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It's About Thyme tel: 512-280-1192 May 13, 2011
Nursery Notes: Thank goodness for all the rain that hopefully everyone
received yesterday. With cooler temperatures and wetter ground it's the right
time to pull up weeds and mulch your gardens to help keep soil temperatures
cool and free of weeds. Herbs and Metal Art on Sale: 20% off all 4" and
4.5" herbs 4" pot on sale for $2.00 4.5" in. pot on sale for $2.65
20% off all metal art: decorative animals, trellises and arches.
Mr. Frog a-slumbering! The nursery is lucky to have photographer Julie
Blake on its staff... and she is always ready to capture little magical moments
that happen each week.To view her many images, visit the facebook page.
(The link is at the bottom of this page.)
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This Sunday's 2 p.m. lecture: Amanda Moon on ‘How to Incorporate
Edible Plants into your Landscape.’ Learn all about fruit trees, pecans,
dewberries, rabbiteye blueberries, fruiting peppers, bright lights chard,
and much more! Amanda is an expert on this subject, having first written
about it for Edible Austin... and then was interviews on the subject on
KLRU's Central Texas Gardener.
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Calling all Permiculture/Vermiculture Fans: Cassandra Truax returns
May 29 at 2 p.m. to demonstrate 'How to Build a Worm Bin.' Participants
will construct their own bin, and it will be stocked with worms and food to
take home. ($45 per student). Call 280-1192 to reserve a space.
(Limit of 25 students)
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This week on KLRU's Central Texas Gardener - a visit to the beautiful
gardens of Kati and David Timmons, and tips on pathways, terraces,
and raised beds from Troy Nixon of Environmental Survey Consulting.
The lime-green Sedum Anjelica pictured with some pansies.
The Charm of Tiny Sedums
by Chris Winslow
Back when it used to rain on a more regular basis, a winter ritual of mine was
to walk the back pasture and collect the year’s crop of stones. This was in
preparation for a season of mowing. Without the rains, my crop of stones
has been poor.
With water conservation in mind and always looking for a drought tolerant addition
to my landscape, I have found a new crop of stones in sedums.Commonly called
‘stonecrops,’ sedums are a large grouping of succulent, low-growing, flowering
groundcovers in the Crassulaceae family. Sedums store water in their leaves
(succulent), making them drought tolerant and a fine addition for sun to part-shade
locations in xeriscape gardens.
With over 400 species in this rather large family of plants, sedums come in a wide
array of flower colors, leaf colors, and textures. Most are under 6 inches in height.
One of my favorites is dragons blood. With the proper light exposure, this low
groundcover puts on a show of brilliant red foliage with red flowers in the late spring
and summer. And when the cool weather of fall arrives, the leaves turn orange-red.
Sedum anjelica displays golden-yellow leaves with a tinge of green – almost like
lime. This trailing groundcover creates yellow flowers through the summer.
Sedum tricolor has green and white variegation with red along the leaf edge. Drought
tolerant and spreading in form, it displays tiny pink flowers through June and July.
Another pretty variegated (green and white leaf) sedum is lineare. This beauty grows
to a height of 4 inches and makes a dense mat of foliage with bright yellow flowers.
These stonecrops are perfect for our climate. If you are looking for a flowering ground-
cover that’s drought tolerant, thrives in poor and shallow soil, and flowers, then this is
a perfect choice.
Sedums are easily grown in pots and baskets, often cascading off the edge. They make
great additions to mixed succulent plantings which seems to be the 'in-thing' in garden
publications these days
.
P.S. There is a native stand of sedum along the rock outcroppings on Oak Grove road
skirting Elliott Ranch. In the summer , these succulents turn yellow for a month or two,
amazingly with less than a half an inch of soil.
Happy gardening everyone!
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