Sneaky Sunflowers

In the fall of 2013 I planted hundreds of bulbs around the shed.  Most of them were eaten by a family of voles the following spring.  I tried everything to ward off those pesky voles.  I couldn't get them to stop eating my precious bulbs and seeds.  I think they finally left once all the edibles were eaten.  In other words, only my daffodils and muscari survived.  Actually, I did have about a half dozen dutch irises come up this year - much to my delightful surprise!  And it seems the voles didn't quite take to the lilies, which I am so ecstatic about, because they were the priciest of all!  But on to the namesake of this post...

After it became clear my hard work with bulb selection and placement was all in vain, I decided to try a much less expensive option for summer time blooms, albeit annuals.  I figured that sunflower seeds were small so maybe the voles wouldn't notice them.  WRONG.  Every place I had planted a seed, the next morning there was a void where the voles had burrowed and eaten the sunflower seeds... or so I thought!

To my surprise, I was going around trimming back my daffodils last month when I noticed an odd weed.  Upon closer inspection I discovered it was no weed at all, but four of my precious sunflowers coming up!  I have no idea which ones they are, I had planted a variety pack and a couple red ones and mammoths.  If I had to guess I'd say the taller one is a mammoth, but we won't know until they open!  It may be a coincidence that they are all located in this little spot, I'm not sure what I had planted there last year that shielded them from the voles.  Or maybe these came up only because they are on the south side of the shed.  Regardless, I am totally pumped about them and hope to get some plantable seeds from them for next year!

June 20th

July 4th

My First Container Garden

All of my living space is on the north half of the building, so I don't have any windows facing south.  I feel this has limited my ability to really explore an entire range of plantings.  This spring I decided to take my green thumb outside a little bit more and try a container garden.  I bought a half barrel to use as a planter and picked out some red, white and blue themed annuals.

A boxful of annuals, right from the nursery!

The barrel made its debut on my stoop April 17th.  There were a couple freezing nights for which the nursery put out freeze warnings, but my little barrel made it through!

The half barrel on its first morning with a flower load!

I was pretty good at watering it every day, but once it started to establish I found myself watering it less regularly.  We got a decent amount of rain in June, so I counted that as part of my watering.

I received these yellow begonias as a gift,
they seem to complement nicely!

Just one month after planting, the blooms are
spilling over the barrel's edge!

I think my lax watering strategy the past month has not helped maintain the blooms.  They have died back significantly and in fact the sweet potato vine has discolored to a rusty orange.  This one is supposed to be a deep purple, but it seems to get burned pretty easily, turning green then orange then crispy brown.  The white alyssum did wonderfully for at least 2 months - I could smell them every time I opened the door to go inside (oddly only entering, not when exiting).  The light blue (hard to see and I forget the name) did not bloom very long and the stems seem completely dried up by now.  I tried to go in and rub off any spent blooms, but it didn't seem to encourage new ones.  The deep purple flowers maintained a bloom most of the summer.   I'll take another photo tomorrow and amend this post so you can see.

The red blooms (again, variety is lost on me) did very well most of the spring/early summer.  Despite being just one root system, the blooms branched out across the entire barrel.  Conversely, I had 6 alyssum pods spread out around the periphery.