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| Photo Courtesy of Westwood Gardens Blog |
Pick your own title. Every 13th of the month, Professor Rush @ Garden Musings will have a garden blog get- together dealing with tribulation in the garden. Join him in sharing about boo-boo's in your garden. In that vein I bring you Ligularia stenocephaia 'the Rocket". While gleaning through the perennial section in a upscale nursery in Wichita, I came upon this shade torlerant beast called the Rocket. It was grown by Greenleaf Wholesale Nursery in Oklahoma and looked very sturdy and had many blossoms ready to bloom. I needed a shade tolerant species to fill an area in back of the shade border. Eureka, I thought! Brought it home. Planted it under the Red Oak tree and went on my merry way. : ) :) (This was early summer) Yes that's two smiles that day. I noticed the next morning the Rocket was wilting. No beg deal I thought, new plant, more water. That afternoon: wilt. Hmmm. This ain't good. Next day, same thing.
You know the story from here. Love the plant hate the sin. Just won't give it up. I believe the technical term is that it has a higher evapo-transpiration rate than the roots ability to keep up with in this planting zone. Arghhhh. However I wouldn't give up, watered it every morning and night. Flagged it so I wouldn't forget.
Even bought some sister varieties of Ligularia -photos above-to keep it company during the 100 degree days of July and August. Ha...nothing staved off the inevitable-photo below.
