A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

Hard to believe, but the very compromised rose plants are putting out a few blooms. I dunno, maybe there is hope afterall.

'Orange Marmalade' flower. Never heard of it until this year, it was cheap. lol I like it though. Needs some food, and then I'll see what it can do. I've neglected it fully in the greenhouse for the last month so I'm impressed it's given me any flowers! Leaves are SO shiny.

This is definitely one of the more shocking turnarounds this season. 'Ojo de Venado' - worst tomato seedlings on earth, and when I upotted them the 1st time the sprouts were not only just barely over an inch tall (when they should have been at least 6), the green tops were dried up and very cruddy looking. Like they didn't even have proper sprouted leaves. Even now I can't think of why I proceeded to try and pump hope into it by moving into a bigger pot. And things still didn't improve every much. I can barely wrap my mind around the fact that this is the same plant.

I'm keeping a close eye on which toms are the earliest to make fruit, not many plants have tomatoes on them yet. But 'Turboreactivnyi' (both the potted specimen as well as the in ground one) has a little load on it already, though the others are mostly just starting little fruits. This is 'Northern Delight', and it has some wee ones. Another called 'Heronland Early' is actually farther ahead than this but I forgot to upload a picture.

Horseradish jail.

In keeping with the tragic comedy theme for blooms this year, just as the delphiniums started to flower we got a 12 hour spell of rain. Everything is leaning and soaked, but I'm hoping they can perk up once they dry. This was taken the day before the deluge. Will post a better pic if things improve. This perennial has proven to be one of my favorites, both for their looks but the longer bloom time than the peonies & that they can stand up without help, and you can collect seed from them. So I planted about 4 more young plants this year. I'm impressed that they are so big already, some of them might even put out a little flower. I really want to get one of those very pale baby blue ones.

 

[ducks4you]

Being outside all afternoon in muggy heat I think it was 10-20 degrees F cooler in the shade, so , Yes!

 

[digitS']

It's the parasitic wasps that are attracted to the umbellifers - they go on to parasitize the leaf miners.

Three bald-face hornets (or yellow jackets, not gittin close enuf to tell) were in the beets this morning. One was eating a leaf miner. I hurried back into the house to grab the camera for a picture but he had finished his meal by the time I returned .

I was not intending to bother the hornets in their patrolling but the movement of my shadow seemed to upset them.

Steve

 

[heirloomgal]

Delphinium time.

I went looking today at a few greenhouses for the light blue one. Nada.
This is the first year where I think I may need to divide the clumps. I can't tell if it's the rain we had that's made them lean so much or the crowns are just too large now. These are old plants.

 

[heirloomgal]

The weather since June has been AMAZING. I mean, a little hot for the humans, but solid heat in the high 20's low 30's (C) and a good rain weekly. I've mostly been watering the potted plants and greenhouse, I've barely watered the in-ground gardens. That is some seriously good luck!

All the mini dwarfs are just LOADED with tomatoes, a crazy amount of tomatoes for such wee little plants. Not close to red yet though, but hey, I'm happy with the promise. The Tzimbalos even have little fruits on them.

Now if only the weeds would pull themselves...

 

[flowerbug]

...
Now if only the weeds would pull themselves...

that's the thing with regular rains you get a lot more weeds. i have no idea where most of these weed seeds are coming from because i do normally keep the gardens pretty well taken care of but this year you'd think i'd never weeded at all. purslane all over the place... i have a week or two before they start dropping more seeds so i think i can get these back under control again. some are worse than others.

disturbing the garden soil is a sure way to invite yet more weeds than normal to sprout too, but i'm normally pretty good at not doing too much of that but yes for sure this year a few of the gardens were reshaped and leveled more so Mom could have an easier time walking in them so perhaps that is a part of what is going on. moved the seeds into the germination zone.

 

[heirloomgal]

that's the thing with regular rains you get a lot more weeds. i have no idea where most of these weed seeds are coming from because i do normally keep the gardens pretty well taken care of but this year you'd think i'd never weeded at all. purslane all over the place... i have a week or two before they start dropping more seeds so i think i can get these back under control again. some are worse than others.

disturbing the garden soil is a sure way to invite yet more weeds than normal to sprout too, but i'm normally pretty good at not doing too much of that but yes for sure this year a few of the gardens were reshaped and leveled more so Mom could have an easier time walking in them so perhaps that is a part of what is going on. moved the seeds into the germination zone.

Me too @flowerbug, I think we have similar weeding practices with scraping the soil so as to prevent drawing up more weeds seeds from beneath. But despite being out scraping about every 2nd day, the little ones just keep coming up. I can't remember ever seeing this much purslane, I've barely ever had that as a weed in the gardens in the first place. And horsetail hasn't been a bother for several years, and it seems to be poking up again. For how meticulous I've been with trying to keep the soil bare, there are an awful lot of weeds sprouting.

I'm tempted to think that there are other factors which contribute to the intermittent appearance of weeds, cycles in nature that we aren't aware of etc. And yeah, all these nice deep rains are probably playing a large role too.

 

[heirloomgal]

I truly am not one to get thrilled about *pretty garden pictures* given how ubiquitous they are all over social media (and I admittedly enjoy the more science side of the garden when it comes to online content) but I must say, this instagram account is pretty jaw dropping. Her deference to shape and form is really something; she doesn't lean on showy blooms as much as most 'pretty picture' accounts do.

https://www.instagram.com/katecoulson/?hl=en

 

[heirloomgal]

I have never been a huge fan of mini dwarf tomatoes, but I also haven't tried a whole lot of them. But so far this year I am quite impressed with this little colony of mini's that I'm growing. And their fertility demands have been fairly low, which is good, because the doling out of all this endless chicken manure to this years numerous tomatoes is $starting to add up! I gave them each a handful at planting time and no signs yet they need more. I like to keep fertility down as tomatoes ripen anyway because they taste better that way.

The only one that is not really living up to the promise of ultra 'mini' is 'Geranium Kiss', that one is somewhat bigger than the rest, but realistically not by a whole lot. I like the shape of them, photo 2.

'Physalis minima' is really turning out to be a fast grower. I'm quite impressed so far, it's full of little husks already. We'll see what they taste like....

My new snail. It originally had some obnoxious colors so I spray painted it. I may do my old heron the same, which is getting a bit rusty now. Might be a bit matchy-matchy though. Odd, I consider any mollusk an enemy to the gardens so why I got a virtual placard of one I don't know. The cartoon versions are cute I suppose. If I see mollusk numbers increase from here on though, this will get buried far far away.

Can't believe I'm actually getting to enjoy some roses!! Leaves are chewed up, but flowers are still arriving.

I so loved that 'Ruby Parfait' celosia last year that I'm trying another celosia, 'Elephant Head', but whoa this one is turning out to be WAY different. The leaves are quite massive, very unlike ruby with her delicate leaves. And I'm still a bit stumped about the spacing of them. I have no idea what to expect now...