Joanne McKinnon Garden Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Delphinium’

Blue Mirror

Blue Mirror survived another winter with only snow for protection. The raised bed will be top dressed with compost in the next week or so. The dead wood and weeds have been removed. It rained over the week-end, soil is evenly moist.

Every season, gardeners find themselves with wrongly labeled plants. In my case, it’s usually positive. So was the case with this Belladonna  Delphinium. Before I received it from McFayden I didn’t even know it existed. this group of Delphiniums are shorter and bushier than the elatum types. When it first died back to the ground, I thought I lost it. But close examination showed tiny sprouts.  The plant also responds well to moving. When it gets leggy, I lift, divide and amend the soil with shrimp compost and bone meal. This year, for the first time, I’m using fish compost. Yes, it does stink. Found this fertilizer at Costco. The smell doesn’t last long, raccoons visit my feeders but never touched any of the plants amended with the fish compost. I do apply only in the morning.

They like full sun, moist soil and some support. You can read more details about this hardy perennial on the my garden site.

Grown from seeds. First try, placed seeds in crisper for a few weeks before sowing, none of the seeds germinated. Second time, sowed in a self watering tray and placed it in the refrigerator. Most of the seeds germinated after a few weeks, then moved them under a grow light until the outside temperature was warm enough.

A week or so after the last frost, they were planted in different beds.  Those in part shade and sandy loam hardly bloomed and some nearly died. Then I grouped a few in a raised bed that’s half filled with home made compost and gets sun all day. They were the first to sprout in spring. They now get an algae based fertilizer every week.

In the past few weeks we had lots of heavy rains and little sunshine. They have no support expect each other and they are still standing and blooming.

Garden Images