Sunday, August 01, 2010

August: At least the leaves are pretty

Hello, and welcome back to the GROW project! The foliage on the Spitfire nasturtiums has recovered from its crispy sunburned state of a month ago, possibly due to more watering or less intense heat and sun. My plants are still sparse on flowers, but I love the nifty peltate leaves of nasturtium and would almost be willing to grow them for that reason alone.

I moved the potted plant to a shadier spot, and it looks a little more alive now.
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The plant vining up the alley fence looks good. It gets sun in the afternoon but the roots are shaded.
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The plants I meant to go up the railing are also turning into a very pretty, yet flowerless, groundcover.
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Part of that same plant, going where I meant for it to go:
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And so you don't think I have zero flowers, here's one! (it's not quite that red in real life)
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From the side... note cool nectar spur:
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So how do your Spitfires grow?

I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project. Thanks to Renee's Garden for the seeds.

8 comments:

Gardeningbren said...

Nasturtium are one of my favourite flowers, and yes indeed the leaves are beautiful in their own right! I am not growing Spitfire from Renee's but am growing their Amazon Jewel and Mounding Cherries Jubilee...what a beautiful red the latter has turned out to be, but slow to start blooming compared to others. Amazon Jewel is equally as lovely and I would grow both again. BTW..I really enjoy your blog)))

Monica the Garden Faerie said...

Yours are looking good! And *thank you* for incidentally saying nectar spur--I was just wondering what the name of that thingie was and it's kind of hard to Google it using terms like "wingy pokey protrusion on ack of flower." :)

GardenMom said...

Funny how the nasties don't like too much sun...but they get grumpy about too little sun as well! Picky Picky! Other than that though, they are relatively low maintenance. I love the ones you have spilling over the edge of the bricks.

garden girl said...

The foliage is cute Diane, and it's nice to see you have at least a few blooms. It seems like they don't really like hot weather. I wonder if they'll bloom more in cooler fall weather.

garden girl said...

p.s. I like how you experimented with them in several places. It's illuminating seeing the differences in their growth patterns and both climbing and trailing habits depending on where they were planted.

Colleen Vanderlinden said...

Yours are looking great -- I'm glad to hear that they perked up when you gave them a little shade. I decided to move mine to a shadier spot because they've just been limping along in all of this heat lately.

MrBrownThumb said...

Cool!

BTW, I spent the day trying to remember what the nectar spur was called and couldn't. Glad I finally got around to commenting on the posts and re-read yours.

Diane said...

@Bren - Aww, thanks! I've seen pics of the Cherries Jubilee and would like to try it next year.

@Monica and MBT - Glad I could help :)

@GardenMom - Yes, very picky - I'm starting to think they're best in containers that I can move around the yard from day to day.

@garden girl - I have not reported on the ones I planted near trellises, since they sort of got swallowed up by the perennials. That experiment didn't go so well :/

@Colleen - They seem to be a bit like clematis - shaded roots and sunny vines are a good combination of conditions.