The Dog Days Blues

During the dog days of summer when it's too hot to do much in the yard, you have time to make plans and dreams for the fall.  Fall is one of the busiest times of the year for gardening in Louisiana.  It's when you separate many perennials, plant all the cool season annuals, and plant shrubs and trees.  Here are some of my plans for dividing perennials:

First off, my daylilies need to be divided and planted in new beds.  I have big plans for how to re-arrange my daylilies.  The white Joan Seniors are to be put in mixed beds with other flowers because their cream color mixes so well.  The darker colors should be put in part shade where their colors won't get faded by the sun.  I also have family and friends that might really like to get some nice daylily starts.

 

The Becky Shasta daisies have really spread a lot and can finally be divided this fall.  I'm really excited about this since I've been patiently waiting to spread these around to other flower beds in my yard.  I can think of many places where an unfloppy, mounding, white and yellow flower would look good. 

My other plants that need dividing and re-planting are the irises along the fence.  I don't like them being along this fence because it becomes quite hard to weed this area in the summer.  Irises don't like to be mulched, so it's really hard to keep weeds and grass out of the area they are growing in.  Hence, this fence gets ugly in summertime.  I'll put these in a proper flower bed where I can get to them easier.  This fence will get some other plants that like mulch.  I'm thinking of making up a bed that has all bulbs, corms, and rhizomes and that will have nearly continual blooms all year.  I could have daffodils, gladioli, lilies, irises, crocosmias, tuberoses, and etc in this bed.  Wouldn't that be neat?  Speaking of tuberoses, they need to be divided this fall as well.  I can't wait!