Hydrangea and gypsophil

　We have many kind of flowers in our garden. Just cut some hydrangeas and gypsophils to put in a pot at the front. We like to have this kind of blue and white arrangement in summer to provide cool atmosphere. Hydrangea is a shrub,gypsophil is　a perennial plant. We thought they were easy to have but reality always goes different! They also need our attention, we need to cut their branches when they grow a lot, we need to get rid of weeds around their bottom. Much harder than expected. Maybe one year plants could be easier to have because we just need to put them into flower beds and pull them out when they die! Neighbours' glasses always look greener :) 　 Hayaokidori webiste

Chervil

It has been hotter or colder than usual this year, a bit strange weather here and there in Japan. Everything seems to be harvested less than usual, our black beans in the tiny farm have not been ready yet. But chervils in some of our pots grow alright. As you see, they look sensitive and weak but actually they grow well you provide everything they like. They survive in the snow! Most herbs love strong sunshine but they are one of a few exceptions. They prefer cooler place where there's some shades like just a bottom of big trees. They prefer moist and fertilized sand. We put some leaf mould for it to keep them that way. If it's November, strong sunshine like in summer never kills them, so sometimes we put them in sunshine to grow.
They smells good in your mouth, just slightly though. One of our favorite herb for cooking :-)

Hayaokidori website

Petunia

Summer flowers don't grow right maybe due to the heavy rainfalls.(><)Flowers we always have don't grow alright, so tried petunia for the first time. They say it does not grow good if it gets rainfalls. We put the pots at the corner of our garden where there are no tree branches above so that it never gets raindrops from the tip of the branches. It seems ok at the moment We got them after the rainy season was over, so if we got them before the rainy season, it might have been different. Lately some new comers are also available e.g prietta but even the prietta has not grown good this summer. By the way, we hardly have the typical rainfalls like silk in rainy season lately like we did before. It always goes like tropical rainfalls which starts all of sudden for a quarter to an hour. What's going on? Those tropical hard rainfalls often bring disasters.... Hayaokidori website

Forget-me-nots and violas in our flower bed.

Forget-me-nots and violas are in bloom in our flower beds.Tried to take some pics using some functions in my digital camera. This setting seems to be called "Pop". Maybe for ads. This seems to be called "Pin hole". Bright in the middle, shadow in the corners. Fresh eye. They say fish see things like this. Wonder if I were fish, perhaps I would get headache if I see everything like this lol I am not good at using every function, but it's important to try. Hayaokidori web site

Tomatoes 2011

Maybe because of the much rainfall and lacking of sunshine in the last half of this previous August, tomatoes had not grown enough much. Look as if they were mini tomatoes but not. Beans also look smaller than usual. I believe it firmly that sunshine is really important to grow vegitables. How about your house farms?

Hayaokidori website

Echium bluebedder is now in bloom.

I have tried to have some echium bluebedders get in bloom this year as well as I failed it last year. I found some are in bloom today, yay! As the name says, I guess it would be very beautiful if a lot many more are in bloom, but just some for now. Blue flowers like delfiniums, echium bluebedders are in bloom one after another at this moment in my place because our house is painted in red, so red flowers can't look gorgeous in front of our house :( This could bother us sometimes.

Hayaokidori website

What's the name of this flower?

I felt it lazy to transplant flowers every season every year, so I just seeded "wild flower" in which some kinds of flowers seed were. One of them still gets in bloom every rainy season at this time of the year. But I have no idea the name. Does anyone know the name of this flower? Thanks in advance.

Hayaokidori website

Delfiniums against strong wind

It's rare to have this strong and warm wind here in Hakuba. I guessed maybe a typhoon was getting close but it did not seem like that when I checked weather forecast.
But anyway this strong wind would hurt delfiniums especially tall ones. As you see, some are now taller than 2 meters tall but poles are only 1.8 meters and some part of them - probably 30cms - are in the ground. So I can not help being kinda nervous when the wind goes strong. I have already moved delfiniums in pots to my house side to avoid wind.

Hayaokidori website

How to grow delfiniums

People sometimes ask me how I grow delfiniums. Not an unique way, just how people do when they grow flowers. I seed some delfinium seeds in autumn ( I used to seed some in spring before ). And transplant them again and again to do #8-#10 size pots or into flower beds. This pic shows the pots I seeded some into last autumn. Depends on each and ever delfinium, some grow faster and some do slower, so some of them still stay in the same pots even now.


Transplanted once into a bit bigger pots. I did it in this spring.





Some that grow faster are already transplanted into #6 size pots. Probably they don't get in bloom this rainy season yet, but may do in autumn. More than 1 year needed for delfiniums to be in bloom after being seeded judging from experience here in Hakuba. In average, let's say 2 years needed for it.
In cool place like Hakuba, delfiniums survive for some years, but they are not strong enough for hot and humid weather, so if it's along the Pacific ocean side western than Kanto region, they survive less than a year. Every year you will find some of them don't germinate, maybe 20-30 per cent of them don't.

If you would like to seed some delfiniums, pay attention below.　
#1- Choose when it's around 15-20 C, it's the best temperture for delminiums to germinate, but if it's over 23C, they don't.
#2- Their seeds don't survive long enough.

With reasons above, if you can get some fresh seeds, I recommend you to seed them in autumn. But if you "buy" some from seeds shop etc, probably it's harvested at the previous year, so maybe you are to seed them in spring.


Hayaokidori website

Delfiniums are in bloom

Finally delfiniums are in bloom now. Just a couple of pots are in bloom now, hopefully it'll go one after another soon.

Hayaokidori website

Delfiniums are ready for bloom

At this time of the year - just begining of the rainy season - delfiniums grow a lot to get bigger and bigger. Some of them reach 2 meters in height. Now they are ready for bloom, many buds are put around. I love their blue-azure color which changes time to time and angle. No other flowers can look like them.

I tried to seed them in autumn last year for the first time. I always did it in spring but found their seeds didn't survive long so I just tried and got better result.The pot in a black one is what i seeded last year and already replaced from a small pot. Now i have to transplant it to the bigger unglazed #6 size pot. With this way you can make a strong pot because when you transplant a pot again and again making the pot bigger and bigger, their roots grow constantly. Probably it takes around 2 years for delfinium to be transplanged in a flower bed by me. while they are small, I don't think they can survive in a flower bed.
I look forward seeing the blue-azure color this summer as well!

Hayaokidori website

Dog teeth violet- Katakuri flowers

Finally dog teeth violets are getting in bloom. As we got more snow than usual this time, flowers tend to get in bloom latter than usual. Dog teeth vilet is our village symbol flower, as you see, they look like bowing like cyclamen.
You may be able to see dog teeth violet, pheasant's eyes and zazenso flowers together around Golden Week time. Why don't you join us here in Hakuba!?

Tweet


Hayaokidori website

Delfinium 2010

Finally delfinium flowers are getting in bloom this year, too.
　Seldom find blue flowers for flowerbed. Our house is painted in red, so red flowers are not good combination with it. That's why delfinium flowers get our attention.

　As delfinium get tall, we have to have some pillars for support them. This is a little bit tough sometimes, but the flowers are very gorgeous in color and shape, no other flowers can not look like that.

When you grow delfinium, we don't recommend you to seed some if you were not patient enough because it needs around 3 weeks to germinate, not good germination(maybe around 50% or less ) and it takes more than 1 year to see the first flowers!

If it's in Hakuba, you need to seed some around the Golden week when cherry blossoms are in bloom here, then you will see the first flower at this time of the year ( rainy season ) next year. They survive under the snow.

Even when you get some pots, you need to put 4 pillars per one if it grows good. You tie the 4 pillars round and round by string to support the tall flowers. This is a bit hard work sometimes, so maybe you should not grow many pots for the first time.




Each and every pot shows slight different color. If you could have flower beds big enough to have many delfinium flowers, probably you can enjoy the difference.　



Hayaokidori website

Echium blue bedder

I got 3 packs of echium blue bedder seeds today and seeded 1+1/2 packs.
A couple days ago, I happened to find this flower on browsing web with a keyword "Delfinium". I think blue flowers look cool in summer, so I ordered 3 packs of seeds at a web shop. They say Echium blue bedder is very popular flower in the U.K, I think it looks like a blue bed if I can grow it good.


As they are imported from the U.K, everything is described in English. It seems that it needs 7-28 days for them to germinate. 7 and 28 are very different and sounds very approximate :) lol
I ordered 3 packs of it and just seeded 1+1/2 packs today. It's first time for me to try seeding this flower, I will seed the rest a bit later so that I can avoid having them all dead.


Hayaokidori website

Cherry blossoms still in bloom.

Sometimes I still find some cherry blossoms in bloom even at this time of the year while I drive somewhere in Hakuba. This one is what I took a couple of days ago. It's outstanding because there's no other cherry blossoms around. As the sunlight got in the camera, it looks a bit vague though.
Maybe I should walk around sometimes instead of driving a car to find something more.

Hayaokidori website

Yellow tulips '10

Tulips are in bloom this year, too. They are covered with snow during winter but they survive with it. What if it was somewhere cold but dry without enough snow?

Hayaokidori website

Seeding some

When you have some flowers, sometimes it costs too much more than expected if you keep purchasing flower pots. So, it helps if you try to seed something.

Short cosmoses. I expect they won't get down by wind.






Delfiniums. Funnels don't work good to give water to them because if you use a funnel for it, some delifinium seeds dropped deeper and deeper in the sand there. I've found sprayers work good for it.







Like this! You need to keep the surface of the sand wet until the gelminating. Seeds are covered with peat moss which keeps water around but if once it gets dried, it's almost impossible to get it wet again. The three factors for seeds to gelminate are #1-water, #2-oxgen, #3-suitable temperture, so you need to keep it wet 'til they gelminate.

A hornet?

I think this is a hornet which often visits delfinium flowers that are in bloom now to get their nectar. Some people say it's not a hornet, so I am really not sure it is or not. They work very hard to get nectar. When I observe them hard, I find they prefer deep flowers which they need to get in to get the nectar. For example, delfiniums and Nasturtiums etc.
I guess those flowers hold very yummy nectar :)

Hana shobu in a misty day

Went to the Hakuba Goryu ski slope alps daira gerande where some of botanical flowers have been transplanted by us. We need to volunteer to delete some weeds every year. Clowds surrounded the mountains so I thought it might be cold and no visibility. It said it was only 15C! Cold enough rather than cool at this time of the year. The flower in this pic are "Hana shobu" which is one of iris flower family. Hope it brings you some cool feelings in a hot and humid summer day.

Tulips are in bloom at GW

Tulips in our flowerpots are in bloom this Golden Week. It has been warmer than usual and we did not have so much snow as usual this previous winter. I guess they are why.

Hayaokidori website