Ianna, I have some daisy type flowers that are hardy in my zone 3/4 garden. I don't know what they are as they were gifted to me years ago. Anyway they too did not have any petals this year. I think it was due to extended cold weather after lots of warm weather in March and may also be due to all the rain we received over 12 inches in three weeks time. They are on their second flush now and these have petals but they are very short. Strange.

I didn't buy a single plant this year so I had no disappointments in that regard. Sorry that you did.

MeMo

I planted Heavenly Blue morning glory and it just started blooming and looks like Grandpa Ott or Star of Yelta. I haven't looked closely enough to figure it out. I'm annoyed. I bought a pack of Heavenly Blue and expected that. Oh well. It actually works out ok because it's near my purple 'Jackmanii' clematis.

Lisa

I've had problems with coneflowers before ianna, and now I've got a few no petal flowers. Which is perfectly fine if you planted them for no petals...

The dahlias are weird here this year. The talls are flowering but seem to dry and look weepy so quickly but maybe it's the heat. Then the other two shorter types look perfectly healthy but are reluctant to flower.

I have an area I've seeded with annuals TWICE and not a darned thing has come up. What is with that? The soil there is pretty good. I'm miffed (and disappointed as I have a huge naked hole in the garden)

Then at least two of my tomatoes are diseased. Two came out today. We'll see if this rain has helped others. If not, I've got a good other 6 go come out. It is very possible we'll be growing more beans this year :(

My black eyed Susans had a bud in early May that bloomed by the end of the month. I had transplanted it last year from a Toronto garden and think that might have something to do with it. It's been going for a month (although the plant is only a foot tall) while my neighbour's batch is just starting to gear up for the show (the rest of the plant started blooming in June - still way early, IMO.

I went to a nursery also at the beginning of June and walked out with a "mystery" plant. Most of my garden is shade, but the leaves looked more like my daisies so I put it in a sunnier spot. Within a week, the plant had gained about 2 feet in height (so about 3.5 feet in total) and is now sporting some buds. Obviously I put it in the right location, it's very happy, but the buds look almost like a hydrangea bloom. Can't wait to tell what it is.

No real disappointments yet. Although I think everything is on a short track this year - destined to finish off in August instead of October :(

Very few or no flowers on a dozen peonies due to late freeze while setting bud.

I haven't had any oddities, but I have had several disappointments. My Blue Fortune Agastache look more gray than blue most of the time. And my Bela Lugosi daylily is a much redder purple than I had in mind. I guess that's what I get for buying plants that are not in bloom, but by the time they would have bloomed, they would either have been sold out at the nursery or it would have been too hot to plant them.

Totally Confused

Im dissapointed in my dahlias and gladiolous bulbs. I bought them at a box store but never thought they wouldnt come up! I only have 12 out of 60 gladiolous and no dahlias out of 10. Im not sure what went wrong but i wont try again.
My druids chant daylily isnt as great as i thought itd be either. Its nice but not awesome. And i ordered daylilies from qvc when a relative gave me a gift cert. I have 2 that arent part of the package i ordered, and way off my color preference!

my vine lemon vine that just made it over the top of the arbor was nibbled on by some varmit and now the whole thing is dying. None of my 6 baptisa bloomed this year, and my pink yarrow is white.

Lilyfinch, I remember when we had a thread going about the garden withdrawal driven purchase of bulbs at big box stores early this spring. Remarkably, I had 100% success with both my gladiolas and dahlias from the big box stores. So, don't give up! My caladiums have been great, too. The liatris and crocosmia had spotty success at best, but I know I waited too long to finally decide where to put them. The bulbs felt soft by the time I got them in the ground.

Here's a picture of the 'Heavenly Blue' morning glory (ha!). Any thoughts on what it really is? Grandpa Ott, Star of Yelta, something else?

Lisa

green thumbs guy, most weird. I have black eye susans as well and they are just budding. I'm just a zone higher than you. It's this weather we are having. Cool and too wet.

thanks on the feedback re the coneflowers GGG. I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this weird phenomeno. At first I thought I had a new plant but then I realized I've had this one for a couple of years now and it's only now that's 'lost' it's petals.

Six, yes six green tomatoes on 53 plants. That's all I've gotten this year. And maybe a dozen squash. The flower gardens are just doing their thing for me. My echinacea is going gang busters, both white and purple. The stargazers are almost 5' tall and blooming like crazy. But the veggies, not so much. Did I plant too many bee friendly plants? I've got swarms of bumbles all over the flower garden and very few in the potager just a mere 4' away.

-ianna, I have had double decker for over six years and it hasn't doubled its decker, lol! It only grows a few wild petals out of the top, but nothing more. Rather suspect that the nursery started it by seed and it didn't come 'true'.

We had a very cool (at one point nearly twenty degrees below average!) and wet spring that set the veggie garden back a great deal.

My favorite peony- it didn't have quite as nice flowers this year due to some nasty caterpillar chewing at the buds. Then the rain started again and ruined them completely ;-(

My Hakone double white balloon flower partially rotted out. There are a few seedlings around it, but it may take awhile for them to do anything.

My Chocolate Eupatorium and Agastache Golden Jubilee are barely a third the size they were last year. Only reason I can think of is the late frost we had earlier this spring killed most of the first shoots...
CMK

Ianna, I love verbena bonariensis too. What was the "secret" you found out? I don't start them early inside, and by the time the seeds germinate and grow big enough for flowers, my summer is over. Do tell.

silvegirl -- well I was following the instructions to a T. And that was to germinate the seeds in the dark. However for several years, it never worked out. So one day, I spotted the owner of the seed company while I was attending a flower show, and he was most embarrassed by it. He said it was an error and that the instructions were typed up by his wife. I happen to know his wife passed away a long time ago and perhaps he may not have noticed it till now. In the past, I must have killed off the seedlings by not recognizing they were verbena seedlings. Once they do grow in your yard, let them reseed so you have continuity of plants for the following year.

CMK - that's it. It's time to get rid of that double decker imposter.

One more disappointment. My Love Lies Bleeding Amaranthus turned out green and no it's not bleeding.

Well you don't germinate teh seeds in the dark. Simply let them fall on top of the soilless mix and it will germinate in a couple of weeks. Even if small do tranplant out when the weather gets warm. Alternately, you could direct sow and protect them with a cloche made of the top of a pop bottle. T

tried to make a correction to my entry yesterday but couldn't. The last paragraph got separated from the first paragraph. LOL

Lilyfinch: That is a very large percentage of failed plants from the big box store. Where they bare root plants in the box? I would take the boxes back with the bill if you have them and explain your disappointment.
I will say ours sells things WAY beyond their life expectancy. Just a few weeks ago they were still trying to sell fruit, bare root in bags and boxes at 50% off and a couple were looking at them. I told them not to bother (the gal behind the cash register looked very annoyed) because the stuff had been there since March, never watered in plastic bags outside and we'd had temps almost to 100 for several days.
Normally this store is an excellent one (my friend runs the garden center) but they are often forced to make decisions they know are not in the customers best interest because it's dictated by the office. Even if you get nothing in return because you don't have the plants - you can at least explain their failure to thrive.

Ditto with my Coneflowers. Same as last year. This year all the leaves turned brown as if they got fried then dropped off. It's full of flowers though but I doubt any more grow.

I'm VERY upset at my Morning Glories and Moonflowers...and the Blackeyed Susan Vine.

All bushy but no blooms. By now the MG's and MF's should be blooming their little heads off. Now we have very few blooming.

I've never fertilized these either, they don't need to be fertilized, but I'm wondering if maybe I should? I hear fertilizer can increase leaves with no flowers.

Every year I plant Grandpa Otts morning glory seeds and plants. That way I have flowers early and all season long. This year, two plants have drowned and disappeared in our unusually rainy May and June, and the other two are petering out though they have put out a couple of puny flowers three inches from the ground. The seedlings did well a week or so and then have slowly disappeared. I have lost well-established agastache, nepeta, and lamium. I lost an expensive new variety of bleeding heart. My miniature Joe Pye weed is wilting at the top, and I am going to try to pinch these to see if it stimulates better growth now that the sun is finally here. These are disappointments due to the weather, and I am sure I will have more to come. My coneflowers are in early bud, but the plants look spindly. I expect some disappointments there, too.

I have also had some disappointments due to mislabeling of plants. I don't like orange, but the burgundy gallardia that I bought is just starting to bloom, and it looks a lot like Goblin. I have a funky neon peachy-orange-colored red hot poker which I put next to the soft yellow one I had bought the year before to increase its numbers. Finally, a white boltonia is really a pink boltonia. Which is really not a disappointment, except the pink boltonia tends to flop for me.

oakleyok, it's nitrogen that causes plants to be heavy on the foliage and less in flowering. That can also be due to high nitrogen fertilizers or compost high in nitrogen like bloodmeals.

So find fertilizers high in the middle number and that's what you need.

So much rain in June brought out the slugs in my garden. Got holes in 1/2 of my hostas; and I CAN'T get zinnias to take off cause they keep getting eaten. Finally got some on the deck in seed pellets. aren't zinnias supposed to be easy?

I was so busy that I ended up not getting my zinnias WS, so I decided to direct sow them as they are supposed to be so easy. Not one has come up and I have planted several different times and in several different places, Very disappointing as I had some new ones (to me) that I was so hoping to try.
I saw some beauties at the garden centre and even one kind that I had seeds for. I will probably cave and buy some...just so I have at least a few. :)

Sorry to hear about the coneflowers. Mine are just budding because of weird weather.

My oddity was a chrysanthemum purchased in the fall. It was labeled Maia Coral and was blooming light pink flowers. Now, it's blooming deep red. I didn't know they could change color. I like the red.

I planted two autumn joys about a foot apart 2 years ago. As far as I can tell they receive the same sunlight and water. One looks healthy while the other is barely getting by. I needed to move them and found one has an incredible root system and the other has a small root.

My mandaville has been a dissappointment this year for me,well last year also.Just doesn't seem like it's doing anything.I've fed it make sure it's watered etc,and it just looks yucky.

Also my white snowball bush is covered in aphids,so much so that you can hardly see green on the stems.We've had this bush for years and never had aphids b4,and now it's covered.I've blasted the He** out of it with water and they returned.DH sprayed it the other day and i havn't looked at it since then.If it's still covered,i'm gonna tell dh to cut it up and dig it up!!Havn't been too happy with it the last couple years anyway.
Kathi

I had the same problem as GGG with seed sowing for summer.

I think I just couldn't keep the soil moist enough and my zinnias are very spotty; haven't seen my amaranthus or celosia. The basil seedlings should have been a foot tall and they are about an inch tall. Not a single marigold has shown up. Last year, my garden was overflowing with summer annuals! So, yes, I also have gaps in the garden where I envisioned sweeps of annuals between my perennials.

One coneflower plant was loaded with cones without petals. I finally got worried that it could have a disease, so I pulled it up and destroyed it since I have so many other good coneflowers.

My perennials seemed to have all bloomed at once. They are now looking a bit tired from the extended heat wave with only one rain. I'm deadheading like crazy to try to refresh the blooms or I'll have nothing until the autumn perennials bloom.

cameron

It sounds like the purple coneflowers may be suffering from a disease called yellow asters. Check it out.

We just moved to this house a year ago and there was this random bush growing on the side of the house. I was able to identify it as ninebark. Well, I decided to let it grow. Something was eating its leaves and making it look like lace, and it looked like a weed. I got sick of it and threw it out. I will never understand the appeal of ninebark.

Also dissapointed that my tomatoes have yet again, as always, contracted early blight. :sigh: