Transplant trials

I have not purchased a whole lot of new plants this year.  I am sort of waiting to see what fills in, and where the empty spots are after the bluebonnets are gone.  But I have transplanted a few things.  I am finally to a point where a few of my plants have grown enough that I can divide them.

Obedient plant

This is a plant I have moved all over the place.  It always seem incredibly invasive, and annoying.  And then it blooms and I think, hmmm, if I could just find the right place for this guy, he could be really pretty.  Having unsuccessfully transplanted it into the back south corner, I know that it does need full sun. So I transplanted it into two places in my front bed.  The first is in the north back corner.  I have one Tropical milkweed transplant that does well there every year.  For the last two years, I purchased small milkweeds to fill the corner out... And they have all died.  Fool me once... So, no more tropical milkweed for that corner.  Maybe the Obedient plant will do there.

I also put a few transplants into an open area in the middle of the bed. I think that, as a center plant, with smaller plants in front of it, it may not look so scrubby, and when it blooms, add some nice purple color.  We'll see.  I may regret the transplant, or it may die.  Only time will tell.

Unknown ivy

One year when my mom was in, she helped me create some container gardens. We purchased a nice ivy to complement the other plants in the basket.  Well, the other plants have long since died, but the ivy has crept from its container and planted itself in my back bed. I thought the dry, hot summer would kill it, so I didn't bother to pull it out... But it lived.  Igen thought the freezing winter would kill it, but it still lived.  I decided to go ahead and pull it out of that bed where it has creeped, and put it in a few places along the edges of some of my other gardens.  No loss if it doesn't do well.

Foxglove Penstemon

I love love love this plant.  It is so very gorgeous in the early spring.  It originally started from a packet of seeds that Dave through in the back area. I have never been successful with seeds, but this one packet had a few survivors.  Three years ago, there were three of the foxglove blooming in the back area... But you couldn't really see them.  So I transplanted it to my side bed. With frequent watering over the summer, it has grown and literally bloomed ;). I then transplanted two more to fill out the area. The new transplants are blooming this year, though not has big as the original yet.  With this success under my belt, I thought I might try to transplant some to my front bed. In the meantime, the plants in the back have continued to seed out, and there are now 8 or 9 plants back there. So I pulled out three. It may be too hot and dry out there, but I thought I would give it a try

Englelmann Daisy

This plant thrives in the back area. I'd didn't know what it was... I just thought it was some weed. But when it bloomed last year and looked so gorgeous, I asked some online gurus what it was, and they told me Englemann Daisy.  In some of my recent nursery crawls, I have seen the 'weed' for salad for $8.  So, I thought I'd pull some of my free ones from the back and give them a try.  The plant  only has a short bloom time in the spring, but I thought I might pull a couple out and see how they do in a tended garden.  We'll see...

Flame Acanthus
This has really spread in my front garden, so I pulled one out to put in my back porch bed... only to realize I already had a flame acanthus seedling started there.  Oh well, now I have two :o)

Agarita
We had a really heavy rain today, so i decided to try to extract an agarita again.  I really want one of these plants, and they are very expensive at the store -- and all over my back yard. This time, I tried pulling up a smaller plant. It has a very long tap root, and the root got nicked pretty bad in extracting the plant, and I accidentally cut the tap root off pretty short.  So we will see if it lives.