Ken

Very good you found LIR and that the hummers found them. Mine get about 2 and 1/2ft tall and wide. Once the top spike gets thru blooming you can remove it. No need to deadhead as the blooms are only good for about a day and then they are replaced by another. They are a good solid hummer staple. I have it every year.

Yes, the LIR flower spikes should be cut off once a spike's individual blooms are done. Don't bother removing each individual spent bloom because that becomes tedious pretty quickly. If you leave the spent spikes on the plant the calyxes will turn brown, open up, and drop seed. You want the plant to spend its energy growing new flower spikes, not seed.

Ken,
Once it gets hot, LIR will start to grow vigorously and reach 2-3'. If you are near Morris County, The Farm at Green Villa, located in Chatham, has many hummer plants.

Hi Harryshoe,

Thanks for the info! Chatham is a little over an hour from here. :C( I will look up their number and call them if I have trouble finding a specific plant.

There are a lot of nurseries close to me and they all carry a good amount of hummingbird plants. Problems arised when I tried to find many of the specific favorite hummer plants that have been posted in this forum. I still have not been able to find the Salvia black and blues at all, but I am happy with the lady's in red that I did finally find.

Ken

Excellent picture Ken! I think a lot of seeing your hummers is patience too. And, I usually hear them first before I see them.

Lady in red is fairly common at a lot of stores right about now,. I recently saw some black and blues in bloom at my local lowes store but didnt buy any since I already have them.

By the way if you have a nice bed of annuals that you like and want to overwinter you might consider what I did. After maybe the first frost or two I cut all the plants down to 6inches or less and cover them with plastic sheeting[visqueen] or a tarp and use something like sheperds hooks or bags of mulch or rocks or whatever you have to hold down all edges of the plastic , it works. I have a lot of salvia guaranitica and agastache tutti frutti which survived using this method.

I plant LIR and Coral nymph about 1 - 1.5 feet apart. I think the seedheads of the LIR are quite ornamental, and like to collect seed so I don't deadhead all of the stalks. Both of these plants are very easy to start from seed.

Another Salvia that is a hummingbird favorite and easy to start from seed is Yvonne's Salvia which is a tall cultivar of Salvia splendens. This can grow much larger especially in a warm sunny spot and I space those a bit farther apart.

Terrene

I also collect seed from coccinea and guaranitica plants and start from seed inside around march 1st. I do this every year giving away half of what I start to my sister who is happy to plant anything I dont want.. I also do some from cuttings such as cuphea shumannii and david verity which are the only cuphea I fool with and they are super easy to root. It expands my garden and saves money at the same time. Some would rather just buy the new plants in the spring that is fine too but I have trouble finding a lot of the plants I want around here, so I do what I do. I guess its sort of a habit by now.