PBS Forum

I planted 5 Amaryllis belladonna bulbs from my parents' yard about 25 years ago. The original bulbs were planted 100 years ago by the first owner of that house. 

These are pink, no stripes, not dark, not white, plain pink, and in my climate usually flower between mid August and late September, depending on  how warm the summer is. Leaves are up from mid fall through mid spring.

This week I dug up the last three clumps, as they had divided so much that the upper bulbs were at the surface. I found 30-40 bulbs in each clump, with more than 100 in all. I replanted one in each original hole, and now have over 80 bulbs looking for a new home. 

If anyone is interested, please contact me using my email address, kathleen.sayce@gmail.com. Your cost will be whatever the shipping costs are. 

Do you have tips on how to clean Trillium seeds? I've used dry sand in the past, and find it tedious and prolonged. This may be the usual process? Found 2 T. kurabayashi pods in my garden today--usually wasps/ants +? get them all before I
do.

Grown from seed purchased years ago from Alplains Seeds. Would like to know how vulnerable Veratrums are to voles, slugs and snails. This year, a very pleasant surprise, a flowering stem emerged. I have one relatively moist garden spot that is usually shady, but need to resolve the slug question before I move it out of the mesh frame. 

A small success, but mine own:  between deer, squirrels, voles and slugs, Fritillaries have a tough time in my garden, but in a mesh frame, with a boundary of iron pellets to keep the slugs away, this year I have flowers!

Adorable spouse and I built a cold frame in 2005. This let me buy plants as they came available 800 miles to the south of my garden, and hold them for 6-8 weeks. Then came climate warming, and voles, and general creakiness. Last year I realized that I had more use for mesh frames than cold frames now. So out it is coming. If you are interested in the durability of ground contact wood, see what happens to this product in less than 20 years. Image rotated so that this former corner is oriented with the bottom down and the top up. It probably would not have lasted another 3-5 years. 

William Doreen's lily book, Species Lilies of the World, arrived last week. I sent copies to two reviewers to confirm my initial decision to not proceed to get copies, based on a need for proofreading, incomplete descriptions, lack of photos, and other problems. 

Everyone who contacted me by email was notified. I got 2 "failure to deliver" messages, and will send messages out again to everyone I did not hear from the first time. 

Thank you to everyone who responded, and sorry, this book did not meet some basic quality standards. 

I have posted more than once about the copious mammalian, bird and molluscan pests in my garden, which this year include elk, deer, European hares (a dark coated clan, mostly black haired, that has moved in this year from about a mile away), eastern gray squirrels, Douglas squirrels, chipmunks, the occasional bear, opossum, coyote, raccoon, rat, and last but not least, voles. 

Well, this month I have a new resident mammal, one I haven't seen for years, and am very pleased to say is back in residence:  weasels are denning under our house. Hurray! My first sighting was a foraging weasel returning to the den area with a very fat vole. I sincerely hope they hang around for a few years and seriously deplete the local rodent populations. 

As for pea fowl, the last male has not been seen or heard since last midsummer, so perhaps my flower beds are safe from their depredations for the year.