Enter for your chance to win top cultivars!
It’s hard to believe I work for a company that is turning 94! Most of the time it doesn’t feel like it, but every now and then I come across an artifact that reminds me, like an ancient bulb catalog or an old plant culture library on Dewey-Decimal-style cards.
Well, to celebrate its grand old age, Wayside is doing a huge event featuring 7 giveaways as well as plenty of sales. So head over to the Giveaway Page to enter for your chance(s) to win some of Wayside’s finest plants and supplies! There will be something for everyone, from trees to perennials to planters!
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Passiflora 'Sherry' is the first in the Darkhorse series of heavy-blooming Passionflowers to
be introduced to the U.S. This beautiful deep, red passionflower is grown especially for containers.The vines of this compact variety will never reach more than 4-6 feet, making it a perfect, interesting addition to your container garden.
This tropical perennial is hardy in zones 8-11. Move it indoors to a sunny
window before your first frost if you live north of zone 8, then set it back
outside after the last spring frost to enjoy it for another season. You will have an abundance of exotic, showy blooms all summer long. Visitors will be drawn to the deep red petals, and so will butterflies. This is one of our most popular plants right now, and with good reason. Passiflora 'Sherry' will make an impressive addition to any garden. If you are not familiar with passionflowers, Sherry is a great introduction to the genus – besides having one of the most beautiful blooms on the market, it is compact and easy to maintain!
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I'm very excited about my next houseplant project. This year Wayside Gardens has one of the most stunning and hard-to-find bamboo varieties you'll ever see, Phyllostachys nigra. It is a deeply colored black bamboo, and I've always heard that it makes an excellent large indoor plant. I've got a perfect spot for it this year, left empty when I finally planted my container-bound Japanese maple tree outside.
Black bamboo is a great choice for indoor planting for a few reasons. Most obviously, the dark culms are very dramatic and interesting. It is a relatively slow-growing bamboo, so it requires less pruning and thinning to keep it looking wonderful. It is also a larger bamboo than most varieties commonly grown indoors, so it will grow taller and with a straighter upright habit, which is great for a very impressive effect and can give an entire room, even a large room, an amazing exotic feel. I'm hoping that, as it gains height, it will draw the eyes upward and emphasize the tall ceilings in my living room. Of course, as with any large houseplant, it can dominate a small room, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. This bamboo in a smaller room could create a wonderful meditative feel of being in a perfectly calm outdoor temple somewhere in China.
Bamboo is never a houseplant requiring no care at all, but it is a relatively easy plant to care for. It is important whenever growing bamboo indoors to keep it trimmed, but with taller varieties, such as Phyllostachys nigra, it is especially important to keep it from overgrowing the ceiling. Trim the tops of the culms (they're technically not "canes" until after they've been cut) just above a high branch. This pruning shouldn't harm the plant at all. You'll also want to thin it, cutting off most of the smaller new shoots and culms at the soil, especially once the plant is well-established (though you'll probably want to keep some of them, as the green of the new shoots looks wonderful against the black of the older culms). Trim the branches from the lower third or so of each culm to emphasize the shape and wonderful ebony color of the bamboo, and prune the branches above that to the second or third branching.
If black bamboo indoors isn't for you, keep in mind that it thrives in zones six to nine, and makes a fantastic privacy or border plant, or it can just be grown as an interesting grove. It is one of the best bamboos for landscaping not only for its beauty but also because it is a less invasive variety of bamboo, requiring less work to keep.
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Bulbs should be firm and never mushy or rotten—small amounts of surface mold should be okay. If only a small part of the bulb seems to be mushy, try slicing off that part with a knife and stick it in the ground anyway. It’s better to give it a fighting chance than to just assume it’s dead and throw it away. Even chancy plants can live a healthy life if you’re diligent.
Bulbs that have already sprouted will be vulnerable during the winter, so make sure your bulbs have as little new growth as possible. Larger flower bulbs, like tulips, produce bigger plants and tend to come up later in the season than plants from smaller bulbs. Plants with smaller bulbs, like crocus, come up much earlier.
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