Ducks ALIVE in 2025!

[ducks4you]

Got both my God Mower AND Tractor delivered home today!!!
There was an additional new part on the tractor and they didn't charge me for that OR the pin.

 

[Dahlia]

I think you are right, @Dahlia . What should I do with this? I did not plant the seed. The plant is voluntary, and just like other volunteers on my property I am sure that a bird or the wind spread the seed.
Should I propogate it?
Should I dig it up, since it's growing in the wrong place?
Don't think the heavy mulch on the west side of my garage is similar to volcanic soil.
Looking for some answers.

I have no clue what to do with it! I just used my plant phone app to identify!

 

[ducks4you]

Since I was working on my wildflower bed yesterday I have decided to dig it up and replant this flower in this bed.

 

[ducks4you]

Finished hand pulling grasses and weeds. I got all of the grass I could, but so much of it easy to pull ryegrass, and the flowers don't mind them, so, neither to I.
HOWEVER, I ran across a patch of sawgrass, which sends runners underground. I used my spade, dug all of the runners out, threw onto the cement cistern to dry out, and to the trash they will go.
I left a lot of the tender grass to either die and fertilize or it might come back.
This patch is not NEARLY as weedy as it was one month ago, and I am impressed at how aggressive the wildflowers are that came back.
I see:
blue flax
sweet william
white yarrow
bachelor buttons
Plains Coreopsis
black eyed susans
(Funny, the host of Mid American Gardener is a pretty black lady, and SHE said that her mother called them
"Brown Eyed Susans", after her daughter).
There are some other flowers not yet blooming but I recognize their emerging greenery, so I will report back on what they are when I know.

 

[ducks4you]

Got all of the wildflower and other flower seeds that I was keeping in a large glass jar all mixed up together and ready to spread. I hand planted 2 sunflowers, Lemon Queen Arikara and Taiyo

and small amount of hollyhock seeds. They will be growing close to the sidewalk, on the north side of this bed.
I Will be finishing prepping around the cistern to plant sweet corn this week, and I am planting radishes in between.
I love radishes when they go to flower! I really think we miss out when we pull them up and I Have to pull 4 of them from another bed that is currently weeded out.
Funny, I had a paper seed packaged labelled: Prairie resistant seeds.
I assumed that these, too, were wildflowers, but when I dumped them in the jar i discovered 15 purple beans, instead.
I had to use a long teaspoon to fish them out.
Guess they will get planted today and we will find out exactly what kind of beans they are sometime later.
I have a lot of Alaska snow pea pods. I plan to let the plants die and dry out, then harvest them for Fall planting.
I still am getting some sugar snap peas, but I have a good amount of 2024 seeds to start this fall.
Guess I'll snack on them.
Surprise--purple top turnips came in! I was amazed at how big some of them got.
Here they are before harvest. Think I will cook them up in bacon grease and add the tops. If our Father's Day roast, etc. is too much, I will have them for leftovers tomorrow.

 

[ducks4you]

Cooking cut up turnips slowly, as I write, with the stove 10 ft away and my smell detector on.
I went online to figure out how to cook them, and they are sauteeing in bacon grease with some dehydrated garlic. The biggest one I harvested, and I spotted that yesterday, so I knew it was time to harvest some of them, fit nicely in my palm. I read to use a potato peeler on them in case they were tough, but you Know when you slice into a vegetable if it's tough or not. NONE were tough, and they were easy to cut into cubes.
DH and I are awaiting DD's to come over to enjoy the pot roast that finished cooking in the crock pot about an hour ago. It is heavy with garlic bc I put some dehydrated pieces in AND the tops that I accidentally cut off last month, so I dehydrated them, plus the usual, potatoes at the bottom, an onion and carrot slices, cooked in 2 1/2 quarts of last year's beef broth. There will be another batch of beef broth cooking this week.
Youngest DD is planning on cooking brownies, in lieu of a birthday cake, and I have the oven pre heated for her.
Here is what they looked like. The tops had suffered some insect damage, so I opted not to cook them up, but to compost, instead.

 

[ducks4you]

Here are pictures of the 3 sunflowers that I planted today. NONE of the original ones made it back from 2 years ago.

Sunflower Seeds - Taiyo​

Arikara Sunflower--this is, I believe, the sunflower that volunteered in my big garden in 2024

Lemon Queen Sunflower

I planted all of the sunflowers and the sample packet of 8 hollyhocks next to the sidewalk, very north part of the wildflower garden. I plan to harvest seeds from them for next year, but leave some for the birds for the winter, too.
My Vet used to have a very large patch of hollyhocks. She told me that it was always a surprise what colors you got every year. She has a neighbor who installed very bright LED floods, as if the town she lives in didn't have streetlights, and now the hollyhocks and some of her other flowers won't grow anymore in her yard.

 

[ducks4you]

It will take me some time to catalog ALL of the seeds that I planted and watered in my wildflower garden, but, suffice to say, it is pretty much a one and done. I will take pictures in a few months and we will see what decided to grow there.
I plan to keep it watered this week, heavy rain expected on Wednesday, but I believe that if I water it for the next 2 weeks I can forget about it.
I planted a handful of old watermelon seeds there, as well as a full jar of 2024 collected garlic seeds with some bubules, a package of sorghum seeds, 1/2 a package of wheat, a package of buckwheat, and I think a few oats came up from when I tried 5 years ago to fill the space in With oats, so they are welcome.
As far as I know I have dug out all of the sawgrass.
This is where you realise that there are no "gardening police." Plant what you want Where you want and enjoy!

 

[flowerbug]

@ducks4you yarrow will take over... i like it and if mixed with grasses in a lawn it will look nicer during dry spells than what a dormant grass lawn might do, plus the foliage is softer to walk on with bare feet. the downside with yarrow is if you happen to be reactive to it.

the white kind is ok, but there are red and pink versions which have the same foliage that i really like and then there is a silvery foliage type that has yellow flowers that i definitely do not like (smells like doggie poo to me).

 

[heirloomgal]

Here are pictures of the 3 sunflowers that I planted today. NONE of the original ones made it back from 2 years ago.

Sunflower Seeds - Taiyo​

View attachment 75502
Arikara Sunflower--this is, I believe, the sunflower that volunteered in my big garden in 2024
View attachment 75503
Lemon Queen Sunflower
View attachment 75504
I planted all of the sunflowers and the sample packet of 8 hollyhocks next to the sidewalk, very north part of the wildflower garden. I plan to harvest seeds from them for next year, but leave some for the birds for the winter, too.
My Vet used to have a very large patch of hollyhocks. She told me that it was always a surprise what colors you got every year. She has a neighbor who installed very bright LED floods, as if the town she lives in didn't have streetlights, and now the hollyhocks and some of her other flowers won't grow anymore in her yard.

I'm growing Taiyo this year too, I planted a whole bed of them! And the other one is Lemon Sorbet, very close to Lemon Queen!