A Seed Saver's Garden

[heirloomgal]

I've been looking at my martynia plants and secretly griping about them for the last 4 weeks. For a plant that's supposed to grow to 4-5 feet wide, these have barely budged since planting. And it's not for lack of hot weather, which they probably love, or lack of rain because there has been plenty. The bed isn't super fertile but it's decent enough. Humph. I bent down to take a picture of how pathetic it is, and when I lifted the neck I saw...a pod! No idea how that got there, but I guess it didn't just sit there doing nothing after all.

These are all storage tomatoes. I might have lost my mind a little this year with the idea.

The little 'Green Finch' peas (aka 'Verdone') are making pods! My gosh, could there be a cuter name for a dwarf pea than green finch?

It's been so long since I grew a true big sunflower species that I forgot how massive the leaves were. Actually, I'm not sure that I ever registered they had big leaves like this. They've got to be over a foot long. The packet said space a foot a part, which I did...but that doesn't seem like enough space?

First blooms are on the 'Apricotta' cosmos! Nice breeding work in this one for sure.

My new/old clematis has peaked for the year. The later blooms were strangely less dark than the first ones. This is one of the challenges with trying to make a decorative garden with some permanent residents along with rotating vegetables and flowers - all of them are ALWAYS changing their sizes, and fairly dramatically too. Clematis can become a giant beast and hog up a ton of space in a couple years, so I can't see how I'll manage it in this one spot in coming years. Maybe I could prune it annually so as to keep it on the smaller side.

 

[heirloomgal]

I feel like the garden is finally catching up after a late start to the season. Pole beans are starting to really climb (yay!), tomato plants are all growing fruits. I'm happy with how the cucumber plants are looking, I don't usually plant those in the ground and I also don't typically grow many plants, but this year I put quite a few plants in a secondary garden. No question, they like that better than even a decent sized planter.

Very impressed with the flavor of both the perennial onions so far, Egyptian Walking and Welsh. Excellent oniony taste, WAY better even than the garlic chives which was decent for a perennial allium. These do not taste like a watered down onion at all. If these do well for me, I won't even bother with the garlic chive plants anymore, except perhaps, as flowers.

Found a ripe ground cherry yesterday, that was weird. Tasted wonderful though. These 'Geltower' ground cherries have quite the growth habit, very low, almost tight to the ground. They may go upward as they mature I guess. I may have spaced them too far apart as well.

I notice that my Tzimablos, while fruiting, seems to not have completely full little fruit trusses. I put a fly strip in the greenhouse this year, which has worked marvelously for having no insects in there, but I wonder if the tzimbalo might need a few bugs. Not a crop with much information behind it.