A Seed Saver's Garden

[flowerbug]

...I've been hitting the jackpot in getting all these trees cut the last couple of years. I love the opening up of the space!

just remember that open spaces invites deer visitations...

 

[heirloomgal]

just remember that open spaces invites deer visitations...

There's no deer here. My neighbours who are deer hunters have to drive several hours to get them. Thank heavens!

 

[flowerbug]

There's no deer here. My neighbours who are deer hunters have to drive several hours to get them. Thank heavens!

lucky you! a lot of people around here hunt and they still can't get enough of them.

 

[heirloomgal]

Newly stained trellis! Really relieved that this is done because painting this thing was a nightmare. Way too many surfaces to account for with a small paintbrush. And the nauseous odor drifting off the stain I'm pretty sure melted some of my neurons.

It's that time of year where I play 'guess the perennial' and 'how did this get here'. The light brown twiggy stuff sticking up are peony stem stubs, but some kind of plant has colonized it's base, for years now. Can't seem to ever extract enough out to eliminate it. The other green clumps I suspect are decorative globe alliums of some sort, though I don't recall planting those in recent years. A new delphinium from last year has come up, bottom left. I have a new respect for delphs, for large flowering perennials they really seem to advance quickly after planting.

VICTORY. Garlic bulbils are peeking through.

Black Salsify, Blue Fiore and perennial onions of various species. Another sweet victory in the perennial seed adventure.

I bought a variegated phlox at the tail end of last season, discounted as the season was over. Little did I know that some red veined sorrel must have gone to seed in a pot close by. Which is fine by me, it's another perennial veg I'm curious to try. Probably won't like the taste of it, but I do think it's pretty.

I had a tiny little cluster of skinny stems last year, which I didn't think would get through winter. But they did and now I have a tiny little cluster of fat stems!

Another of the 2025 planted perennials that have really proved themselves, perennial poppies. Amazing how fast they bulk up. While that short bloom is always such sorrow for me, the magnificence of those huge blooms is such that I overlook that less than ideal quality. This is a 2nd year plant! It had 3 leaves when I put it in!

The Egyptian Walking Onions came through winter so well, I'm quite pleased. My first batch of perennial onions that will be an eatable size by June. Joy! There are 2 onions in here (hidden by the green stems) sent to me by The Backyard Larder in the UK, and I'm not quite sure if they will make it yet. They haven't sprung up in green like the Egyptians, just a sort of sad looking yellow nub. Not sure if they're hardy to my zone.

Hollyhocks continue to puzzle me. Said to be biennials - so these probably should not have grown back. They fully flowered last year from established plants? And yet here they are up again.

Well, not super impressed with the oat cover crop experiment. Very little broke down through winter. Of course, this is probably somewhat my fault - letting the plants get too big. Will definitely need to use a tiller on the whole bed because those rootballs are very hard and clumpy.

 

[digitS']

My early Spring experience is "guess the weed," HeirloomGal. I perennially forget weed names. Of course that means, that I can misidentify weeds and wanted plants.

Somewhat of a caution about your perennial poppies: They can spead. We have 2 blooms as of yesterday. I'm happy with where they are and have been for years. However, when we moved in here, they entirely covered the neighbors' side yard. I never knew where they had started life but assumed it was Olive who had planted them. She and her husband lived here for nearly 50 years.

I'm interested in your Black Salsify. How large will their roots grow? Salsify is everywhere here as an invasive. The roots of a fully mature plant are the size of a pencil. I have wanted to try them, harvested and at the table, but can hardly imagine bothering with digging a reasonable number.

digitSteve

 

[ducks4you]

Funny about weeds and how our relationships with them. I usually pull OUT wild violet wherever I find it, not too hard, shalow-ish roots, a small hand trowel will get them out for you, but I decided This year to leave them under my pear tree. Dunno about Any peaches from either tree this year, but I DO see baby pears and the wild violet is growing en masse underneath this tree.
If I leave it I won't have to mow or weed out anything else, so less work for me.

 

[heirloomgal]

My early Spring experience is "guess the weed," HeirloomGal. I perennially forget weed names. Of course that means, that I can misidentify weeds and wanted plants.

Somewhat of a caution about your perennial poppies: They can spead. We have 2 blooms as of yesterday. I'm happy with where they are and have been for years. However, when we moved in here, they entirely covered the neighbors' side yard. I never knew where they had started life but assumed it was Olive who had planted them. She and her husband lived here for nearly 50 years.

I'm interested in your Black Salsify. How large will their roots grow? Salsify is everywhere here as an invasive. The roots of a fully mature plant are the size of a pencil. I have wanted to try them, harvested and at the table, but can hardly imagine bothering with digging a reasonable number.

digitSteve

Funny you mention this about the poppies, because today I noticed 2 small seemingly unrecognizable plants right around the base of one of the poppies. On closer inspection it does indeed look like babies! This is a first, and tells me I must have been lagging on my deadheading last year, as I tried to keep up on that for continued blooming. But I might just plunk them somewhere, as they aren't entirely unwanted! It never ceases to amaze me how well things grow in the US climate compared to my own, I've never seen poppies re-seed anywhere else before. This is a first for me. Annual poppies, different story!


Strangely, a row of Iceland poppies which I sowed last year is back. They never grew over an inch, let alone flowered, because by the time they were up the kale was towering over that row. I assumed the little seedlings would just perish, having lived an unfulfilled life. But they are still there, exactly as they were when the snow fell last year. I'm really curious if an annual poppy like that can come back like that.

My understanding about the Black Salsify, from the vendor's photos, is that these should get as big as large asparagus spears. But of course I've never grown it, so that's a hopeful assumption. I wonder if when grown in fertile garden soil they get much bigger than they would in the wild? I do hope they taste as good as the descriptions imply!

 

[heirloomgal]

Funny about weeds and how our relationships with them. I usually pull OUT wild violet wherever I find it, not too hard, shalow-ish roots, a small hand trowel will get them out for you, but I decided This year to leave them under my pear tree. Dunno about Any peaches from either tree this year, but I DO see baby pears and the wild violet is growing en masse underneath this tree.
If I leave it I won't have to mow or weed out anything else, so less work for me.

A wild violet is a type of mini-pansy, right? Looking around the garden this weekend I saw that some of the large flowering pansies I planted last year have re-seeded themselves. The tags did say perennial on them, but I didn't believe it. I've never known large flowering pansies to survive winters here. I will say, I have seen whole lawns taken over by the little purple johnny jump ups and its quite dazzling.