Planting True Blue Salvia, Attracting Hummingbirds to the Garden, Deadheading Lilies

Good morning friends! I hope you're having a wonderful day out there in your gardens. It's a beautiful day here in Pennsylvania. It's a little bit cloudy but it's not too humid today so I think we have a solid 15 minutes before I start sweating through these clothes. Today's video is going to be all about planting for the hummingbirds. You guys know I adore hummingbirds. That's my logo. My grandma has an award named in her honor called the Hummingbird Award and I haven't seen a lot of hummingbirds this year. Maybe one or two sightings all summer long. So this morning, lo and behold, my car drifted into Ken's Gardens again, somehow seemingly against my will, and as soon as I walked in there I saw these rockin' blue suede shoes, Salvia, and I thought this is just what the garden needs. I have primarily pinks and magentas in the main flower walk this year and I think these true blue Salvias will bring another pop of color that will blend nicely with the pink and magenta and hopefully bring in the hummingbirds because I really miss seeing them. So I picked up six and we're just going to pop them in where we naturally have holes in the garden. I kind of like to zigzag my planting. I don't know if that's really a thing or not but it's what I like to see in my garden. I think on the left hand side of the border we'll do two. That side gets a lot less sun than the right side. On the right side I'm going to do four. I think I'm going to do one right there where there was a calla lily. I decided to pull that calla lily out and then right here I have this big gap that to be completely honest with you is just full of weeds. I mean look at that. There's like four different kinds of weeds back there in that area. So what I'm going to do is actually pull these Montezuma lilies out. I decided I don't really want those in the garden anymore. In that hole we'll just place those three Salvias. So let's go ahead and get to work on planting these. I also need to go ahead and deadhead some of the lilies in the main flower walk and a lot of lilies in the driveway garden need deadheaded too. So let's grab a shovel and get to work. How's that bone Grace? Rocky what are you doing in here? Rocky I'm going to be planting right there. Is that your secret hideout? What you doing in there? You want to come out? Yeah that's it. What you doing in there huh? Are you jealous Grace you got a new bone? Don't worry I'll get you some tuna as soon as I'm done with this. This year we added hot pink cala lilies into the main flower walk and I really enjoyed having those here and that show is just going to get better as the years go on. You see the cala lilies I don't even know if you can see them in the camera right now but they're quite short this year. I have some cala lilies in the back that are about five years old and they're easily this tall now so that will completely change the look of the main flower walk once those gorgeous hot pink cala lilies reach their mature height in about three years time. Oh now I see what Rocky wants. You want a little catmint treat didn't you Rock? Back here I have some bleeding hearts that have started to turn yellow so I'm just going to go ahead and remove their foliage right now. You know it's hard to find true blue garden flowers. There are some that are easily grown from seed like forget-me-nots, larkspur, delphinium, and even love in a mist but sometimes when you go to the garden center the only true blue flowers that I see are normally on microphyllohydrangeas so I was really excited to see a true blue salvia. It's going to be so beautiful. Well the sweat timer doesn't lie. I think it was about three minutes until major sweating instead of 15. Oh look at this catbird right here. You know have you noticed that catbirds don't seem to mind people? Can you see it right there by saving grace? Let's go ahead and weed this area now and we'll go ahead and pull those montezuma lilies out. Balbinol. I've had those for a long time. They're a beautiful red lily but I'm just ready for a change and I also think I want to add more rose lily ramonas into the main flower walk next year so I don't want to have five random red lilies right here. In the future, probably in the fall, I want to put some kind of a shrub here. I'm not really sure what I want to do. Maybe a small oak leaf hydrangea but for now let's just tidy it up a bit and get some color in there. On a scale of one to ten, what's the sweat situation? Are we at 100 yet? It feels like it but it also feels great because I got all this blue salvia in the ground. Now I want to go ahead and deadhead my eastern moon lilies. Since I want these eastern moon lilies to be just as tall next year as they were this year, I'm going to cut right below that lowest bloom leaving as much of the flowering stalk as I can behind. Okay, let's take a look at how these new blue salvias look in the garden. There was a few eastern moon lilies that had some nice blooms left on them so I'm going to give them a few more days in the garden before I go ahead and deadhead them. I tell you what, I did not expect this blue salvia to look this good. I am really enjoying this color palette with the purple, the magenta, the pink, and the blue. It's bold enough to satisfy my bold color desires but also it's a little bit more feminine than what I've done in years past. I've always been sticking with that orange and purple color palette the last few years. I think it's nice to change it up with some pink, purple, and blue and we are going to have some light pink dahlias coming in the next few weeks also. Let me know what you think about the blue suede shoe salvia. I also love that it's a reference to Elvis because I just love the 1950s and the 1960s. When I was back here weeding and digging around I stuck those in possibly a little too close to the front so when it's a little bit cooler tonight I might push them back into the border a little bit but I did want to show you what this color looks like with the magenta and the pink. I think we have some zucchinis that need harvested over in the raised bed. Let's see if we can get Grace to help us. Let's see if she's willing to trade her bone for a zucchini. She does love zucchini. I already picked two zucchinis this morning and ate another one that I had harvested yesterday for breakfast. Hey Gracie! Gracie look! Gracie look what I got for you! Gracie look what I got! Come get it! Look at this! Look what I got for you! Can you bring that inside for mama? Can you bring it in? Good girl! What do you think? Zucchini or bone? What do you choose? We've got plenty of zucchinis if you want one for yourself. Uh bone it is. I think we need to go inside and get some water. Well friends I think that brings me to the end of today's video. Thanks so much for hanging out with me and be sure to let me know what's your favorite blue flower? True blue that is. Bye friends!