Our Front Yard Garden tour #25.33 in the SC Upstate-10/17/25

A weekly tour of our garden

Well, hello and welcome to episode 33 of our front yard garden in the South Carolina upstate. It is October 17th. We’re well into fall now. Another Friday morning. Absolutely beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky. It’s uh right around 70°. A tiny breeze, but not much. Great time to go out and look at the garden. Uh, of course not a lot to see at this time of year, but there are still some flowers that are blooming as you can see right here. Our zenas are still giving us some color. Certainly not as much as as we were getting even a month ago, but uh there are some little surprises as most gardens will have and uh we’re going to go through those. Uh it’s already time to dead head again. getting a lot of uh flowers that are finished up and um you know it just has a very fall look to it almost like a corn field at this point. But one surprise that I’ve just come across here in the last uh few days um if any of you were following these videos back in the spring, we had uh some clatus growing up here on the uh mailbox and they have come back. They they kind of died off in the summer and they frequently will do that. Uh we had big brown vines all over the the mailbox and they looked terrible. Um just since uh I say maybe in the last week or so we’re getting some new clatus coming up out of the ground. I had pulled all the old ones out and they’re now coming back. And we’ve got some really pretty jacamini clatus here that are uh growing up amongst the zenas. I’m going to try to train those when they’re a little bit longer up on back onto the uh mailbox so we have those for next spring. Uh cuz I was afraid I was going to need to just buy some more and put them in. But maybe uh maybe they’ll come back and uh won’t have to do that, which would be really nice. But um as always with the zenas, we’ve got all kinds of different colors. These were all put in uh planted by seed in coffee cups on our back porch back in the spring. We put them in in probably miday, maybe early May. And uh they’re very low maintenance. Uh very nice uh colors and um uh you’ve got reds, oranges, whites, yellows, purples, pinks, and just about every color you can imagine. And uh they this time of year they kind of look pretty bad. But um and then they get really long and spindly and they uh kind of drag out into the into the yard. But um despite that, they are uh just filled with color throughout the summer and and uh definitely worth the effort if you are so in inclined. One other thing that’s worth mentioning, we only have the taller zenas um the ones that are about 5t in height. There are shorter versions um a little easier to manage, but they are uh they don’t put out as much color overall. And uh they are uh uh probably not as not as much of an impact flower, put it that way. And here we have our we’re going to go a little bit different way cuz some of the neighbors are out and I’m uh just trying to give them some space. But uh these are our knockout roses. I deadheaded these a few weeks ago and uh I was hoping that maybe we would get some growth, but I think I did it too late in the year because um we I’m not really seeing any new growth or or flowers or anything. But if I had done that earlier in the year, I think they would be uh a little more uh prolific. Um one of our neighbors has a lot of these. He’s a retiree and so he has a lot of time to put into his into his garden and uh uh he’s got flowers left and right and I’m hoping next year if I can stay on top of this with the deadheading that these will do better. Um these uh Aelas are doing great. They’re getting their second uh I call it the second wind but their second blooming. They bloomed in the spring. Uh we have two different types. these ones with the light pink and uh actually it’s kind of a byolor uh light pink with the uh dark pink throat. Beautiful, beautiful flowers. And of course we have some hydrangeas here long since finished. And then we have uh couple different types of of zelas back in here. We have these with red flowers. These appear to be about done. I don’t think they’re going to bloom anymore this fall. Sometimes it’s hard to tell cuz they they don’t all come out at once. they kind of come out more gradually. And then we have the more traditional uh light purple variety. But for the most part, this is a spring bed. And in about I would say about 5 months, we’re going to be getting a lot of activity here. We have uh again the zelas, we have hydrangeas, and then we have these viburnum, these big uh bushes here, which will put out big tufts of white flowers. And those should be really pretty. Over here, kind of the same thing. Um, if I burn them, I’ve cut them back for the first time, hoping that uh they would put out more flowers and a little bit less of the greenery. Um, but uh not a lot to see here. They’re just uh just shrubs for right now. Same thing with this gardinia here. It didn’t do much this year, but it uh it is slowly getting bigger and bigger. So, hopefully it’ll give us some more flowers as time goes by. big uh white flowers that bloom out of that. Um got our little citrus area here, our orange tree, which doesn’t really do anything other than exist. Lemon tree kind of doing the same thing. And then we have our small lemons here. Now, interesting thing about these, I’ve had um very minimal uh involvement, but these did put out a lot of flowers over the summer. And out of all those, we did get two actual lemons. And this one has started to turn yellow. And uh it looks like maybe this one is doing the same. It’s starting to lighten up in color. So, maybe they’re ripening. They’re not huge, but uh I don’t think they’re supposed to be huge huge uh fruits. So, we’re going to watch those over the next few weeks and see what they do. But, uh overall, even though these were all small and they’re just in small pots right now, as you can see, uh straight from the the box store. I think I got these at Home Depot on discount. Um they were uh uh they’ve done much better. They’ve put out more flowers and uh actually starting to put out some more leaves, too. So, it’ll be interesting to see what happens with those. I’m going to move them around to the uh back porch so that they’re protected from the winter once it gets cold. And not sure what I’m going to do with these. I left them out last year. They didn’t do too well with that, but uh they’re so heavy to move around. It’s hard to uh keep uh uh taking them inside every time it’s going to freeze. And we don’t get a lot of frosts here, but when we do, it’s not uh not real favorable for uh plants that that prefer the uh the warm air. And certainly citrus trees uh prefer that because they’re normally in Florida and California. This is not an area where you would normally see a whole lot of uh uh citrus. In fact, you wouldn’t really see any citrus at all or palm trees or anything else that you think, oh, we’re in the south. We should be seeing that. No, doesn’t really work that way. Uh we’re in the upstate. Our elevation here is about 1,000 ft. We’re in the Piedmont. Uh in fact, you we’re within uh uh distance of being able to see the Blue Ridge Mountains about 30 mi north of here uh from some of the higher elevations. You can see those. So, we’re we’re very very uh close to the mountains. And this is not an area where you would normally see that kind of stuff. These hydrangeas are done for the year. Um, and just since last week, uh, when we did this video, um, our, uh, blackeyed susanss here have just about finished up. We have a little bit of yellow, uh, left, but not a lot. This will probably be the last week for these. And, uh, last week they were fully in bloom. They were, it was just a sea of yellow. It was beautiful, but they, uh, they all kind of finished up around the same time. And now we just have lots and lots of these seed pods. But we do have some more zenyas up in this area. Um, again, just kind of finishing up. But we do have some that are that are still fresh flowers. Very, very pretty. These purple ones here, bright red ones here. Uh, some more of the bright red ones. And, um, overall, I’d say these are doing a little bit better than the ones out by the street for whatever reason. But it’s interesting with this particular group, we have some colors that we aren’t seeing and haven’t seen out at the uh street level uh all year. And I don’t know why. Uh more of these pinks and different shades of of pink and red. Um you got this one that’s just a slightly darker red. This one’s a slightly lighter color. Um and then oranges and the whole transition from orange to red. And then you’ve got some that are just an absolute blood red. And these are all coming in the same package. So you don’t have to buy, you know, a bunch of different flowers. But the other thing that’s peculiar, and I I have not had an explanation for this, is uh some areas like this group right here. These are all red. And we we grew them all together. We put them in all together. It’s the same thing over here. This particular group are all pink. They’re all the same color. But I don’t know why. Um I mean we have one orange, one yellow, but for the most part like 95% of them are are all pink. It’s very strange. Um but uh my my wife kind of over overestimated uh what what our needs were going to be last uh spring and she put in roughly 600 uh seeds, 600 coffee cups full of zenyas. And so we have zenas left and right and I still ended up giving away about 2/3 of them um to friends and and um from what I’ve been told they they’re doing very well. So um you know if you have the time you have some soil and some coffee cups and and you know the seeds are cheap you can have a fantastic Zenia garden uh with with relatively little uh involvement. Now, other things in this area would include Russian sage, and there’s not a lot to show here, but it is still around. Uh these little delicate purple flowers. They’re doing doing uh reasonably well. This one has not taken over. It’s certainly not an impact flower, but it’s kind of buried back in amongst everything else, and it’s kind of a neat little thing to see. Now, the other thing that has come and gone over the year, and right now it’s it’s blooming again. And I thought we weren’t going to see any more, but these DAS, these are not dinner plate DAS. They’re not huge, but they’re a good 4 in across. You get some that are about 6 in across. Those are the dinner plate variety. And and um we don’t really have any of those. But this nice yellow one is is doing great. And then just since last week, these two uh pink ones have come out. We’ve had some others. I won’t even say pink. This is more of a red or magenta. They’re all covered with water right now from our uh sprinkler system, so they’re a little heavy. I’m going to leave it up here. But uh we’ve had some other pink ones that have have done pretty well this year. Um but this is not a prolific bloomer. This is a little bigger one. This is a good four or 5 in across. But um they uh they tend to get so topheavy that they fall right over. And so what I’ll try to do is move them around. They are kind of balanced on each other so you can actually see them there. That way they stay up. You can actually enjoy them. Um but uh that’s about it for the front yard. Oh, I guess I’ll mention our petite knockout rose here. I deadheaded this about u six weeks ago and it it uh got its second wind. I think the between the deadheading and the weather cooling down uh cuz we had a very hot summer which was not not too favorable for for roses. Um it got a lot of blooms. They’re starting to fade now, but uh I don’t know if we’re going to get much more before the end of the year. We’ve got probably another month or so in our growing season. Although uh the weather here can really vary. Um last year we didn’t get our first frost until December 1st. The year before that we had it in mid October right around now. So you just never know. Um but so far there’s no uh indication that we’re going to get a frost soon. So hopefully these things will continue to bloom. Of course, frosts are not the only factor in uh when flowers stop blooming. A lot of it just comes down to the length of the day. And as the days get shorter, for example, these zenas have been kind of gradually winding down now over the last month. Uh just because the days are getting shorter, it’s not uh you know, the weather has not been unpleasant at all. We’re frequently still in the 70s, even 80s uh during the day. So, and our nights are not cold. So, they’re just responding to the amount of light that they get. One last thing I’ll show here is our climbing rose. Kind of hard to see here with the shadows. There’s really not much to see. Um, but this thing has struggled with black spot all year. It is trying to put out some new leaves. I don’t know if they’ll get out in time for the uh before the end of the growing season, but uh we had some flowers on this as recently as this week, but uh I think for the time being it might be done for the season. Uh but that has been one of our best performing flowers. Uh it’s really really done well. It’s given us consistent red roses and u especially in a prominent place like this at the corner of the house near the garage, you really see it easily. So hopefully this will come back next year and give us more color. That’s about it for the front yard. We’re going to do our backyard video next, so hang on for that. Uh hope it’s sunny wherever you are. And until next time, happy gardening.