Hi Chris, nice to run into you here.

Oops, I gave the wrong name on those I started from seed. (I just looked at my seedling pic above, and noticed the tag). They are Ruby Bells, not Firefly. I'm pretty sure I bought them from Swallowtail, though they no longer list them- must be sold out. But here's a link.
http://www.harrisseeds.com/sto...

BTW Chris, I'm still growing some of the pretty coleus that you shared last spring.

Karen

Can you believe that I didn't overwinter any this past year? Last time was just too time consuming so I gave it up. But glad to hear you're carrying on with them!

Karen if you like starting from seed you might want to try Marvelous Marble they have them on Amazon 50 seeds for $2.99. How is your E. Milkshake doing ?. I ended up getting one as a replacement plant, it is growing well so far.

Bob, it isn't doing anything, getting drowned in monsoon rains, wind, and hail. We got around 1.6" of rain again today. (that's what I had in my rain gauge). It has been raining since I planted the poor thing, and no sunshine!

Karen

I know what you mean about the rain it just does not seem to want to stop. But at least we have been getting a lot of sunshine in between. I am having more trouble with deer eating my plants and bear walking through my gardens crushing them. I have lost a couple of my heuchera to crown rot due to all this rain, Lime Marmalade & Plum Royal.

Karen here is a picture of Marvelous Marbles in case you were interested in trying them. And mother and two cubs walking off my property.

Southern Comfort ( in shade )
( in full sun )
Stormy I agree that Southern Comfort keeps truer color in the shade but the one I planted in full sun is 3X the size, And I know it's wrong but I like the golden color some of the leafs get.

Yikes, Bob, I'd be moving to a new house state continent! Though, we do frequently go to the Smoky Mountains and we've seen quite a few bears here.

And I whine about rabbits and deer eating my plants!

Karen

Bob, but it looks like the leaves on your shady SC are larger than those on the sunny one. I noticed this on mine too. It is like SC performs as a different plant completely under more light. I remember going to Terra Nova's site and comparing my different SC's to their promo photo. It turned out that the shade grown ones most accurately resembled their photos and the sunnier grown ones almost seemed to be aberrations.

I also found on mine that the leaf texture and height were different depending on the light growing conditions. With mine the sunnier exposure grew more leaves on a more dense compact plant, whereas the shade gave them larger leaves with a taller more open form. and yes, there seemed to be more of a pink color to the shady grown ones.

Now I will also say that I bought my SC's at two different times from two different vendors. There could have been variances at the grower and retailer's level that could also account for some of the differences.

I have also found similar differences on Beaujolais depending on the light and soil conditions.

I know most people think N.J. is mostly city & suburbs but the northwest corner is rural a lot of farmlands,state parks and watershed property. I live right next to a state park . From late may till winter it is a rare day you don't see a bear around here, you get used to them being around . We also get fox ,bobcats and coyote every once in a while. The biggest pain is how many times i have to fix the fence when the bears climb over them, and that I have to be careful about my dog.

That part of Jersey is exceptionally beautiful and a very nice place to visit. I will often drive up through there and go exploring when I am in the Poconos.

I bought my SC's about the same time but they did come from different sources. My Beaujolais plants are both in full sun .I like seeing pictures from other home gardeners because you never know how much color enhancement the growers have done to their promo photos.

A LOT Bob!

Midas Touch - This is one they added a lot of color to. In the promo pictures their is a lot of the peach color. I thought it was my plant or growing conditions but now I have seen quite a few of these at garden centers and they have less color then mine. Some had no of the peach color at all.

The one thing that makes it hard to choose where to plant the heuchs is knowing in what season they will get their intended color. Whenever I post Heuch pics here or on DG, I always specify what season the photo was taken in.

Some Heuchs like Mocha & Creme de Menthe get their best and promoed color only in the fall. The same is true of Prince of Orange. The growers should give that information in their marketing materials. It would save a lot of folks from wondering what they are doing wrong in their cultivation practises.

They also should say when a plant needs a few years to develop it's intended color, like Miracle. I planted a Midas Touch in Spring of 10 and it looks a lot like yours, but smaller. That drought and last year's endless summer was really tough on the heuchs.

Last summer was tough on most plants. Even tough- as-nails rudbeckias and echinaceas went dormant early last year. They just shut down. A defense mechanism ?

I was surprised that so many things even survived winter.

Karen

I definitely think it was a defense mechanism. I saw it on my oriental lilies. They just aborted their buds and let the foliage die. But they came back strong this year.

That's a good idea to note when pictures are taken. Everything I've posted so far pictures were taken that day or the day before. During drought I cut most of my plants in half to remove all buds so all energy goes to the roots. On the heuchera I cut the stems so they don't go to flower.

That's not a bad idea Bob, but I could never do that with the number of plants that I have. I could barely tolerate to be outside for 45 minutes at a time during that endless heat wave last summer. I, and most of us other Mid Atlantic folks were practising self preservation just as our plants were.

Catching up here -- Cute bear pic!!!!