Archive for the 'Hollyhock' Category

Hollyhocks

We are growing biennial hollyhock flowers in one our raised beds again this year. Last spring, I planted about a half a dozen double flowered hollyhock plants that I bought from a nursery. We also have single flower hollyhock varieties that reseeded on their own from last year’s hollyhocks.

The flowers are beautiful, but the leaves look messy. Their upper leaves are full of yellow spots, and most of their lower leaves have turned brown and died. I suspect the problem is a disease called hollyhock rust. The hollyhocks that are growing together in a group of about 8 plants seems to have much more of the disease than the few hollyhocks I have growing on their own in other parts of our garden. I don’t want to spray fungicide on them, because I have them growing near vegetables. So I will just pull them out as they die back later in the summer.

July 15 2012 | Hollyhock | Comments Off on Hollyhocks

Summer Flowers

These are 3 pictures of flowers blooming in our yard this summer. The first picture shows an Amaryllis belladonna plant. These beautiful fragrant light pink flowers have appeared for the second year in a row from a bulb that I planted in the ground several years ago. The flower stems appear from the bare earth about a month after the leaves turn brown and die in June. Ours has about 10 flower stems this year, about twice as many as last year.

The second picture shows a cluster of purple dahlias that I planted in one of our raised bed gardens last year. These dahlias have grown vigorously and bloomed profusely in our raised beds, which get watered regularly and have some protection from snails and slugs. When I tried to grow dahlias in the ground a few years ago, snails devoured them.

The third pictures shows a group of hollyhocks growing in another one of our raised bed gardens. I planted the hollyhocks by seed last summer. They have grown very quickly over the past year with regular watering, but no fertilizer. Some of our hollyhocks are now over 8 feet tall. Our hollyhocks started blooming in early July, and they were full of dozens of flowers of various shades of pink and white for over a month. Now they are starting to fade. This picture was taken about a month ago.

August 20 2011 | Amaryllis and Dahlias and Hollyhock | Comments Off on Summer Flowers