Coleus

Rather than battle aphids to raise peppers, I'm becoming a believer in planting what grows without trouble. Coleus, for the most part, is easy, and I can buy peppers at the store.

Sure, a couple of these "deer-resistant" plants got mauled by a deer a few weeks ago, but they have both bounced back. This one, in fact, is probably the tallest coleus and now has a flower stalk. There's a lot of advice out there that you should just go ahead and clip coleus flower stalks, but I'm going to let this one go. I want to see what develops, and to be frank, this plant has always been expendable due to its lack of color other than green. After it is done flowering, I may put it outside again to see if the deer are still interested in it.

Most of my coleus are out of a Burpee seed mixture, and most have some color. And of course there is the purchased ColorBlaze 'Wicked Witch' that I got along with my Supertunia order from Proven Winners Direct 10 weeks ago. The alleged height of a mature plant is 24-40 inches with a spread of 18-36 inches. That is "garden" size. In a small/medium ceramic pot, my plant is nowhere near that size. I clipped off the older leaves which seemed a bit tired, for lack of a better description, and the newer leaves are smaller. It is very bushy, but small. I'm thinking maybe it needs a bigger pot. I took three cuttings, and one of those ended up in a larger pot at the greenhouse, so we'll see what happens with that.

Lately I've come across ideas for potting coleus and petunias together. I have coleus, I have petunias. I don't have an available large pot unless I relegate one of the chives back to a fake terra cotta, of which I have two. I gave away the saucers for use as fairy gardens, but I can use one of the black saucers instead. I could take the two smaller 'Wicked Witch' cuttings and pair them with 'Jazzberry' and 'Bubblegum,' if I have viable cuttings of those. (Not sure.) Then put it outside the house, swapping out the petunia pot next to the AC unit on the south side. That pot would go to the greenhouse, where there will be room once the potato plants die. One reason I write this blog which no one has access to read is it helps me decide what to do.

The neighborhood has an abundance of daisies this year, so I dug one up out of the vacant lot next door and potted it. I doubt the owners would mind because they mowed the lot a week later. It is blooming on the back patio now.

I was wondering what variety it was and found this on the interweb: "The most common wild daisy in Montana is the Oxeye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare). Originally an ornamental escape, it is an aggressive, state-listed noxious weed commonly found along roadsides and in meadows. Oxeye daisy is highly invasive and spreads aggressively through both seeds and underground rhizomes."

Don't plant it in the ground and deadhead the spent flowers, check.