I don't have room for 40 Apios americana vines, and I have to leave space for the Apios priceana seedlings. I'm going to plant the tubers along the canal. Maybe they will choke out the zillions of honeysuckles and buckthorns all along the path.

That many? As far as I can tell, mine just has two stems coming up. But the bigger one already reached 5 feet. Like Skip’s, mine did not look good in Fall, so I am glad it came back.

I planted some Clinopodium arkansanum, Scutellaria, Delphinium tricorn, Polemonium repens, and I moved some Manfreda virginica, Monarda fistulosa, Rudbeckia horta, and Eryngium yuccafolium. I took the Tephrosia and Crotalaria and put them inside under the T5 light.

Maianthemum racemosa

Wow, you can tell what it is by the foliage. I need help with Maianthemum. They all look the same to me. I'm pretty sure that I don't have canadense, Mayflower. I want it bad. Do you have it up there Dandy?

Cool plants

Finally got around to laying down plastic sheeting for bottom watering.

1.5" hole for drain, oversized so the uniseal has some room to protrude into

Nice job Skip. Reminds me, I have to water my trays.

Looking great, Skip! Did you use pond liner?

Is this some sort of violet growing with my usual ones? Can’t say I have ever seen this leaf shape.

That yellow star grass is nice Jay. Is that the place from the "kill your lawn" video with the sidewalk going through it?

Nice color on those milkweeds, Iris. I bought a 10x25ft sheet of black 6 mil polyethylene sheeting, and laid 3 layers. This was recommended over pond liners in a web page I read, because apparently rodents like to chew the liners. You could bury edging or hardware cloth to keep the rodents from getting under the wood framing but that's more expensive. I might put pebbles or coarse sand in it to level out the bottom because one side is about an inch deeper than the other. Going to try to pick up a rain barrel to feed into it next week.

I sprayed the creeping bellflower with glyphosate about 3 weeks ago, and went and painted the scattered leaves radiating from the main colony with 2.5% glyphosate in a buckthorn blaster. I retreated the last green leaves the other day and it looks like its totally dead. I let it start to flower last year then mowed it as low as possible. It never regrew last year but it came back with a vengeance this year so harsh treatment was needed before it spreads everywhere. The violets intermingled survived the spray and are already greening back up.

Yep, that's the kill your lawn place. Wasn't enough stuff blooming to make my own crude video.

I kept wondering why the Aralia spinosa wasn't bigger. The deer have been eating it. I'll probably have to cage it. They also ate more golden alexanders and kidney vetch. Only the flowers. And the viburnum beetles are back.🥺😢😱

I put a cage around a flowering dogwood the other day, the deer ate all the leaves off of it. I used 3 of those 6ft plastic coated metal garden stakes with 5 foot chicken wire.

Some of the carolina elephants foot survived, and one shagbark hickory nut I direct sowed survived and at least is putting down a radicle.

The common milkweed is back

I ordered 3 Gillenia trifoliata plants last year, and I just now noticed that one of them is an Aruncus dioicus plant. I have one other goatsbeard from somewhere else. They have male and female plants. I'm not sure which mine are yet.

That’s a nice milkweed patch, Skip! Did the Monarchs show up yet?

Jay, things are looking great, even if they are eaten. Can’t believe there is hosta left untouched by the deer.

You guys are not having good luck getting correctly labeled plants. I keep finding weed seedlings in my jugs and trays, wild violets, veronica, and some mustard. The monarchs haven't showed up yet as far as I know, they were abundant in July last year. My new purple milkweed is sunburned I should have acclimated it to full sun a little better. Should I block the afternoon sun with something until it recovers or just let it sort itself out?

Doesn’t purple milkweed like a bit of shade in the first place? Or is this just in the South? I planted mine last year to just get a few hours of morning sun. I told you all the whole year how seriously behind I am, so there are so many unknown things coming up. As if I don’t have enough mislabeled ones :) Seek app says this is Ithuriel's Spear . I suppose I need to look a bit closer at the leaves tomorrow. Unless one of you is familiar with it? Really pretty though.

Maybe block it until it aclimates. We had tornado warnings and then a deluge of rain. I did get some things planted. I noticed the 'Gillenia ' had two kinds of flowers and then I figured out they were 2 different plants. Where was the purple milkweed from? A lot of people especially Japanese like to eat the new spring stalks of Aralias. I hear that harvesting the 1st stalks makes the plants send up even more shoots. So, I'm not surprised the deer like it, but it's one of my favorites.

The flower does look like Triteleia laxa, but that is only supposed to grow in California. The cordifolia grows up higher where it's cooler. I'm going to try giving my 4 cordifolia plants a half day of sun in a breezy place. It seems like mature plants have stronger stems.

I got the purple milkweed from the nursery in south jersey Earth First Natives, where I got the Potentilla, Spiraea, Lysimachia, Hypericum, Ionactus and Spiranthes.

I think I should move the purple milkweed now over to morning only sun. My veratrum viride looks like hell, I moved that one to a spot I can water it more and mulched it with old shredded leaves.

Thanks, Jay. I did have California poppy coming up a few years ago, so who knows? I tried to do another count on the bats in my bat house. They are so quick, but my husband thinks there are at least 40. I sent a clip to Javi, since I have Info do so. Maybe she can count them. Really too bad you can’t post even short videos here. In any case, time to add a new house. I have no idea how they fit all in the one we have. And I would rather not have them move behind the shutters on the windows. On the bright side, not a single mosquito bite today. Even though it topped at 90 degrees and puddles all around.

I sew a few weeds in my seed trays. They must be from little seeds the fly on the wind. Iris, what is it you don't want moving behind the shutters? Bats?

Yes, the bats. It seems evening primrose is still the thing coming up in my pots. No sign of Ipomoea. Amorpha is doing it’s job. Plenty of little leaf pockets, and this little one out and about.

I think there is 1 male and a female goatsbeard. I'd say that's a lucky accident.

I have a whole bunch of goatsbeard seedlings. I moved the purple milkweed. Also sprayed some of the grass between the erigeron and the other plants to make room for seedlings.

Now it's too hot to work outside. 91 and humid. Good progress Skip. Do you have any Gillenia seedlings?

Yes I have one Gillenia from last year and a couple new seedlings

Skip, looks like you still have room! Jay, it was this temperature here too. Until we did get a thunderstorm. It was raining buckets, but cooled us down to 70. Oakleaf hydrangea is starting to bloom. It’s another problem child. Has been there about 10 years, but not doing much.

There is some room but not for long. There are pipevines against the fence and some other things like ironweed and wild senna that are just coming up. The green mass is coreopsis lanceolata and rudbeckia laciniata

I tried counting Iris' bats several times, even on slo-mo....no go on the slo-mo! :)

I saw this new bee today so put it on NTP. Supposedly Orange belted bumblebee. This is the only one I saw. I was so hoping it would be a Rusty. My Polymonium reptans are getting quite the work over now with all the bumblebees on them. I'm pretty sure i saw a Rusty two years ago on them.

Jay, I have lots of Mianthemum canadensis here. They just come up everywhere. I'll have to send you some, in fact I think I'll put together some care packages later on and start sending them out.

I was so hoping to get some rain this weekend but it has missed me so far. Everything is green but that's only due to residual snow melt moisture. I started to see wilting today so am watering right now. I have 150' of hose out. I have a real massive pressure tank so I can pump water everywhere I want.

My seedlings continue to move along. I had to start thinning out the Silene and Sambucus cuz too many germinated. I have a pot full of last years' Lillium and it is now a fact that Lilium always takes two years to germinate no matter what I do. Always save your pots!

Did any of you germinate the Elderberry seeds I sent out? They seem to be easy germinators too. My backyard area is full of them in bloom right now. My plan is to have another hundred more shrubs out there in five years time.

Dandy, that’s a cool looking bee! I am still hoping to find a rusty patch one day. I am so tired of the mud around here.

I think Michigan lily seeds are supposed to take 2 years, but Philidelphia lilies seeds just need sixty days. I have some that have germinated. I might just keep them in the pot until they get bigger. I have a container with Sambucus racemosa seeds. Some bug is nibbling my mortality vine. It's becoming a vine again.

I wintersowed some Adams and Johns elderberry in a 2L soda bottle and 3 sprouted recently.

I need to get Lilium philadelphicum. My Lilium superbum were trampled by my daughter but theyre hanging on. Theyre still really small plants, probably will take a couple years before blooming. I have some michigan lily seeds out I will just have to ignore them.

I took the white plastic greenhouse film off the one cold frame, now its just insect screen. Hoping more sunlight helps germination. I just got tons of seeds off my Packera aurea, Im going to sow them in jugs asap. I might try transplanting a runner and see how that works too. I have this idea to spray the lawn right next to where my packera is growing to let it take over that whole area.

I have a lot of Adams/Johns that germinated. Do you know if they come true? They are like S canadensis so maybe they are a cross with the EU types. The berries I got last year were nothing special. I would have to pick a lot of them to get any thing.

Iris-what a deluge you are getting. Does your soil drain very well? I got a big .2" today. I'm watering while it's raining. I have yet to hear any thunder this year as the storms just don't get here.

I doubt they will come true, maybe heavier yields. Every recipe for elderberry calls for adding loads of sugar, so I'm guessing they dont taste very good on their own. I've been watching this colony of grassy plants come in at the edge of my property among the weeds, I think its a sedge. It spread pretty fast but I don't mind, if it can form a decent cover. It was evergreen too.

I picked up a blue plastic 55gal drum today to set up a rain barrel.

I did get 0.72 inches more last night. Rain in the forecast until Saturday. With mostly having red clay, the ground ranges from squishy to ankle deep puddles in the low locations. My husband is currently very proud of himself for digging all kinds of trenches for drainage pipes from the gutters and installing a sump pump in the crawl space. Some trees are really not looking so good though. Especially the wild black cherries, followed by the oaks. Lots of different fungus on the leaves.

Skip, how do you keep mosquitoes out of the rain barrel? Netting on top or dumping in mosquito dunks?

It was 94 here and very humid today. Skip, where did you buy your root slayer. No stores sell them and to order one online costs about $30 in shipping.

Iris, the kit I have has an adapter that installs in the middle of the downspout, then a hose goes from the adapter to the barrel. I dont think there are any open tops the mosquitos can easily fly into. They would have to fly down the gutter, into a tube, to the barrel, and then find their way out.

Jay, Amazon was selling them with free shipping when i got mine, and I saw Tractor Supply Company carries them in store now. I just loaned mine to my dad.

I don't have enough buckthorns to warrant buying an uprooter, but it would be nice to have. The Cynanchum laeve, Ipomoea pandurata are back. More milkweeds coming back. My Penstemon smallii and digitalis have flower buds. We had a huge downpour. Now it's a slow steady rain. The weather is making it hard to get much done. I put the majority of the milkweeds outside. Now it appears that 2 spicebush are alive, bso I'll hold on to the others, just in case. There aren't many bugs around. I saw a red admiral. There are still a bunch of empty containers with no germination.

Yes-looks like a sedge. Sedges have edges dontcha know.

Sedges are difficult to ID. You usually need a microscope and a couple hours.

Yep, Jay, rub it in that you have Ipomoea pandurata coming back. No sign at all of any seed sprouting. Had some more rain today. Even the weeds in the lawn get moldy.

Had a couple of hours of nice weather this afternoon, Bigleaf Magnolia is blooming. The southern ones are too, but this little tree had a rough time, so I am glad it’s settling in.

Nic pics Iris, even the moldy ones.

Thanks, Skip! Did get another thunderstorm earlier. I could use some of your rain barrels, one of my dogs could use some therapy :)

Jay, that looks like it. It has been there a while, but never got anywhere because it was eaten. Just some nibbles this time around.

I started a new thread. It makes it easier for some people. I'm supposed to be getting a big delivery. I hope the plants are in good condition. Look for the new thread.