Saxifrages in troughs - Fall 2011

There are about 70 porophyllum saxifrages in the troughs here. They're pretty happy. In fact, they're so happy some of them have begin to hang over the edges of the troughs, maybe trying to reach the ground.
In Denver the troughs need to be in shade in the winter, otherwise the plants shrivel to nothing in our hot winter sun.
I just bought a camera so by the time the plants bloom--late February to mid-March here---I might have figured out how to take pictures and post them.

Bob

(snowing here)

Nold wrote:

..........I bought a camera so by the time the plants bloom--late February to mid-March here---I might have figured out how to take pictures and post them.

Do get on with it Bob, I'm sat here salivating ;D

Some years ago I bought an old stone kitchen sink from our local tip (cost me 50p [about 80cents]) intending to plant it as a Saxiphrage trough. Never got round to it but this year, as the accountant of the family wasn't looking, I sneaked a selection of Porphyrion Saxes in with one of my bulb orders. Now I need to buy some stone and I'm away.

I planted my first Saxifraga trough in 2008 (see first pic). You can see how they look now on the second pic.
It's filled with ten pure species saxifrages. In March a couple of them were flowering (third pic).
If I were to redo this trough, I would create a mound in the middle, so the soil never gets below the level of the rim of the trough.

In the beginning of this year I planted one with ten cultivars. (fourth pic)

They are placed in shade during summer (from May until September) and the rest of the year they have full sun from noon onwards. They seem to like that regime.

Very nice Wim, something for me to aim at there.

Yes, very well done.

Mine are supposed to look like that, if I'd just pay more attention...

Great before and after shots.  So, everyone of your original saxes made it?  You didn't have to replace any? Was there much maintenance required?  Thanks for posting.

I'm curious if people have trouble with troughs cracking during the freeze thaw cycle?  I started using thick ceramic pots for plants I am keeping out of the ground.  I thought I had found a solution.  Then after a few years these pots cracked too.  Clay pots do not last long at all.  I switched away from thin plastic pots because they became bleached in the sun.  However, I am again trying a thicker higher-quality variety of plastic pot hoping this will last more than a few year.  My trouble is finding short and wide quality plastic pots (bowls) in large sizes.  If I do find them they are very expensive.

James

Thanks everyone,

In the trough from 2008, only one died and was replaced with another species. In the trough made this year, all seem to be growing very well!
Very low maintenance, during summer (and only when it's very dry) I have to water them a bit and that's it.

The soil mix I used is: 1/4 garden-soil (we have a sandy soil here), 1/4 compost, 1/4 sharp grit, 1/4 sand with very big grains (called "Brekerzand" in Dutch, I have no idea about the English translation, it's a product made from broken grit, there's a kind of "Brekerzand", made from recycled and broken concrete, too but that's not suitable).

James wrote:

I'm curious if people have trouble with troughs cracking during the freeze thaw cycle?  I started using thick ceramic pots for plants I am keeping out of the ground.  I thought I had found a solution.  Then after a few years these pots cracked too.  
James

No, I've never had a problem yet with troughs cracking in the cold... I did have one that was made from a very poor recipe off the internet, that was soft and crumbly.  (We referred to it as the "chocolate brownie trough" due to that and the slightly excessive brown powder dye used in it!)  Nonetheless, it too lasted for years, growing more and more dishevelled through time (I finally dismantled it this fall and moved the plants.)

Lori,

    I love the beauty of glazed stoneware bowl style flower pots.  These pots are almost an inch thick.  However, even these eventually crack for me.  They usually only split into two or three pieces.  The way they split allows me to continue growing plants in them.  Although the planting mixture begins to spill out and the pots are hard to move after cracking has occurred. 
    The ones over 16" in diameter seem to split easier than the smaller diameter pots.  The thickness of the smaller pots and larger pots are the same.  The pressure the larger pots experience from expanding ice must be much larger for them to be cracking when the smaller pots stay intact.  A greater thickness for the larger pots would probably reduce the problem I have been experiencing. 
    I really like pots that are 20 inches in diameter or larger.  I had my Daphne arbuscula and dwarf mugo pine in these pots.  However, I am now trying high quality plastic pots.  I am hoping plastics strength under tension will allow these pots to better withstand the pressure from Spring thawing and refreezing.
    In my experience the thin clay pots are destroyed the quickest.  The moisture is able to get into the wall of these pots.  The result being they crack internally into thin layers resulting in disintegration.

James   

I bought a camera and almost simultaneously killed my laptop. (Deleted non-restorable drivers, for those who want to know ...) It's supposed to snow again tomorrow so pictures would probably all come out white.
All of the porophyllum and silver saxifrages here are in home made hypertufa troughs. The mix is variable; sand, perlite, and scoria in about equal parts, with some organic matter thrown in. Pieces of broken styrofoam (ie, polystyrene, I think ....like fish boxes ...) are set in diagonally so that ornamental rocks can be set on top of them.
The plants need regular watering here. Saxes grown in tufa blocks need to have a fine layer of "squeegee" or ant gravel (collected from abandoned red ant hills ....both of these are garvel about 2mm in diameter) sprinkled on top to keep the tufa from drying out, which it will do here in a matter of hours.
The soilless mix in the troughs is frozen solid for at least two months in winter.
Glazed ceramic pots, so popular here, used to be able to be left outside for years, but in the last three winters, which have featured snow on the ground for three or four months, I've had both pots and birdbaths crack. One of the pots that cracked had been outside, and planted, for over 45 years.
I grow a lot of sempervivums and cactus in unglazed Mexican pottery and so far none of these has cracked.
I experimented a little with Thompson's Water Seal applied to the inside of the pots and this seems to work pretty well.

Bob

My oldest homemade hypertufa trough is almost 25 years old and bowl shaped, and shows no sign of giving up.  It sits on the ground, uncovered all winter, sometimes completely covered by snow, sometimes not.  This one has a chicken wire armature within the hypertufa.  Since then, I  have always used the fiberglass fibers mixed in the hypertufa for strength.  I have eleven hypertufa troughs, mostly straight sided.  None have ever cracked, although one  came apart at a seam.  My oldest styrofoam trough is a fishbox, and has survive six winters so far.  All it's ever need is a touch up of paint.

I've had a few troughs break, due to faulty engineering. One broke when the dog stood on it to look over the fence. For some reason I thought balancing it on two cinder blocks standing on end would give it some height.
I had one break in half, but I glued it back together and it's been fine for about 15 years.
Another one had the end broken off when I put all my weight on it to do some weeding, and I put the end back in place with decking screws. The resulting, very visible crack, is for "drainage".  But then, this same trough has two holes drilled in the side of it, because I wanted to plant some dionysias in the holes (the sides of the troughs are beveled or slanted so that the tops are wider than the bottoms), but the dionysias fell out of the holes when I watered the trough from above (that engineering thing again) and I didn't notice it for several days.

Bob

I have three hypertufa troughs from Stonecrop Gardens in NY and they seem very durable.  I have one rectangle and two square shaped troughs and want to add a circle or oval shaped trough next spring.  I haven't seen the circle ones for sale.  I'll have to check with Farmbrook. 

I am attaching pictures of the flower pots I wrote about previously.  The 12 inch glazed ceramic pot has survived the winters fine.  The 16 inch glazed ceramic pot has cracked, but is still useable.  The larger glazed ceramic pots all cracked into multiple pieces and were discarded.  I have also included a picture of the 18 inch plastic pot I am trying.  This seem to be difficult to find locally.  I am hoping this plastic pot will be able to withstand the freeze thaw cycle better.  I switched plants around in these pots just this Spring.

James

You will probably have better luck with any bowl shape that has no vertical sides at all.  This will better allow for expansion as the soil freezes, and the the soil can climb up the sides rather than push the sides out.

Saxifrages in troughs.
I don't know why the ones growing closest to the fence die out so much; maybe they don't get as much water or something.
They do tend to grow together rather disgracefully. There is a serious Labor-Management problem in the garden here.

Bob

Bob, really nice troughs fiull of silver saxifrages, inspiring.  In your trough5 photo, do I spy some foliage of Aquilegia saximontana?

James wrote:

I am attaching pictures of the flower pots I wrote about previously.  The 12 inch glazed ceramic pot has survived the winters fine.  The 16 inch glazed ceramic pot has cracked, but is still useable.  The larger glazed ceramic pots all cracked into multiple pieces and were discarded.  I have also included a picture of the 18 inch plastic pot I am trying.  This seem to be difficult to find locally.  I am hoping this plastic pot will be able to withstand the freeze thaw cycle better.  I switched plants around in these pots just this Spring.

James

Here we can buy glaceed ceramic pots which are frost-proof. If the ceramic absorbs water it cracks. And as Rick says, the sides of the pots are better V-shaped (or U) than A or O-shaped. The freezing soil has to have somewhere to expand.

Bob, I like your troughs!

The troughs were made using a wooden mould my wife built for me. They're fairly big (and heavy). 75cm long, 50 cm wide, give or take.  Porophyllum saxifrages were my wife's favorite rock garden plant so there are a lot of them here. (In other words, she didn't mind me spending money on them.)
I cover them with chicken wire in winter to keep the rodents out. It works, sort of.
Attached was taken on a frosty morning (-5C), about fifteen minutes ago (so I've been awake for less than an hour), showing Sax. caucasica leaning over the edge of the trough. I think S. ferdinandii-coburgii is here too, and another whose label is buried. A Primula allionii hybrid or cultivar, and in the upright cage, Daphne 'Ernst Hauser'. (That cage is to prevent the little daphne from being mashed by the chicken wire.)
When the garden is on tour all the armor is removed, of course.
(Mark, that aquilegia seeding everywhere is the little one from Rick Lupp, labeled A. grahamii, but non-glandular.)

Bob

Nold wrote:

The troughs were made using a wooden mould my wife built for me...........

I showed this to mine, the response was "Think again Sunshine" :'(

After I made a trellis ("Why didn't you just buy one?) I was forbidden from doing any construction of any kind. Except the heavy duty work like digging post holes.
Behind the shed there is a flagstone patio which she left unfinished. I tried to finish it, but when I discovered that the steps she built were perfectly level in every possible direction, I gave up. There's a certain unique artistic spirit, you might say, in the design, that I can't get, despite encouragement from people who think I can build things.
Across the path from the patio is an enclosure with a fire pit and a homemade seat; she said she planned another seat for the other side of the fire pit but I couldn't even figure out how to start that, so I did the only thing at which I excel: I filled in the empty space with too many plants.

Bob