Showing posts with label Blanket Flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blanket Flowers. Show all posts

Thursday 23 June 2016

Blanket Flower; Beautify your Home and Gardens



Blanket flower is a perennial long season of bloom, produced from early summer to early fall in different shades. Blanket Flower is also known as Gaillardia is a genus of flowering plants in the sunflower family. Gaillardias look like large daisies, with bold, bright markings like those of an American Indian blanket, in patterns of red, yellows and golds. The blanket flowers are glandular in most species; however the inflorescence is a solitary flower head. Blanket flowers are annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs, sometimes with rhizomes.  

Usually, it grow about 2 ½ feet tall, but there are also dwarf varieties. They bloom in summer over a long period and are a good choice if your climate is hot and dry. Therefore, varieties include the mixed colored “Monarch Strain” and solids such as dark red “Burgundy” and “Yellow Queen”. Multicolored “Goblin” grows a foot tall. Blanket Flower is sometimes rolled into a funnel shape are many tubular disc florets at the center of the head in a similar range of colors, and usually tipped with hairs. Blanket flowers enticing butterflies can be grown in containers and the taller cultivars make nice cut flowers.  Blanket flowers are usually short-lived; cutting back clumps to 6 inches in late summer often increases their chances of winter survival. 

Blanket flower normally grows in moist, humid areas and plants may develop fungus diseases in summer or succumb to rot from winter moisture. Avoid mulching them, and give them light, well-drained soil, preferably on the sandy side. Gaillardias can be grown fairly quickly from seed, and will flower the first year. Moreover in spring season, watch for new shoots that may appear quite a distance from the original clump. If the center of the clump dies, discard it and replant the side shoots. Blanket flowers have insect or disease problems and look out for aphids and leafhoppers that can banquet a virus-like disease called aster yellows.