Rita,I w/s several different Rudbeckia. I cant wait to get blooms of these. I have never grown Goldstrum, but I love the colors of the Cherokee Sunset, and Cappucino too.
tammy

I'm not picky. I love all black-eyed Susans.

You chose well! I had Cherokee Sunset for aeveral years in the front bed. The maurauding purple heart finally got it along with several cone flowers.

Tore that stuff right out, and may plant some of theCherokee Sunset again to replce the loss. But not today.
kay

Goldstrum is very boring compaired to the fancy new kinds. Plus I alway loved Indian Summer better than Goldstrum back in the old days. I am sure I am going to love this new (to me) one.

All this plant adding is part of my plan to bring back things that used to be in the gardern but that I lost due to the terrace and hardscape building that went on here for the past three years. That was the golden era of adding roses and daylilies. Not going to be kicking out the roses and daylilies (those beds look fabulous) but I am very much on a plan to make it even more cottage garden. Step one is to bring back plants that used to be here but died due to the construction and moving things around.

Goldstrum is very boring

To each his own. ;)

Not trying to pick on anyone that grows Goldstrum. It is a very easy low care plant. But it just doesn't look as pretty to me as some of the other varieties.

This will be my 3rd try with a Black-eyed Susan plant. I bought a small
plant a week ago at a nursery. It must be the Goldstrum, all it says is
Black-eyed Susan. I think it's going to grow this time. I sure do hope
so because they are so pretty. I tried to grow some Prairie Sun from seed,
but no luck.

Black-Eyed Susans and Brown-eyed Susans grow wild here, and I mean WILD. They come up everywhere. I am allergic to their prickly leaves and stems, but I love them anyway.

I have Rudbeckia hirta growing near the patio again this year. I had to thin them out. They keep reseeding nicely but get so big that they take over the pathway there. When the butterflies lay eggs on them, they get really ugly when the little buggers hatch out. Oh, well, nothing lasts forever.

I planted Rudbeckia, Irish Eyes last year and this year it is going to bloom. It is biennial not perennial. I used to have several varieties, but am going to have to start over. I just love them.

In the wild here you see them in grassy meadows with Liatris, Purple Coneflowers, Narrowleaf Coneflower, Mexican Sombreros, Scarlet Paintbrush, Blanketflowers, Coreopsis, Spiderwort, Wild Larkspurs, and many others. Very pretty. I want to copy that look in my wildflower garden...again.

Years ago I looked at the common R hirta and the flowers were very pretty. But I did not buy it for my garden as it was much, much too tall for my tastes. These fancy strains are usually shorter. But I would love to see it growing wild in the fields and meadows. We don't have that around here.

I love R. hirta. It may be my favorite all-around flower.... so cheerful, and very long-lasting in bouquets. :)

I've grown some of the green-eyed rudbeckias and I love them! but they aren't really hardy enough to last as a true perennial here. :( I've also grown Cherokee Sunset -- it was pretty, but, again, not hardy enough for here. They call us z5, but realistically it should be z4.

Let it seed. That is what I plan to do and I know from personal ecperience that they self seed very well. That is why I went with the CHEROKEE SUNSET alone and not some of the other types also. I want it to come back true from seeds.

I often have trouble with rudbeckia hirta. They can get viral here, if we get warm rains they flop, because of such long summers they can grow about 2' taller than what is listed, and with the heavy flowers they flop. I love them! I wish they would behave because I enjoy them as cutting flowers.
That said, there are so many types of rudbeckias I just love them all. They start blooming here in about a week and I will have various plants blooming until fall. My favorite blackeyed susans are tall with wirey stems and perfect for cutting. They are now massing along the driveway and I keep having to thin them out!

Wow, these things have really taken off for me once they got in the ground here. They are twice as big by now and growing like weeds. By contrast, the new coneflowers planted next to them are not growing much. And those were planted much earlier.

I don't think mine have a name any longer. I had some Autumn Colors that I purchased. I saved the seeds and last year had some repeat brown ones. I also sowed Gloriosa Daisy with no other name, which is the common name for R. hirta. I saved seeds from all of them. I scatter them here and there. Some flop, some stand tall. I plant them among other things to give them support. I also grow goldstrum and R. triloba. I like them all, but I really like the variety you can find in R. hirta.

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Those photos were taken today.

Very pretty. I figgure all your seeds cross polinated so you have a mix of all your varieties.

I want to save seed from mine and wanted them to come true from seed so that is why I only bought the plants of Cherokee Sunset. Otherwise I would have bought several different ones.

Love the mix, Tom! I sowed Gloriosa Daisies this year too. Put a few transplants under the Chaste tree before it leafed out and noticed today that some are blooming even though they don't get much sun under there.

Getting here pretty late but here is my 2cents - I love them all - all varieties have a place in my gardens. I love how they self seed and come back year after year. I love them with daisies and purple coneflower. I really love how the yellow finches feast on them from late August till winter. It is a wonder that there are any seeds left to self seed but they do ........

Lynne

I appreciate the idea of getting consistency from your plants Rita. But I like surprises and the variety. Like this one that bloomed too late in the year to collect seeds. The single bloom was huge, 6" across.

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Wow, that one is really unusual.

I agree that I think the self sowing annuals are all around a great way to get those vivid blooms in the borders. I used to have a ton of the perennial dotted along for late summer color but they made such big clumps and self-sowed if I wasn't really good about deadheading.

I find the hirta are sturdy and are easy to yank out if you get too many and just so pretty! I used to have a lot of them but they needed renewal - I ordered several varieties to sprinkle in - Goldilocks, Cherry Brandy, and Indian Summer. They are a very good thing. :)

My mother had them all over the garden, all self seeded. They looked lovely and much better than the Goldstrums, which always looked exactly the same.

I have both and I do agree the hirta is much more attractive than the goldsturm. However mine don't reseed and I usually start them from seeds each spring.

I have had the Cherry Brandy and it was beautiful and made the longest-lasting cut flowers. I have Goldsturm for the first time this year and also some other chocolate-looking one. I really want to get some rudbeckia triloba, which is a prolific annual and a great reseeder. It has not hit our nurseries yet, but I am on the prowl for it. It is such a cheerful plant.

Gee -- I just returned three pots of Cherry Brandy that I bought earlier today! I came home from the garden center and looked up more info before planting and saw the bad reviews on that place that we can't mention here...so, I didn't keep them. Now, I read this!

I love Rubeckia,the whole tribe, but have been unable to grow them because of deer. This year has been better. I got flowers on one variety called Rudbeckia 'deami', Deams' rudbeckia. It has smaller flowers nicely distributed on the plant.
My favorite is a old wildflower type, Rudbeckia Triloba. It self-seeds with abandon but the plants are easily transplanted, are hardy and accept part shade.
Seed of this is readily available, specially from native plant nursery. Do try it; it's much prettier in a wildflower planting than the stiff Rudbeckias.

Hey,

I love Rudbeckia but the seedlings always die out on me.. I germinate tons of them and the little seed leaves just stay there and then they start giving the hairy true leaves...but usually they just turn brown and die. Am I keeping it too wet? I really have no idea what is going on. Thanks.
Z

possibly a case of damping off - which is a kind of fungus that kills off seedlings. Use soiless mixes that are well sterilized. What you need to do is to provide your germinating seedlings a bit of air circulation like using a fan to gently circulate the air. Second water from the bottom of the pot instead of the top down. if you could add sand to the top layer it would help prevent the development of fungus. Don't use those peat pots or newspaper pots which get mouldy.

ianna,

Thanks for your reply. I am germinating these outside so they are get circulation. I never have any luck with watering from below.. What I mean is, I never see that the water gets to the top of the soil.
I will keep trying and try to edge on the side of waiting till the seedlings are dryish before watering again to see if I do better this time.

phill173 ~ i grow triloba and will have billions of seeds soon. i'd be happy to send you some if you email me with your address!

What I described is for indoors or under greenhouse seed germination. Air circulations promotes stronger stems and reduces moisture. In your case, it could be both a fungus problem and a direct sun problem which caused it to wilt up.

Love Indian Summer, but I've never had the patience to let it reseed. I grow Goldsturm as well, in the less well tended "don't want to mess too much with it" part of the garden.
A word of caution about Cherry Brandy, however. I bought these in six-packs from a very reliable local nursery, fully expecting the blooms to be that beautiful wine red color. While one or two of them turned out that way, most of the rest were brown--not the lovely, rich red brown of some blooms of Cherokee Sunset, but a dull, drab buff brown that pretty much blended seamlessly with the faded mulch underneath it. A few were gold with a hint of red brown toward the eye. Of course, when you buy them at 3-4 inches high or as seeds, there's no way to preselect for the color. I've since seen them for sale in gallon-size pots. Same problem. Some are gorgeous, others not so much.

Kay