A few happenings of late 13 June 2008

Wednesday (the 11th) at the farmers’ market I got two six-packs of zinnia ‘Oklahoma Mix’, a six-pack of salvia (mealy cup sage) ‘Victoria’ (which I’ve grown many times before, purchased from this same farm, but never in this garden), and two single pots of rudbeckia/black-eyed Susan ‘Indian Summer’. Yesterday I planted the zinnias and the black-eyed Susans, as well as a purple-flowering heliotrope I bought last week to replace the purple-flowering heliotrope I mail-ordered, as it appears it never recovered from getting ill due to being the only plant in the order that arrived in a cracked pot. (Heliotropes are already very susceptible to drying out in tiny pots.)

On Wednesday I also sowed some of the copious number of seeds I’d still had to sow. They included summer savory and a second strain of slow-bolt cilantro for the crop section (so they can take advantage of the partial shade and rich soil provided, respectively, by the taller crops and the compost amendments), as well as numerous flowers, such as more sulfur cosmos and marigolds, and two seed packs an acquaintance got me at a market in Chinatown, one only labelled in English as “chrysanthemum” and the other being Tithonia (labelled “Titonia” on the packet), AKA Mexican sunflower. The cultivar commonly available in the US is ‘Torch’. Mexican sunflower ‘Torch’ is supposed to be the easiest annual to grow anywhere ever, but I’ve had absolutely no luck with it. Either my seeds never germinate at all or the plants never flower before frost kills them. I always thought it was just me, but this acquaintance said she’d had the same problem until she started growing this strain, whose plants topped out at nine feet by killing frost, smothered in blooms. (That’s why she offered to pick up a packet for me.) We’ll see if I have anything close to such luck!

I’ve got a lot more to do today. I’m hoping to finish up in the front, though we’ll see. I’ve got more herbs to plant as well as more annuals and a couple more non-herb perennials, and then I have to sow the rest of the seeds (mostly more zinnias and all the nasturtiums) and plant the gladiola bulbs. I also have to sow the last beans to arrive in the mail – soybean ‘Envy’, garden bean ‘Dragon Langerie Wax’, cowpea ‘California Black-Eyed’, dry bean ‘Anasazi Bush’, runner bean ‘Dwarf Bees’, and lima bean ‘Thorogreen Early Bush’.

I discovered yesterday that that agastache I rather haphazardly plopped down with the lavenders is supposedly hardy here, despite being sold in the annuals section of my nursery. It is “Acapulco Orange” of the Acapulco series, and turns out to be a cultivar of Mexican Giant Hyssop (Agastache mexicana). It apparently likes similar conditions to the lavenders (I found that at a different site than the linked one), and since the hardiest lavenders came back this spring, we’ll just have to wait and see if it does next year too. From what I read, hardiness estimates vary, USDA zone 5 or 6 depending on the source. By the way, for those lucky amongst you who actually get hummingbirds in your gardens, I am told that agastaches are tops with them.

And now it’s off to the garden.