PM, I planted dill in the garden based on a past photo of yours. I had hoped to have several interspersed with perennials, but only one seedling survived. It now has two black swallowtail caterpillars on it!

Deanna, look at that!! lol Yes, that is one of the reasons I grow Dill, for the caterpillars! My Dill reseeds for me, but I'm one zone warmer than you, I don't know if that makes a difference. I have a lot of seed I collected one year when I had an abundance of Dill in the bed and I am going to scatter that where I want them late in the fall this year. One year I scattered the seed too early and they all sprouted before the first frost and were killed. I'll need to be careful not to put it where I have mulch, but I really want more next year again. I moved a lot of plants around last Fall and that must have disturbed the reseeding because I usually have a lot of Cleome too and I had none this year. I can't have more than a half dozen Dill plants out there this year.

You know you are doing something right, when the life cycle of the insect population is able to complete itself!

I have an old photo of a caterpillar like that on Parsley.

I managed to get some September photos this morning....

Deanna, I just hope all the squash on the vines have time to ripen. If we have a long warm autumn, they might. It looks better than what’s been in the grocery store and I didn’t have anything to do with it. [g]

Wow on that Heliopsis, it is very cute! Next year you should get a lot more flowers. I like that ‘Summer Nights’ too. And so different than the ‘Burning Hearts’. I especially like the name of your Heliopsis…BHearts! Sweet. Impressive that you are able to see bloom the first year.

Your echinacea are so pretty they are entitled to photo bomb. LOL

I’m really looking forward to more Heliopsis blooms, for sure.

Forgot to post this: Dianthus carthusian seedheads are sprouting these things, like secondary shoots. I’ve never seen this before!

Deanna, I've never seen that before either. Maybe someone on that thread of Plant ID might know? Or someone on the Perennial forum.

I’ll post to Perennials for some info. Several of them are sprouting.

My first year to sow Tithonia. I have never seen a pollinator on them. Not one.

One of my Agastache seedlings survived as is flowering, which really surprises me given our wet year. I sow these types of Agastache but rarely have good results.

The burnet family is really starting to intrigue me. I LOVE these Purple Japanese Burnets, seeds from Hayefield. The plants are tall. They peek up over the edge of this elevated deck.

This year I realized that I sorely underwatered bushes when establishing them. I thought they were like perennials and would “establish” with about two to four weeks of good watering. Boy, was I wrong. My ninebarks are especially happy with the moisture this year. I think they’ve turned a permanent corner. First is Lemon Candy Ninebark, a favorite which is hard to find here now.

Second is Amber Jubilee Ninebark. This one barely survived last year. I’ve also done a better job of weeding out competition at the roots last year and this, and it has helped.

My Aralia Sun King is very happy this year. These two are my biggest. One that had emerging shoots regularly pruned by slugs still has not grown that large despite almost no slug issues this spring (thanks, beer!), so I’m going to consider moving it. That area is drier, so I don’t think it has been able to mature as well.

Deanna, You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about adding Tithonia for the pollinators. I have seed that is probably too old now, but I never found a place to put that large a full sun plant. Really strange that you haven’t had pollinators on Tithonia! How disappointing. AND it reseeds on it's own!

I haven’t had good luck with Agastaches either. My soil is probably too heavy for them and a lot of them need maybe a zone or more warmer to be fully hardy here. I do get Honey Bee Blue back every season and it grows well for me. And it smells like root beer when you rub the leaves, which I love. The bees love it too, of course.

I do sometimes buy annual Salvias and use Agastaches as annuals. There is a spring plant sale I often go to and one of the vendors starts Agastache seeds every winter and they’re pretty reasonable, so I’ll pick up a few.

The Burnet plants are really interesting looking. I’m thinking they would pair up with verbena bonariensis or Gaura ‘Whirling Butterflies’ Or Dill? They look like a pretty color.

I have one Ninebark - the dark foliage with small pink flowers. It’s native and that’s why I got it, but I don’t think the afternoon sun position I have it in, gives it the best chance to reach it’s full potential. And I don’t have a sunnier place to put it. That ‘Lemon Candy’ does look like it’s enjoyed extra watering. I bet everything comes back better next spring!

Wow, that SunKing looks great!!

About the Tithonia, I KNOW! I check every day. Not even a bee on it, and there are NO chemicals or anything nearby.

I forgot about the root beer smell on some Agastache. Going to crush some leaves and see if I can get a whiff!

This is a GREAT blog post from Hayefield about Japanese Burnet and what to plant it with. It’s the one that got me started. Now I notice all the smaller ones and I am ready to go down the burnet rabbithole!

Hayefield Japanese Burnet post

Some more first-year bloomers:

I thought all of these seedlings had died and mistook them for a type of carnation, but I am SO pleased to see I was wrong! These are Heleniums, which have FINALLY survived the slugs and become plants. My wintersowing germination is excellent, but I swear I love over 50% of what germinates before it can get established, mostly from slugs. I’m very happy to finally have Helenium survive. I may have to move it from this location, but I’m very happy to cater to its needs!

Sterntaler coreopsis is now blooming. I must admit, the burgundy center is not my favorite since I am not a fan or bronze and burgundy in the garden, either in flower or foliage. (The burnet above leans more towards purple, so it’s OK.). But, I’m glad to have them anyway.

It seems one of my Heliopsis is neither Summer Nights or Burning Hearts, but is the standard. Another very welcome surprise!

Here’s a good shot of my secondary growth from the seed pods with their own buds. It’s just so weird and Intersting!

And this lungwort and brunerra area has LOVED the moisture. I lost many brunerra when it was first being established, but for the past three years it has finally settled in and even reseeding all over with both brunerras and lungwort. It’s so nice to see the variegated/frosty brunneras reseed. I think it helped when I put a HUGE rock up at the driveway edge so the plowman would stop destorying it. Every plowman should be required to tend gardens by hand in the summer, in my dream world.

And three spring/early summer bloomers are reblooming, both viola, nepeta, and dianthus.

And, lastly, I love River Oats seedheads. They are still green now, and are beautiful in the morning moisture.

Enjoyable thread! All I have in bloom are annuals mostly - zinnias, cosmos, dahlias and yes - tithonia! I'm so pleased with my tithonia this year! It's the first year in about a decade that I had good germination and a fair amount of seedlings survive and thrive.

I honestly am not out in the garden enough (unfortunately) to see if the pollinators are enjoying the tithonia, but in general I am seeing tons of flying things out there - butterflies, dragonflies, and bees of all sorts.

:)

Dee

Hurricane Lee sputtered disappointingly here, if you were hoping for drama. Boats were pulled, people prepared, but fortunately we only had high winds and ~24 hours of a power outage. It was for use not as bad as some nor’easters, and I am glad to not have damage to repair!

The night before Lee blew through did give us an astounding sunset, though. The first view is from my house looking south, the second is from a friend around the corner who faces west.

Houzz wouldn’t put both photos in the post. Here’s the west-facing view.

Deanna, I just tried crushing a few Agastache leaves to get that root beer fragrance and nothing. I don’t know if it’s just the time of year or what, because they normally smell very heavily like root beer. I know they did in the spring and every other season.

Thanks for the link for the Burnet! I’ll take a look at it.

Glad you are having such a good time with your winter sowing! Wow, you really have a problem, with slugs! Some years I have a problem with earwigs believe it or not. They come out at night and make a mess of the foliage of a lot of different plants, but if it gets bad, I can just hand pick every night for a few days and it makes a big difference. SLUGS? So glad I don’t have those. They are so slimy! Eeew! Lol

Hope your Helenium and Heliopsis come back for you next year. They are such a cheerful plant.

Yeah, that Dianthus is just weird. Lol

By plow man, you mean the person who does snow removal? The person who plows our driveway always digs up the corner of the driveway that I have to fix and mulch every spring. I used to try to allow my bed of Vinca to grow right to the edge of the driveway, but I just mulch it now, so that’s the extent of the remedial work after winter. I see some neighbors have those poles you can get at the hardware store. They have reflectors on the top and are about 4ft tall, and you line them up along the edge of the property to guide the plow to where the edge is. I guess I should get a few. It would have to be a pretty big rock that they could see above the snow, right?

I’ve always enjoyed the look of River Oats!

Dee, you are not out in the garden enough?! Such a sad tale. There's always next year!

Deanna, same here with Hurricane Lee. A complete non event for us...lol. Hardly any wind, some leaves all over the lawn, no down branches, thankfully. No power outage, thankfully. Barely a drop of rain. A big to do about nothing. Although by the day before it was due, the weather forecasters were saying it was mostly going to be on the Cape and the Islands and the coast line. You lost power for 24 hrs....sorry to hear that! I'd consider that a major inconvenience. Do you have a generator?

BEAUTIFUL Sunsets!!!

PM, I”m glad you didn’t get the rootbeer smell either, so perhaps mine can give me that in the future. Maybe it only happens before the bloom, like how herb leaves lose their flavor after bloom?

I am COVERED UP in slugs. They are my constant companion and nemesis. If the world is destoryed I know I will not run out of slugs to eat, if I can bear to stand eating them. Sometimes even famine might not be enough…

Yes, my plowman who removes snow. Last year for the first time I hired the awesome neighborhood plowman only to learn that he turned the business over to his young son last winter, who ransacked the whole neighborhood. No lie, in multiple yards, including ours, he just plowed right over our reflective tall markers. There they were, 10 of them smashed into a new wall of snow, a couple broken in half. He killed a shrub SEVEN FEET inside my garden bed. I’m surprised he didn’t dent the fender of one of our cars the way he pushed snow up against it. I am NOT particular about plowing and accept that there will be losses, but this guy completely redefined ”losses.” it’s the last straw. I’m buying a powerful snowblower. I know I’m on my own to do it as my husband doesn’t participate in things involving the house, but I’ll do it for the sake of the garden. Or, I wish I could get a device that senses inordinate destruction and pushes huge sharp spikes through the ground to pop all the tires. Wait, I’m just kidding! (I think.)

New England Aster ’Alma Potschke’ is blooming now.

Deanna, I never noticed a lack of fragrance before, so I don’t know the reason, but there is a strong root beer fragrance when you rub the leaves at different points of time. Do you have the same variety that I have? I’m not sure all Agastaches have it, mine is Honey Bee Blue that I started from seed.

As for the slugs…maybe it would help if you just dedicated one season to ridding yourself of the Slugs? Just get rid of every one you could find, every day for a month. I had to do that one year with earwigs that had gotten out of control.

Oh boy, if the reflective markers aren’t even safe…and he can somehow end up 7 feet into your bed, I can’t see how you can have him come again. No one else to hire, so you don’t have to do the snowblower?

My Alma Potschke is blooming now too. I counted ten bees on one of them, this afternoon. I have two. They are so big, even though I just divided them last year. Every year I say I am going to provide support and I haven’t yet. Maybe next year.