The Coreopsis Autumn Blush, Coreopsis ‘Autumn Blush’ (PPAF) is a wonderful new variety to the Coreopsis family. Continuous flower production and vigorous growth have made ‘Autumn Blush’ destined to become one of America’s gardeners’ favorite plants. Autumn Blush Tickseed is smothered in stunning buttery yellow daisy flowers with brick red centers at the ends of the stems from early summer to early fall. The flowers are excellent for cutting. It’s ferny leaves remain emerald green in color throughout the season.

Plant Characteristics

- Autumn Blush Tickseed will grow to be about 24 inches tall at maturity, with a spread of 32 inches.
- Its foliage tends to remain dense right to the ground, not requiring facer plants in front.
- It grows at a medium rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for approximately 10 years.
- This perennial should only be grown in full sunlight.
- It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water.
- It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in poor soils.
- It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution.
- This plant can be propagated by division.
- ‘Autumn Blush’ is a hybrid perennial coreopsis that blooms like an annual from spring to fall, featuring large flowers that change color with the seasons.

Problems

No serious insect or disease problems. Root rot may occur in heavy, poorly-drained soils. Performs best in cool summer climates. Plant stems tend to sprawl, particularly in hot and humid climates with periodic heavy summer rainfall.

Uses

Long spring to fall bloom and bright foliage provide good accent in beds, foundations and borders. Also effective as an edger for walks/paths.

A large number of you must have seen Hibiscus flowers (Hibiscus on Wikipedia), you know those large red or orange flowers with the stamen. These are tropical plants, that can also easily grow in pots, and can live for a large number of years as long as you take good care of them. They go in a wide range with the flowers ranging in size from anywhere between 2 inches to almost a foot in diameter. Similarly, the plants can vary in size between bush sizes plants to tall ones ranging to 6 feet in height. As a result, you need to plan for the ones you need, since they could be used for pots, or in hedges, or for ornamental use in gardens.

Hibiscus and fear of frost

Hibiscus are however afraid of frost, so if you live in an area with frost, then they should be taken indoors; if in zones 9 and 10, then you can cover them and leave them outside when frost threatens (although covering in plastic should be the last resort, best to cover with mulch or straw). However, if you are in zone 8 or more north where the frost is thicker, then they should be brought indoors, else you are in danger of losing your plants.

Hibiscus and soil conditions

When planting anything, you should have read about the soil condition needed for the plant. For Hibiscus, the soil should be well draining, as the roots will rot if left in soil which is water logged. The soil should ideally be a good mixture of organic matter (peat, moss, or the universal favorite, compost), sand and topsoil. If you can ensure the pH condition of the soil, keep it between 6 and 7. Once you have planted them, ensure that you do mulching regularly, since this helps in retaining surface moisture present in the soil, and also improves availability of nutrients. Make sure that you have prepared the soil before planting, and this will ensure a long life for your plant.

Hibiscus and continuous care

Hibiscus normally are not very comfortable with lifting, which is why we mentioned in the beginning that you should plan for where you want to plant them. Once planted, monitor the pH and if necessary, add garden lime to adjust the pH levels. Add organic material when required to ensure that the soil has enough organic material in it. Hibiscus needs light and some amount of warmth to survive and thrive, even if this is only for a few hours every day. If not enough in winter, then use artificial light. In winter, the water may need to be heated to some extent to ensure that you are not watering with cold water.

Pruning of your hibiscus plant

Like any other plant, you need to ensure that you carry out pruning of the plant to increase the life of the plant, shape the plant, and to produce better flowers. You should carry out pruning of your plants before the growth of the new season, typically around September; this can be later, but should never be too close to the first frost. When the plant grows too woody (which happens every few years), then prune hard, cutting back to the main trunk and leaving a few branches. This will add a lot of life to the plant. Watch out for a lot of yellow leaves in the plant, since that means that the plant is under stress, and you need to worry about the cause of the stress (pests, low water, etc).

Link: Lots of articles for Hibiscus.
Lots of photos of Hibiscus at pbase (link)
Photos of Hibiscus at betterphoto.com (link)

Soil preparation is critical if you are going in for organic farming. You do not have the liberty of adding a load of chemical fertilizers later if you find some deficiencies in the soil; and the motto for organic farming remains, “do adequate preparation rather than react later”.
Making sure that the soil is healthy is an important first step in the preparation for organic farming. If the soil used for organic farming was earlier used for commercial farming, then you need to spend time to ensure that the presense of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been removed from the soil (how to do this is a separate post), the duration for which you need to have kept such soil clean before using it for organic farming depends on the organic gardening certification in your country or state, and you should check those regulations.
The steps that you should take in order to get your soil ready are:
- Make sure that there are no weeds, stones, or pieces of other debris in the soil, and that it is ready for next steps
- Do a soil analysis. You can get a proper soil analysis done, or you can look at the rough ways of estimating the quality and breakup of your soil. Soil should have 3 main components (sand – 40%, silt 40%, and clay 20%). The soil should be one that you can compress with your hand, and it forms a solid mass that breaks when you poke it. If it either is unable to form a solid mass, or does not crumble when you apply effort, then the soil either has too much sand, or too much clay. An imbalance can result in the soil not being optimum, with imapct on water logging, or the ability of soil to let plants grow in it.
- You can also take a sample of your soil, put it in a glass beaker or jug of water, and then shake, and then let the soil settle down. The settling inside the glass leaves you with 3 different layers, of sand, silt and clay (with clay on top). The levels of each will slowly start giving you an idea of what is missing, and then you can add more of the missing element to get a better mixture. of course, if you are not able to get a correct mixture, go to the store and ask them for the amount of soil you require (make sure that you specify that you are going to grow organically)
- Look to see how you can encourage the growth of healthy stuff such as microbes, earthworms, etc. They do a lot to make your soil better.
- Read up about the various fertilizers you can add to your soil to make up for deficiencies. This would mean that you need to find out what your soil is missing, and requires some amount of knowledge (or if you don’t have knowledge, either learn, or get somebody who can advise). Be sure that adding some good compost is typically helpful for the soil.
- Learn about crop rotation, so that you plan ahead for the crops you are going to put in the soil, and learn about which plants add which element, and remove which nutrient from the soil. Doing this is essential if you want to make sure that you soil is good in terms of nutrients, not only now, but for the future.
- Soil is improved when you add organic matter to the soil. This means that you should items such as compost, and even some more strange items such as hair (for nitrogen), grass clippings, purchased organic fertilizer, peat moss
- If you can, enable poultry to have free access to your soil. Hens do a fair amount of the manual hard work required, such as removing weeds, adding manure, and undertaking tilling of the soil.

Ad: Manual For Creating & Managing Your Own Organic Food Garden, Click here

When you look at different gardens, there is always the feeling you get in some gardens that these are well-designed, that all the plants are growing optimally in terms of location; and in other gardens, there is the feeling that these are planted haphazardly, and a better job could have been done in organizing the garden. But, most people don’t have the expertise to do that, and getting an expert to do your garden can be very expensive. Well, here’s a Do It Yourself Kit that will help you arrange your garden in a much better way: Link.
The site lets you create a whole garden plan that can give you the feeling of a professional plan. Steps include the actual download of some symbols and graph paper from the site, translating the scale of your garden onto the graph paper, depiction of current stationary items onto the graph that cannot be removed, play around with the design to get what you wanted.
Doing such a plan makes you think in detail about what exactly you want, and this kind of thinking is actually half the work done.