Larkspur Lessons from the Potager // Linda Vater

well good morning I am fully aware that I need to shoot more stuff in the front yard right now and I will but most of the time I'm trying to capture this footage in the morning sometimes in the fairly early morning and I'm doing it before I'm presentable so I don't want to just be out in my front yard not presentable let's put it that way so if you don't mind I want to just walk through the backyard look at that hanging basket it's looking gorgeous right now and I've got I'm working on an exciting project that I hope comes to fruition that kind of has to do with some of the things that I use in my garden and actually we photographed some of those items yesterday and I need to send off those pictures but right now I thought it would be fun for me to give you a couple of tips from the Poteau Jay that I I have entitled Larkspur lessons because they relate to Larkspur and I'm kind of writing an article on that right now you can see I've just got stuff lying about toppled over because yes it did rain again last night things are going to be so lush and overgrown and yes buggy so I'm trying to walk kind of slowly so you guys can can see the garden in route I know you've seen it a million times before hopefully you're not getting tired of it here are those wonderful plant stands that I showed you that I got at Home Depot the other day there's a couple of them stacked together I found them absolutely invaluable in the garden for a number of different reasons one of them being that when I plant baskets I set them on top of the bass or rather I said the baskets on top of this stand so that doesn't ride out the bottom and these I pulled out for to take some pictures so let's go back here and I will share my Larkspur lessons but here's another thing I want to point out the POTUS I now really needs to be pruned it needs its second trimming but I'm certainly not going to do that when it's raining because you don't ever want to prune when the foliage is wet because that can really invite disease and other problems that we certainly want to avoid I need to replant that section I think I've showed you so but this is this is the topic for today I call it larks or lessons I am going to show in my stories a picture of how this bed looked years ago when I first started gardening and it relates a little bit to the post that I put on Instagram yesterday and that's that when this bed was first introduced I had nothing in here but roses and poppies and Larkspur and it was absolutely gorgeous but then one hard rain would fell everything and there was no way of restoring it to its former drama once that happened and I told you in that Instagram post and if you're not following me there follow me on POTUS a blog that I wanted to have more year-round structure in here now the the lesson in all of this is we've had lots of hard rains here recently but the evergreen structure that I introduced in the way of these Arbor writers and to a certain extent even that vitex and use the boxwood and some of well actually even the potted plants and some of the garden ornament those things provide structure and stability just like there there's a couple of more pots and arose and what I mean by stability is then that when things like this beautiful larks were germinate there are things surrounding them that support them that their long stems can kind of get intertwined with so they don't topple over in high wind or rain all of these Larkspur there's another LARP sport lesson go to seed or I plant more seed in the fall and then they just germinate and grow over the winter and then they come back so you can see that there is not a solid block of poppies and marks fir like there used to be in the back but now there are Tufts and hence of larkspur that weave throughout the garden bed supported by as I said the infrastructure the things that have more they're just more formidable they are more sturdy and the Larkspur and the poppies which all of the the blooms have been knocked off there's more getting ready to bloom if I wanted to have Dylan here if I wanted to have bachelor buttons anything like that that needs staking then I guess as a practicality the evergreens and the more formidable plants with structure serve as the staking the natural staking I can remember for a while when I just had tons of lux were in puppies when they were first growing up when they were young I would put tomato cages around them and that you know that kind of helps support them but it wasn't really very beautiful this now looks far more integrated into the garden it's far more enduring it looks beautiful even though we have had just nothing but rain and some hail these two tours you guys are from Gardner supply I always try to tell you where they're from as our I think 50 people asked me last week about those wire closures and also these supports on the perimeter there's all kind of gardeners supply so once other lanky things start to grow in here whether it's cosmos or zinnias or other bloomers they whoop they too will be supported by these sturdy stalwart plants so that's Larkspur lesson number one is to intermingle things like this that are tall and lanky with plants sturdy construction the second markzware lesson is if you get if you have a huge spur that you particularly adore and I have son that's not invited yet but that is a very deep purple almost a double swarm what I do is I tag that with one of those little round key tags that you can get at the hardware store you could use them you can mark them with anything but basically to note that that is the seed that is especially prized that's the Larkspur that is especially priced in the event that I want to harvest it share it with friends spread it around the garden I know exactly which blossom turned into the seed heads that I surprised so if I didn't do that it would go to seed and then those seed heads would look like every other color and similar flower in the border and I've got some pink Larkspur I've got different shades of bluish-purple I've got something that's very intense I've got some growing by the compost pile now that's obviously it's a Lux per lesson specifically but it's a lesson it really applies to anything that goes to seed if you find a blossom that you particularly like its form it's huge its shape and you want to make sure to save that should then market before that flower turns into a seed head I love these ambassador aliens from color blinds because they still look beautiful even when they're no longer in that deep rich purple pink color they really look fun someone asked me if I leave them there with their dried heads in the garden and I would but I find that either because of high winds of rain or whatever they will topple over and then this flower heads will rot so I typically harvest them at a certain point and bring them in because I can use them for all sorts of different projects which I won't go into now you can see here there's a poppy couple my buds getting ready to be and look at those wonderful seed heads but notice again that these are supported by all sorts of sturdier plants the Allium the vitex the pots and so you get this wonderful ethereal effect of plants that have gone to seed that come up and intertwine themselves amongst the other foliage now here's my third Larkspur lesson I said that you let the Larkspur go to seed it will drop its seeds in real time as soon as they dry but then because I never know what the weather conditions are going to be in terms of heat and reliable rainfall etc I always save some seed and then I scatter them in the fall and if you've never grown Larkspur that's what you want to do at least here in Oklahoma you want to scatter the seed of both Larkspur and poppies in the fall sometimes multiple times in the fall so that they can hopefully germinate put on growth set a root structure so that then they're ready to bring their heads off in the spring so there you go those would be your Larkspur lessons for today from me and the birds I hope you guys found this valuable if you have specific things that she would like you need to do videos on please let me know I'm trying to be responsive I can't answer every comment that comes my way through Instagram and through YouTube I'm trying to figure out a way to navigate all of that but if you've got something you want to know in particular we're trying to save or save up our little inventory of our questions there's my coffee pad I'm gonna grab it and go inside have a great day you guys

Channel: Linda Vater

Views: 38,156

Keywords: potagerblog, Linda Vader, garden tour, garden life, larkspur, lark spur

Id: BvSuZMv42HQ

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020