Ducks ALIVE in 2025!

[Vanalpaca]

I am not at ALL against specific beans.
It's just that, as a gardener, my successes in growing certain vegetables has not been the best.
Heck, the only saved 2024 seeds were some garlic cloves and a handful of sugar snap peas!!
Family loved ALL of the cucumbers from 2024 and all of the tomatoes from 2024 (almost all hybrid and purchased, though I was trying to get away from that,) that I grew and they loved the green beans from 2023.
I Hope to grow what I have seeds for in my seed cabinet in 2025 and to save as many seeds as possible.
That lady was lucky that you "read between the lines" for her seed request and used your "CSI nose" to decipher what she Really was looking for.
Just for the record, I am Very interested in keeping our vegetables diverse in case of massive crop failures in the future bc of monoculture farming, as well as livestock breed diversity.
I also want to emphasize that most of us out there--not me bc I own 5 acres--garden like people in Europe, a strip of land to the front of the house and a strip of land to the back of the house.
I moved here from such a property and I want to encourage ALL of you out there to plant vegetables with flowers.
Brie Arthur won her HOA's award for most beautiful front yard landscape doing Just That, and you can stretch your landscape and gardening beds in this way.
She also talks about planting peanuts in this video and pushes Rosiland Creasy's book, "Edible Landscaping."

Amazon.com

I've followed Rosiland's book for 2-3 decades. I was living in California when she published it and may even have a copy... I like profusion zinnias for color and low mounding habit, Borage and Comfrey both have bell like blue blooms. I grow marigolds but probably need more. Mine were saved from hybrid seed so I get a 2 foot bush. This year I got the nasturtiums to germinate so I hope to have those and cosmos. I'll buy some petunias for hanging baskets...and I'm growing scarlet runner beans...

 

[heirloomgal]

I also want to emphasize that most of us out there--not me bc I own 5 acres--garden like people in Europe, a strip of land to the front of the house and a strip of land to the back of the house.
I moved here from such a property and I want to encourage ALL of you out there to plant vegetables with flowers.

This year my front yard is going to be ALL about the veggies and the flowers growing together. Let's see if I can pull this off and have it actually look good!

 

[heirloomgal]

I've followed Rosiland's book for 2-3 decades. I was living in California when she published it and may even have a copy... I like profusion zinnias for color and low mounding habit, Borage and Comfrey both have bell like blue blooms. I grow marigolds but probably need more. Mine were saved from hybrid seed so I get a 2 foot bush. This year I got the nasturtiums to germinate so I hope to have those and cosmos. I'll buy some petunias for hanging baskets...and I'm growing scarlet runner beans...

Sounds like a beautiful combination of flowers and color. I'm a big fan of the Gem series marigolds after trying so many kinds. They don't need to be deadheaded, they smell wonderful, have hundreds of little flowers and a nice and tidy mounded bush growth habit. Only thing is I've found the saved seeds have only a 50% germination rate, probably because they are a wildish type of marigold. There is a type of cosmos called kenikir, it's really beautiful and reminds me of marigolds only it grows like a hedge.

 

[Vanalpaca]

Sounds like a beautiful combination of flowers and color. I'm a big fan of the Gem series marigolds after trying so many kinds. They don't need to be deadheaded, they smell wonderful, have hundreds of little flowers and a nice and tidy mounded bush growth habit. Only thing is I've found the saved seeds have only a 50% germination rate, probably because they are a wildish type of marigold. There is a type of cosmos called kenikir, it's really beautiful and reminds me of marigolds only it grows like a hedge.

I plant the flowers with an eye to what my honeybees want, a nice open single flower or a center loaded with pollen. They don't see red (bees) but love blue, white, and yellow flowers. Usually they are leaving the farm itself and flying off who knows where. They go out in early morning and decide where 'the flow' is best for that day's foraging and make their locator scent trails... So frequently what I plant, even in groups, doesn't peak their interes. Borage is 2 feet tall, kind of like comfrey with same type blooms but they PUMP NECTAR and can be a major source for the bees. I have a lot of those to spot out all over the garden but also where I WANT the bees....