Hi Stone,
Your garden blog is absolutely wonderful! That must be such a peaceful and serene place to live! All the flowers and plants look amazing. The hellebore are so beautiful. Everything is so beautiful! I am going to spend some time looking through your archives. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, they were starting to become pot bound. I always have so much to do and I'm way behind schedule. And they were so pretty just 4 days earlier! And I have dozens of pots out in the yard and they can be boiling hot in the sun. I keep them in partial shade to keep them cool, works well.
I can't imagine what else it could be if it is not a fungus. In the last picture you can see on the left side the pretty white roots in the dark black soil that was in the pots. And the dirt in that bed was/is several shades lighter brown then all that dark brown stuff hanging off the bottom.
It is bizarre. When I first started growing here 12 years ago I thought Mother Nature didn't like me very much. She would throw me all kinds of really weird and crazy curve balls. Stuff no one would ever dream of. But I finally realized that I am trying to grow in a very extreme climate. And sometimes, in fact fairly often, when things happen, it is in a very extreme way. My 3rd year the bugs found me. I didn't have an explosion of hundreds or thousands of bugs like most people would. I had an EXPLOSION of many 10s of thousands of them! Wiped out every single thing!! in my yard for 2 1/2 years! I always try to find someone else who has had the same experience to share notes. Surprisingly, sometimes I do find someone but most often I don't.
And yes, most things really struggle and have to have some shade here if you want them to grow well. I chose this property because it had so many big Juniper and Pine trees for shade but recently realized that these aren't nearly enough. I've been planting lots more trees (mostly fruit trees) and shrubs these last 2 years. I need to shade every inch!
This year we had 'spring'! I forgot what spring was like. It was awesome! We usually go right from winter to 100+ degree summers. I had the best artichoke harvest ever. Wow! They aren't very drought tolerant yet but now they are very heat tolerant. I left plenty out there blooming for some fresh seeds this year. If I can get some shade on that hill it will be even more fantastic. Artichoke Pictures.....drum roll....
Thanks for replying to my post and happy gardening and foraging.
