in the garden. They need friends.
I finally found these for sale at a nursery close to me (that sells wholesale to me since I am a master gardener, yeah for perks!) and they were a lot less than I paid by mail. The plants were in one gallon buckets and I bought 20 of them. Again I didn't get them planted right away...(I don't know why I procrastinate. I have a phobia of planting things when it's cold outside)...but they could have, and probably should have, gone in the ground as soon as I got them. Instead I was afraid it was going to freeze so I left them in their buckets on the porch for a couple of months until the weather warmed up. I kept them watered and they kept some green leaves the whole time. When it did warm up I moved them out into a semi-sunny spot (not full sun) and they started putting up new leaves right away.
I finally planted 10 of them in mid-March and left the others in their pots just in case it was too early or we had a lot of late freezing weather. But it didn't matter, the ones in the ground started to really grow so I put the rest of them out a few weeks later, about the second week in April.
Both groups are now blooming...the foliage is a little sparse, but the flowers are big with about four or five on each plant. Now I just have to wait a year to see if they return, but I am feeling confident that they will be fine.
Finally I have my Columbines and they are beautiful!
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03.18.05 ::
In
The Mail
I
found out that the native columbine that I wanted was yellow and called
"Hinkley" columbine. From what I learned, it is the best drought
resistant perennial columbine for Texas and is the native to this area.
There is a landscape business down the road from me that has this plant
growing beside their fence. I fell in love with it because it grows in
shade and the blooms stay around almost all spring.
I had
some trouble finding this plant locally. None of the nurseries ever
have it even though they keep saying they will be getting it. They have
other columbines like the one I bought a couple of years ago (see
bottom of this page), but these types aren't drought resistant or hardy
like the Hinkley. I finally found it at a nursery outside of San
Antonio, Madrone
Nursery, and ordered it from the internet. This was my first time
to buy a plant through the mail, and I was nervous about it!Madrone
Nursery had a limited supply, and would only allow customers to
purchase two seedlings. The plants were a little droopy when the
package got here but still seemed ok, nothing drastic. I had also
ordered some purple coneflowers and the nursery added a free gift, a Gulf Brazos Penstemon.
I potted everything up as soon as I got the
package and let them sit outside a bit because the weather was
unusually warm. They seemed pretty happy that first day to be out
of the box, in new soil having had a fresh drink of water.
Here is a picture of the columbine right after I transplanted it into the pot...you can see it is a bit yellowed and weak but it has lots of stems.
Soon
after I transplanted everything, the weather got really cold again and
I had to bring them in the house (yes I brought them in before the
temperatures dropped!). They went down hill from that point. The leaves
all got very droopy and shriveled up to almost nothing, each day they
got worse and worse. Maybe I over
watered them, or they weren't getting enough light in the window, or it
was still too cold for them in the house. I don't know...but I thought
for sure they were going to die.
It got so bad that I had nothing to loose by cutting them back drastically. I knew from past experience that this might help them put out new leaves, so I held my breath and trimmed all the dead stems down to the roots only leaving one or two little leaves. After a stressful two days of waiting there was a small sign of new green near the base of the plant and they started to sprout again. Amazingly the plant is still alive but in intensive care. It has new leaves but not as many as when it first arrived. You can compare the before and after in the photo below showing the plant as it is now. The Columbine is the small pot on the bottom right, (the penstemon, is on the top step and the coneflowers are in the green pot.
I
guess I should be glad it is still alive but they are on the delicate
side, and I am hesitant to transplant them into the yard until they get
a lot bigger. I really want these to do well, and since there are just
two small plants I don't want them to get overwhelmed out in the open.
I am going to wait and keep it in the pot until maybe next year? I am
really not sure what to do yet. I want lots of these to naturalize
along the fence, and I want to buy more of them. I am keeping my
fingers crossed that they will hang in there and continue to do well
after their near death experience. I will update when there is any
major change or progression. To be continued...
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03.18.05 ::
I planted a few of these flittle purple
flowers from the box-nursery in the spring of 2004. I
was hoping they would seed and come back this year, but so far,
no luck. Maybe it is too early. I will report back later!
