Canning article / Recently in the garden 27 May 2009

There is a pretty nice article on home canning in today’s New York Times, targeted towards beginners, Preserving Time in a Bottle (Or a Jar), with a sidebar, Some Canning Dos and Don’ts.  The online version includes a video clip and a slide show.

The snowmelt has emphatically run out in the front garden by now.  Yesterday many of the areas that I hadn’t watered recently (I try to do hand-watering of selected plants when possible instead of whole-garden watering) had quite literally turned to powder.  The ability of the wind and other weather patterns to so completely dry out the front garden so fast never ceases to amaze me.  Thankfully, as I type it’s finally raining, though again the heaviest rain is tracking away from us (usually in the past month it tracks to the south, but this time it’s tracking to the north).

Yesterday I did some planting.  My biggest focus was on the vines that I ordered from Select Seeds (4) and picked up from the nursery recently (2) as they all appeared to be pot-bound and because I know vines want to get going – want to become vines instead of being trapped, being a tiny size in a tiny pot.  I ended up planting 5 of the 6 with the little stand of sweet peas, figuring they could take over when the majority of the sweet peas inevitably die with the onset of long-lasting heat.   The 6th, Spanish Flag (Mina lobata), I planted at the base of the cup plant (Midwestern US native Silphium perfoliatum), a sturdy trellis if there ever was one.  Cup plant is such a hefty presence in the garden that I already get people asking about it even though it’s far from flowering and still short (for cup plant’s standards – maybe 3 feet tall).  Anyway, the biggest reason I picked Spanish Flag for tht spot is because it’s suppsoed to be more tolerant of partial shade than the other vines I planted, and I figured cup plant would, just because of its impressive stature, make whatever climbed on it a bit shaded.  The others I planted were Purple Bell Vine (Rhodochiton atrosanguineum), Creeping Gloxinia (Asarina erubescens) ‘Wine Red,’ Mexican Flame Vine (Senecio confusus) ‘Sao Paulo,’ one of two plants sold as Cardinal Vine, and a morning glory that I think is ‘Blue Star,’ and which I was enchanted by at the nursery because of its tag’s photo of a flower that reminded me of things washed up on seashores, but in photos online looks to be blue-on-blue instead of the photo’s appearance of blue-on-white (still, it appears to be pretty).  After I finished planting them, I handmade a trellis using bamboo poles and garden twine.

I also planted two more creeping verbenas (the two I already had are a deep purple; the new ones are one each in pale lavender and a medium purple), another lantana (‘Citrus,’ which I’ve never grown before [I don’t know if it’s a new cultivar] and which is a pale peachy-orange ringing a bright yellow, and looks lovely planted with the yellow African daisy, the white-with-yellow-centers bacopa, and the pastel stocks, as if it ties the two color themes together better), and twelve young annual ice plants in a mix of colors, ten of them ringing one corner of the garden, one more planted slightly off by the yellow African daisy, and the last one planted at the front retaining wall to provide a bit of consistency.  I think I might’ve planted a couple more things too, but I can’t remember.  I also found a young pea growing in the flower bed and, unsure if it was a sweet pea or a garden pea, transplanted it into the crop patch, off by itself, to see what it becomes.  I assume the ants did the redecorating, as usual.

The peas and fava/broad beans are doing really well.  More favas have blooms every day.  I still love their beautiful white blooms with black splotches; they have such character to me.  Yesterday I noticed the first pea bloom, a white one on one of the dwarf peas (I think it’s ‘De Grace’), and then realized that several of the tall pea plants had buds.  It looks like the rain and crisp air are encouraging them to open their blooms today. The runner beans, edamames (soy beans), and garbanzo bean hadn’t sprouted yet in my last thorough check yesterday, but the last three purple-podded beans have come up since my last update.  (Information on them is pasted below.)  As I’ve said before, how I love purple-podded beans!

Yesterday and today were/are ‘flower days’ in biodynamic growing parlance.  I mentioned what I did yesterday, and today I’m hoping to sow the zinnias, nasturtiums, marigolds, and morning glories.  Marigolds are the first plant I ever remember growing from seed, in window boxes at my bedroom as a child, and I still love their ease of growing from seed and their beautiful flowers, especially the single flowers that I grew up with (neither I nor the pollinators are overly fond of most floofy double marigolds).  Zinnias and nasturtiums are two more of the easiest flowers to grow from seed, and as I noted here last early summer, sowing them shortly before storms works very well as the storm soaks the seed, meaning you can skip the general recommendation of soaking them for 12-24 hours before planting (also a recommendation for morning glory seed).  It’s supposed to thunderstorm later this week (though we’ll see) so I’m hoping planting them today will mean they’ll be soaked shortly and then sprout in the hotter temperatures to come at week’s end.  Right now it’s frigid for this time of year; clocking in in the upper 40s F, it is colder than our average low temperature.  Lucky for ‘De Grace’ that it loves this kind of temperature (it’s supposed to be one of the hardiest garden peas, able to handle some frost well, though in fairness, I’ve found that many of the other heirloom peas are similar in this regard).

My neighborhood farmers’ market starts today, not the best day weather-wise for it, but I am still quite looking forward to perusing all the seedlings for sale, many often things that can’t be found at the local nursery and/or are not organic there.  (Most of the farms at my market are organic, be it in label or solely in practice, but most of the nusery’s suppliers are not.)  Usually the first two or three weeks are mostly plants with some produce, and then the ratio gradually flips until by midsummer there’s usually just one stand selling plants, a fairly new stand that was so unfriendly that I don’t remember them ever even saying hello to me even though I browsed for several minutes at least three different weeks, and the first time, would have probably bought a couple plants from them if I’d been able to find a staff member (that week, there didn’t even appear to be anyone manning the stand when I stopped by, and I wasn’t the only one seriously looking at the time).  Anyhow, the point is that I’m looking forward to seeing the staff again and to getting quality plants and tasty food!  Yay for farmers’ markets!

Royalty Purple Pod Bush. Purple bushes with short runners and purple flowers. Bright-purple stringless 5″-6″ pods cook to dark green. Buff colored seeds germinate in cold, wet soil. Bred by E.M. Meader at the University of New Hampshire and introduced in 1957. (freebie from Peaceful Valley; I strongly favor pole beans, and don’t grow many [sometimes any] bush beans)

Dean’s Purple 55. days. Vigorous, prolific, beautiful. [Family heirloom from Tennessee.] Supplied to us courtesy seedsavers Mark Schonbeck, Valerie Lyle and Dean Turley. Dean recieved the beans as a gift from a student whose family brought it to Frost Bottom, Tennessee when they settled there 150 years ago. Plants form a gorgeous purple and green screen loaded with vivid purple beans. Save both light and dark seedsfor the more tender purple pods and finer taste. Minimal bean beetle damage when other varieties were destroyed. (Southern Exposure Seed Exchange)

Purple Marconi Just in from Italy, a fabulous violet purple Italian pole bean. I was so pleased with these pole snap beans. Vigorous and growing on strong vines up to 8 feet, these are just too beautiful to eat! These were grown on a trellis but they got so big and strong we had to attach an “addition” onto the fence holding up the trellis. They are very ornamental and lovely. The “Purple Marconi Pole Beans” have flat 5-7 inch long pods that turn green when blanched, but the color can be maintained if steam blanched for under 2 minutes. These have a sweet but hearty taste, and are best picked young. Another edible ornamental for your garden, try them raw with crudites for their gorgeous color. Pretty early for a pole sort at 67 days to maturity. (Amishland Seeds)

Another day, another update 23 May 2009

I’m trying to be better about updating, so I’m trying to update at least every couple of days.  In that spirit, here is what’s going on in the garden today:

*After two days of heat (mid-90s F two days ago, around 90 F yesterday) and sunshine, the weather has drastically changed, and the temperature is cooler now, at midday, than it was when I went to bed last night (when it was in the mid-70s F).  It’s in the 50s F with a cool ocean breeze and it is thickly grey.  We have had a very dry May after a cool, wet early spring, and it was quite nice to feel a medium rain as I was walking home from the nursery, umbrella-less, this morning.  The rain didn’t last very long (maybe 10-15 minutes), but it continues to look as if it could start again at any moment.  I hope it does.  I continue to believe that no matter what watering devices and watering sources we humans come up with, there’s no substitute for actual real rain for plants.

*Speaking of the nursery:  While there today I got some more annuals –  flowers and coleus (I’ve been disappointed that their selection of herbs has remained pretty static in recent weeks, and am looking forward to the farmers’ market starting this coming week, when I will have new herb plants to choose from!) – and three crop plants, two of them heirloom tomatoes – one each of ‘Sioux’ and an Italian one – and a Japanese cucumber plant, which I think has ‘Kyoto’ in the name.  The potted cucumber actually has two seedlings growing in it instead of one.  We’ll see if they both survive.  ‘Sioux’ is supposed to do better in heat than most tomatoes (which I actually didn’t realize till I brought it home; I just liked the description when I was at the nursery), so I’m thinking of planting it in the front garden instead of in a pot.

*The ‘fruit days’ period (in biodynamic parlance) ends shortly today, so I went out after I got home and sowed a runner bean I was given yesterday, ‘Aztec Half Runner,’ which is supposed to be quite dwarf, about seven inches tall, as well as my edamame (as I discussed possibly doing in my last post) – soy beans ‘Lucky Lion,’ ‘Moon Cake,’ ‘Kouri,’ and ‘Tankuro’ – and the melons (‘Chanterais,’ ‘Hale’s Best Jumbo,’ and the rather dully named ‘Old Original’) and other cucumber, also a Japanese one (‘Soyu’).  I am, in fact, somewhat sensitive to cucumbers, and so I thought I would try growing the ones that we English speakers call ‘Japanese,’ which are supposed to have both a different chemical composition and a different taste than European cucumbers.  ‘Moon Cake’ is a bit of a mystery to me – it seems to barely be offered by any companies (if even that), and even the one that I ordered it from over the winter no longer lists it on their website!  It was just introduced earlier this decade, according to what I read this morning, and is supposed to be much taller than most edamames, averaging 5-6 feet.  My other three are all from Kitazawa Seed Co., one green seeded, one brown seeded, and one black seeded.  (See their descriptions pasted below.)  Green seeded soybeans are by far the most common ones in the US, perhaps because many catalogs erroneously list other seed colors as being only for dry beans (in reality, whether the beans can be eaten fresh has nothing to do with the color of the planted seed).

*The purple-podded beans have started to sprout, joining earliest bean ‘Arikara Yellow.’  So far, ‘Blue Coco,’ ‘Trionfo Violetto,’ and ‘Purple Podded’ are coming up.  (See descriptions pasted below.)  The runner beans have yet to show sprouts.

*I noticed while I was out sowing that the blueberries seem to have doubled in leaf numbers just since I mulched them with compost two days ago.

*The fava/broad beans are doing even better now that it’s cooled off.  They’ve increased their bloom count.  The ants are obsessed with wandering back and forth on them, like they always do.  I’ve never figured out why.  (There are certain other plants in the garden that they are also obsessed with – especially my autumn-blooming colchicums, but only when they’re in bloom.)

*Continuing my disappointment with Cook’s Garden (sure do wish I’d remembered Burpee’s had bought them out before I ordered), they just notified me yesterday that they were finally shipping my shallots.  It had been so long that I had actually forgotten I’d ordered shallots from them!  The notice piously said that they were shipping at the right time for me to plant them in my area, but it is well past the best time to plant shallots here.  Johnny’s Select Seed sent me their shallots a couple of months ago, and Moose Tubers (the root slips division of Fedco Co-Op) sent theirs a few weeks later.  (Both those are in Maine.  Cook’s Garden is farther away, in Pennsylvania.)  Well, hopefully they will be OK planted this coming week (they have yet to arrive), even though they should have been sent earlier.   My already-planted shallots appear to be doing well.

…

Soybean ‘Kouri’ Brown-seeded soybeans are uncommon in the United States. They are highly prized in Japan for their sweeter and nuttier flavor compared to the traditional green/tan seeded soybeans. Even though the seed for planting is brown, you will find the color of the bean dark green at harvest and it retains this color when cooked. The pod’s pubescence is light brown. The plant habit is semi-upright growing about 2 feet tall. Warm day temperatures and cool night temperatures are important for good results. This is an early maturing variety and seeds are sown from early May after danger of all frost to late June and harvested from late July to early September. Boil in salted water and bite or squeeze the beans from the pods directly into your mouth. Maturity: Approx. 85 days  (Kitazawa Seed Co.)

Soybean ‘Tankuro’ In Japan, the black-seeded soybeans are noted as having a richer and sweeter flavor compared to the traditional green/tan seeded soybeans. Even though the seed for planting is black, you will find the color of the bean dark green at harvest and it retains this color when cooked. The pod’s pubescence is light brown. The plant habit is semi-upright growing up to 2½ feet tall. Warm day temperatures and cool night temperatures are important for good results. This is an early maturing variety and seeds are sown from late April after danger of all frost to early June and harvested from mid July to late August. Boil pods in salted water and bite or squeeze the beans from the pods directly into your mouth. Enjoy! Maturity: Approx. 85 days  (Kitazawa Seed Co.)

Soybean ‘Lucky Lion’ This variety of soybean is prized for its high yield and excellent nutty flavor. There are typically 3 beans per each bright green pod. This is a mid-early maturing type variety, indeterminate type and grows about 2 feet tall. Warm day temperatures and cool night temperatures are important for good results. Prepare as an appetizer by boiling pods in salted water and serve cooked beans or “edamame.” Maturity: Approx. 75 days (Kitazawa Seed Co.)

Pole Bean ‘Trionfo Violetto’ Purple climbing French type bean. 75 days. Beautiful bean, long, slim and very crisp. Makes a stunning fresh bean salad when mixed with one of our green and yellow french beans. Turns green when cooked. Like most French type beans, should be picked when no thicker than a pencil for greatest tenderness and best flavor.  (imported from an Italian seed company)

Pole Bean ‘Blue Coco’ 59 days. Distinctive flavor and color. [Pre-1775 French heirloom.] The name ‘Blue Coco’ refers to the bluish-purple color of the pods and the chocolate (coco) color of the seeds. Leaves are green, tinged with purple. The fleshy, slightly curved flattened pods range from 6 to 7-1/2 in. long, and have a nice meaty flavor. Outstanding characteristics of this variety are color and ability to produce under hot, dry conditions. (Southern Exposure Seed Exchange)  I love ‘Blue Coco’ so much that here is a second description about it to entice you: Blue Coco (pre-1775) – Also known as Purple Pod and Blue Podded Pole. One of the oldest of the purple podded pole varieties, this rare variety was known in France as early as 1775. The young pods are delicious harvested young as snap beans and the beige to “coco” colored seeds have a meaty texture when used as a dry bean. The coloration of the dry seed varies with soil and climate. It is very durable and excellent for short season climates because it is quite early for a pole bean and is also very tolerant of adverse conditions. (60 days for snaps) Pole. EXTREMELY RARE. (pasted from Heritage Harvest Seeds in the UK)

Pole Bean ‘Purple Podded Pole’ This is a heavenly, almost fluorescent purple pole bean, hailing from the Ozark mountains. This lovely heirloom beauty was found growing in a garden the 1930’s by the old Henry Fields Seed Company. It is most likely of European origin and probably dating much earlier than that . Very vigorous grower of vines reaching easily over 6 -8 feet , but not out of control like some pole types I have grown. […] These gorgeous snap beans are stringless, nice and meaty . They are less than 1/2 inch across by about 5-7 inches long. The entire bean plant just glows and is quite ornamental with purple vines and veins in the leaves, and as you can see in the photo lovely bi-colored purple flowers as well. Fairly early for a pole sort. Seed is a buff brown color, with a hint of lavender.  (Amishland Seeds)

‘Why do you grow so many legumes?’ 24 March 2009

Friends are often curious as to why I devote such a large percentage of my growing space to legumes, and I thought that perhaps my readers are as well.   I have been thinking about it this week because I read a blog post by a fellow vegetarian who said that she deliberately devotes about 25% of her crop plot to legumes because they are such a great protein source for vegetarians (or for anyone, frankly).  For me, that’s definitely part of it.  I love the protein boost they give me, and I love their taste as well.  And the taste thing pinpoints something else – I love the tremendous amount of variety amongst them, both between and within each species. I think of legumes as akin to the tulips of the flower world:  Because there’s such tremendous, nearly ridiculous, variety, there’s one out there that almost everybody will like.  But with them, it’s not just their looks but their taste.  Wander through a patch of peas or garden beans and you’ll see what I mean.  The amount of difference in taste, texture, and uses even amongst different garden beans is simply astounding.  Additionally, they are such pretty plants.  There’s a reason that many catalogs carry hyacinth beans and scarlet runner beans in the ‘ornamental’ section.  But they are far from the only beautiful legumes!

The tremendous variety also means that it’s quite easy to find a seed variety in a catalog or shop that is difficult or impossible to find in your own locale, at least here in the legume-boring US.  My own farmers’ market typically only carries the following legumes:

• One cultivar each snap pea, snow pea, and shelling pea in early summer.  Most stands only carry the snap pea and it seems to have the same taste from every stand.  (They all carry the same cultivar of leek, so it very well may be just one cultivar)
• Pea shoots from the Hmong farmers’ stand in early summer (pea shoots are more common fare in Asian cuisines)
• One cultivar semi-snap/semi-shelling bean from midsummer to early autumn (it looks similar to Dragon Langerie but I don’t know if it actually is) at one stand
• Two to three cultivars wax bean, usually green and yellow, but some years/weeks also purple – from midsummer to early autumn.  One to three stands depending on the week.
• In 2007 one stand had edamame for one week.  In 2008 another had fava/broad beans for two weeks.  But that was it.

There are no Roma type beans, no runner beans or other non-garden-bean species, no dry beans, no unusual peas, no cowpeas, you get the idea.  Even in stores here, I usually have to go to a so-called “ethnic” store or “ethnic” section to find more than a meager selection of beans (and any lentils or cowpeas at all).  Most “mainstream” stores just have kidney beans, a white bean (usually butter beans or cannelini beans), pinto beans, black beans, and chick peas, and often not even that full assortment.  My Spanish-language tutor has talked about how jarring it was when he moved to the US and couldn’t find much of a selection of frijoles (beans) in stores any more.

So, to me, many yellow onions (for example) taste pretty similar from one to another, but two different garden bean cultivars can look and taste dramatically different and have very different best uses in the kitchen (not to even get into other species of legume), so it is worth the garden space in my urban garden to grow a wide range of them.   I believe that diets benefit as much from biodiversity as gardens/farms do, so hopefully my nutrition is the richer for my wide legume devotion; I know that my garden experiences, at the very least, are.

Garden plans for 2009 (part 1): Crops 23 January 2009

[Written over several days]

In my last two posts, I’ve done a retrospective of the past growing season’s successes and failures.  I’ve interspersed some thoughts on things I’m going to continue doing next year and others I’m planning to change.  In this post I’m going to talk more about my plans for the garden for 2009.

Crop Plans for 2009

• Beans, beans, beans – As you likely already know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time or have ever visited one of my gardens, I LOVE growing beans.  (And beans love me!  Garden beans thrive under my care, often growing to three times the size each cultivar’s vines supposedly reach.)  Every year I try at least a few new-to-me cultivars and/or species to see how they do and this year will be no different.  I’ve already ordered some more beans in my first seed orders of 2009 and plan to order a few more cultivars.  I’m also going to try at least one different cultivar of lima to give myself one last shot at growing limas here, and since my cowpeas did poorly this year I’m going to try new ones next year as well.  Plus I am planning to grow yard-long/asparagus beans for the first time, specifically ‘Red Chinese Noodle’ and the descriptively titled ‘Green Pod Red Seed.’ I am also going to give soybeans one last go, this time growing one of the same cultivars as before and switching the other to a new-to-me cultivar (‘Moon Cake’).  I think the soybeans had the same problem as the limas in being shaded out too much too fast.  I’m hoping better placement will help them this year.  I also need to make sure they have more consistent water when they’re flowering and podding up on the dry, hot site (I just read this winter that they don’t set pods as well with inconsistent or insufficient water).  Lastly, I am considering growing tepary beans this year, which I haven’t grown for a while.   I would need to grow them away from the soybeans, as these desert beans have the opposite issue – too much water results in lots of foliage and few beans!
• Tomatillos – I have this grand plan to try tomatillos this year.  We’ll see how it actually works out!   I want to try the standard (and rather dully titled if one knows Spanish) ‘Toma Verde’ as well as a purple cultivar (probably ‘Purple de Milpa’) and probably a third for balance, to round out the experiment.  I have yet to decide whether I’m going to try them by the bean patch, in pots, or both to see which does better.   I last grew tomatillos several years ago, a single plant that didn’t produce until very late in the season but grew quite tall in the meantime (taller than my tomato plants that year) and then produced an incredible amount of flowers when it did finally start.  Unfortunately an unusually early frost killed it before the flowers could turn into very much fruit.
• Cherry tomatoes – I used to regularly grow cherry tomatoes in my old, more spoilt garden.  In 2007 I grew unknown-cultivar cherry tomatoes that were given to me by a friend whose cherry tomatoes regularly self-seed in his local garden.  I had varying success with the plants growing them in pots in the semi-shady back yard.  (Since the sunnier front yard is on a very busy road, I don’t like to place pots in it.)  This time I’d like to grow named cultivars.  I’m especially interested in growing ‘Gardener’s Delight’ AKA ‘Sugar Lump,’ which I grew in my old garden, as well as a few other interesting cultivars from Bountiful Gardens (most especially ‘Isis Candy’ and ‘Chadwick’s Cherry’) and possibly a grape, pear, or wild cherry tomato too.   [Note: It’s so easy to get a fairly good variety of heirloom regular-sized tomatoes at the farmers’ market here that I’m still not sure it’s worth the large space and effort to grow my own until I am in a larger-sized garden (wherever that may be).  My old garden had a few cultivars for a couple years but they tended to not be the greatest-performing tomato plants ever and I ended up buying more from the market than I was able to harvest from my own garden anyhow.  I remember growing ‘Silvery Fir Tree’ – which actually did quite well in a large pot on the sunny, hot (roofless) back porch – as well as in-the-ground ‘Paul Robeson’ and ‘Green Zebra.’ I know there were more but I can’t remember the cultivars right now.]
• Root crops! – This is one of my biggest changes planned for the 2009 garden so we’ll see how it goes.  I am planning to do an experiment whereby I try growing root crops in large pots.  I have yet to decide if I’m going to also try them in the bean patch, which has been amended with heaps of compost but still has what I’d charitably call “questionable soil.”  I still regularly find shards of broken glass, rusty nails, bottle caps, etc. in addition to the millions of rocks and pieces of asphlat/concrete/etc that appear to be buried in the garden.  (The front garden’s border was made entirely of large rocks I dug up and I still have many left over.)  I am less hesitant to harvest plants that produce distinct products – like beans – because many studies have shown that the plant itself tends to hold most to all of the toxins from the soil while the produce has little or none.  Anyway, my plans for this vascillate between only pursuing simple plants like radishes and small carrots and trying more elaborate – and harder to find here – things like parsnips and salsify.  The latter would likely have to be grown in half-barrel planters.  I’d really like to try growing the latter types to see what happens, but am not sure how practical nor realistic it is.
• Greens – Every year here I mean to grow greens in pots and both years so far I haven’t actually gotten around to doing it.  I loved growing greens in my old garden, which was full of beautiful heirloom lettuces, mache/corn salad, Siberian kale (that once stood from February to the following January), and so on.  This year I keep swearing to myself that I’m actually going to do it.  Here’s hoping!
• Okra – I’m not quite giving up on okra yet.  Last year the farms at the market here had the best crop I’ve ever seen at local markets, so if only my plants had survived their childhoods I think they would have done well.  I’m planning to try different cultivars than last time, and also to place them in different spots than before.  I’m also planning to try to grow supposed dwarf cultivars this year (though keep in mind that some regular okras top 10 feet, so “dwarf” is relative here) to see if that helps both in their growing to adulthood and in their producing better in my climate, as the dwarf ones in seed listings often have earlier production times than the non-dwarf.  Last year it took them so long to sprout and die that it was risky replanting a new crop that late.  This year I’m considering two other strategies to help with that – one being the different placement I already mentioned and the other being the possibility of starting them early indoors, something I’ve not tried before.  I’m planning to try ‘Burgundy’ again and try the new-to-me ‘Choppee’ from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
• Eggplant – OK, I didn’t actually mean to grow eggplant this year.  I’ve tried growing eggplant before under better conditions and it didn’t really do well for me that year (I haven’t tried it again, yet).  I don’t know why since it’s in the same family as tomatoes and tomatillos and those did great that year.  However, I was looking through a new-to-me site, Amishland Heirloom Seeds (which I clicked through to because I was looking for a domestic source for the rare ‘Blue Pod/Blue Podded’ pea, AKA ‘Capucijners’ and ‘Pois a Crosse Violette’), and I saw this one eggplant offered that I couldn’t even imagine what it would taste like and couldn’t imagine ever finding it in any market here (‘Udmalbet,’ from India).  And so, before you knew it, I had clicked through and purchased it.  This is one of the biggest dangers of the internet for gardeners:  Seeds from all over the world, imported to your country, literally right at your fingertips, just a click away from no longer being out of reach.
• Chiles – As I mentioned recently, I’m looking to start growing chiles again this year.  I grew some in my old garden and then this past year I grew ornamental chiles starting in late summer (when they became available at my local nursery).  As I mentioned here last year, they did better than I expected them to once I replanted them in the hottest spot in the garden, the corner where the two retaining walls meet in the front garden.  They did so well that the leaves kept going through light frosts (despite some pretty impressive slug damage thanks to our wet summer) and one of the plants survived till a pretty hard frost.  The chiles themselves stayed on the plant until snow withered them.  Since I last mentioned it, I ordered a few chiles from Amishland Heirloom Seeds (‘Royal Black,’ ‘Tennessee Cheese,’ and ‘Amish Pimiento’).  I’m looking to order one or two more from Native Seeds/SEARCH, focusing on Southwestern chiles, particularly New Mexican green chiles.
• Slow-bolt cilantro – I tend to use cilantro a lot in my summertime cooking, so I’m going to try once again to grow it this year.  Last year my in situ sowing resulted in a whopping zero actual plants, so I’m considering starting them indoors this time.   I’m also looking into other slow-bolting cultivars (besides the one I tried last year).
• Slow-bolt parsley – Similarly, I am looking for a slowly bolting flat-leaved parsley cultivar.  I enjoyed the flowers and harvesting the seeds last year, and was impressed with how long the parsleys stood after they bolted, but I’d like to complement that with a parsley that I can continue to harvest from over the summertime.  We’ll see how that works.  I’ll probably try to start at least some of those seeds indoors this time as well, as none of my in situ parsley sowings resulted in actual plants either.
• Sweet marjoram – Last year my sweet marjoram suffered terribly in the growing shade of the bean plants.  I’d like to try it again in a new location and see if it does better.  I need to balance keeping it in the most compost-enriched area with giving it enough sunlight to thrive.
• Alpine strawberries – The ones I planted from plants have done great in the back garden over the past two years (and the strawberry-thieving squirrels sure appreciate the steady supply of fruit).  I’m going to try growing out more plants from seeds this year.   I ordered ‘Red Wonder’ and ‘Yellow Wonder’ from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Upcoming posts: Flower plans for 2009 and a general post.

Gardening year retrospective, part 2 16 January 2009

Here are more thoughts on the past year’s growing season.

Biggest Flower Successes

• Clarkia – As I said here last summer, I was astonished at how well the clarkia did this year.  I was used to clarkia growing in partial shade in moist soil in a sheltered location.  I seeded them into the front garden as an experiment, curious as to what would happen.  I was astonished at the extremely high germination rate – one of the highest of any seeds I’ve ever sowed in this garden – and the long, beautiful bloom time.  The plants were shorter than in my old garden, but they were tough as nails and lasted a long time and stuck their little flowers out of every crevice that seeds had fallen.  I will most definitely be seeding them in again this coming year, and am planning to look for more varieties (almost every clarkia seed pack I’ve ever seen, if not every one, is a mix of at least two colors though, usually more).  Annual here.
• Patrinia – Patrinia was a real star of the garden this year.  Tall and graceful, with a very  long bloom time and flowers that attracted scores of pollinators and predator insects, the plants also served as a living trellis for a Japanese morning glory and one of the cardinal vines.  Perennial here.
• Cardinal vine – Speaking of cardinal vine, these did amazingly this year!  The leaves were quite interesting in the lengthy lead up to the flowering time, and when they finally did flower starting fairly late in the season (I’m guessing they are day length sensitive, though not positive), the blooms were amazingly beautiful.  Even the leaves that had been frost damaged provided a beautiful contrast to the leaves that were still green as the season wound down.  This was my first time growing them, but it won’t be my last – I am most definitely growing these again!  Annual here.
• Sweet peas! – This was my best year for sweet peas in years.  I specifically picked heat-resistant varieties and it made a huge difference.  I was astonished at how long they held up under incredibly adverse conditions, the kind of conditions I imagine as sweet pea hell – blistering heat, strong winds, regular dry soil.  Annual.
• Rudbeckia ‘Indian Summer’ – This was my first year growing this cultivar, annual but reputed to be a good self-seeder.  I got it in an approximately 2″ x 2″ x 2″ pot from the farmers’ market.  It did spectacularly, flowering till hard frost.  And birds loved the seeds!  They started eating them while the plant was still flowering.   Annual here.
• Echinaceas! – The echinaceas had a brilliant year, flowering wonderfully and producing huge luscious seedheads.  Like with rudbeckia ‘Indian Summer,’ birds loved the seeds too.   Perennial here.
• Sunflower ‘Vanilla Ice’ – I’m guessing whomever named this doesn’t know much about 80s pop music.  Regardless, this was the one sunflower that did stupendously for me this year.  I got it as a young plant from a gardening acquaintance and it was the one sunflower from her to thrive despite the shock of transplanting (which sunflowers hate) and it bloomed early and often till late summer, when it abruptly stopped (which is apparently common for cucumber-leaved sunflowers).  It was my first experience growing a cucumber-leaved type of sunflower and I enjoyed it so that I am planning to expand their presence in my garden next year.  I have also read this winter that birds will choose their seeds first.  I’m sure the fact that their seeds are produced earliest of the annual sunflowers helps in that regard.   Annual.
• Fall-blooming crocus and colchicum – Each year I add more and each year the display just gets better and better.  When the snowpack melted at the end of December 2008 the last few fall-blooming crocuses were still blooming away underneath!  Perennial here.

Garden Failures of 2008

• Bean ‘Yellow Arikara’ – I said at the time I planted these that I thought I was planting them too late and I was right.  They did abysmally.  This year I am definitely planting them earlier, before the last frost at the very latest.   This type of bean was grown by the Arikara Dakotas according to Monticello (where I got my seeds) and were valuable as the earliest bean.   Lewis and Clark got them on their trip West.  Monticello’s seed store has a page of information on them.  I am still very interested in succeeding with these and I am going to give it another go this spring.
• Okra! – As you likely know if you have been reading this blog for a while, my okra planting was another abysmal failure this year.  Most of the okra seeds (I tried two cultivars this year) did not germinate; the ones that did took a while; and of the five seeds that did germinate, two were snapped off at the bottom of the stem by birds and three others died in infancy for no apparent reason.  Okra is such a gorgeous plant – you can see its relation to hibiscus in its flowers – that many adventurous garden writers recommend growing it ornamentally even if you don’t have any interest in harvesting okra.  I am planning to try okra again this year despite last year’s severe problems, though I think I will try different cultivars this time.
• Lima beans – In my years gardening in Boston I have never once had a good lima bean year and I am close to giving up on growing them in this climate.  This year I didn’t see a single lima bean pod even though several plants sprouted and grew a decent amount.  I think part of my problem this time was that the garden beans and hyacinth beans grew faster than the lima beans, shading them out and possibly causing them to decline in health.  I have a few different ideas for how to change this.  One is to plant cultivars that grow taller; another is to plant cultivars that produce faster; a third is to change where I plant them so that they won’t be shaded even if the others grow faster.  I haven’t definitely decided what to do.
• Garden peas – Like with the bean “Yellow Arikara,” I simply planted my peas too late this year.  As a result I only got a small crop before the heat made them stop producing and then killed them.  I just need to get them in earlier next year.  I’m also considering trying at least one cultivar that’s reputed to be heat tolerant after having such success with heat tolerant/resistant sweet peas in the past growing season.
• In situ zinnia sowing – Like with some other things on the list, my timing was just off.  They turned into robust plants that produced lots of foliage and some buds but were damaged by frost before they could ever actually bloom.  As above, I just need to be more together about timing in the coming year.  (The zinnias put in as seedlings did just fine.)
• Annual scabiosa – These did well planted as young plants from the farmers’ market last year, but the market didn’t sell them this year, so I sowed seeds myself.  As far as I could tell, not one so much as germinated.  No idea what happened here.
• Rudbeckia ‘Toto Rustic’ – These annual rudbeckias did great in 2007 but they were felled quickly in 2008.  Powdery mildew quickly overtook them and they never recovered.  I think planting them too late (I got them as seedlings from the farmers’ market) this year was part of it – our summer came on fast and hot, which caused trouble for many plants – and I also read this year that inconsistent water or too little water can cause powdery mildew in young rudbeckias.  Not sure I will bother trying these next year since ‘Indian Summer’ did so well without as much coddling.  (It even survived having powdery mildew, unlike the ‘Toto Rustic’s.)
• Sunflowers other than ‘Vanilla Ice’ – The rest of my intentionally planted sunflowers (all the common annual sunflower rather than ‘Vanilla Ice”s cucumber-leaved species) did much worse this year than last year.  No idea why. The only other sunflowers to do decently were planted by the birds and bloomed late in the season, one classic yellow flower per plant.
• Chervil – This bolted nearly as soon as I planted it and the seeds didn’t produce any more plants during the same growing season.  I think I planted it too late in the growing season and the stress on the cool-prefering plant was just too much for it to bear.

Next post: Plans for 2009.

The garden in the new year 15 January 2009

Happy 2009, everyone!  I am sorry I am so tardy at producing another update.  Life has been busy and I have also been sick.  I am feeling better now and am in the process of planning out my 2009 garden, as I enjoy the opening of the first indoor bulbs of winter.  My amaryllis ‘Vera’ has opened its first three blooms and my gift amaryllis ‘Ferrari’ has been in the process of opening its first three blooms all at once.  ‘Ferrari’ is, so far, a darker and sheener red than I was expecting; I’m finding it a rather mesmerizing color.  The other new amaryllis I bought myself, ‘Red Lion,’ is behind the other two.  The three amaryllises I oversummered have yet to develop buds, and the paperwhites I oversummered aren’t doing much at all.  My new pot of paperwhites – labelled ‘Chinese sacred lily’ – has leaves so far but has yet to bud up.

In preparing my plans for next outdoor growing season, I’ve been taking stock of what worked and what didn’t.  Here are some of the things that worked well and I am planning to repeat:

Biggest Crop Successes

• Bean ‘Caseknife’ – My star garden bean this year was the quite old heirloom ‘Caseknife,’ which started producing surprisingly soon after planting given its large pod size and kept on going through light frosts, though the beans did get weaker (smaller, a bit floppy) after the first frosts.  I got my seeds from Monticello’s online seed shop.  You can read about the cultivar over there.  As anyone who’s ever seen any garden of mine probably knows, I love growing beans and usually plant several cultivars and see how they each do, so I’m certainly planning to grow other cultivars this coming year as well.  (More on that later.)
• Scarlet Runner Bean ‘Dwarf Bees’ – I’m not sure if it was the faster maturing time, the fact that I planted it earlier this year, or what, but ‘Dwarf Bees’ did better than the straight species had done the year before.  I’m planning to plant ‘Dwarf Bees’ again, but I’m planning to re-add the straight species and also to add another scarlet runner bean cultivar ‘Painted Lady’ and see how all three do if they’re all planted as early as ‘Dwarf Bees’ was this year.  I got my ‘Dwarf Bees’ seed from Bountiful Gardens.  (I did stake my ‘Dwarf Bees’ and it seemed the better for it, but remember that I have a very windy site.  I imagine it would be fine without staking in a normal garden.)
• Hyacinth beans! – The hyacinth beans were gorgeous and productive.  I planted the straight species (I think I got the seed from Monticello but not positive) and ‘Ruby Moon’ which is a cultivar from Renee’s Garden Seeds (she lists it as an ornamental but hyacinth beans are edible; read more about ‘Ruby Moon’ at her site).  This was my most productive year ever for hyacinth beans.  They sprouted later than the other beans despite being planted at the same time, and then took some time to catch up to the others before outgrowing them in size, so I’m guessing that they prefer a warmer soil.  However, they did not rot before sprouting, so I’m planning to plant them at the same time next year.
• Winter savory – The winter savory did great this year and is in fact still sticking out of the snow in the garden, leaves still on and everything.
• Lavender – No surprise here as lavender has always generally done well on the hot, poor soil, windy sloped site.  Ones that are planted early in the season seem to do better than ones planted later, so I will try harder to get any new ones in fast this year.  Like the winter savory, the perennial lavenders’ leaves are still on and sticking out of the snow.
• Flat-leaved parsley – In complete opposition to the lavender, I was astonished at how well the parsleys, which supposedly prefer some coddling, did on such an adverse site.  They bolted after not too long – the first one by early summer, the second by midsummer (I planted them in spring – probably April?) – but they quite literally kept on flowering and producing seeds till a very hard frost killed them.  The flowers brought TONS of insects to the front garden and the fact that they kept on flowering meant that I had a steady supply of seeds to harvest for eating and seed saving.  I only planted them as an experiment, sure that as soon as the site developed into its searing hot summertime temperatures with blistering southwest winds, the parsleys would be felled and I’d have to replant for autumn.  But my experiment instead ended up showing again how much gardeners can learn when they ignore “common wisdom” and try something different.

Still to come

• Flower successes
• Garden failures and missteps
• Plans for next year – both general plans and some of the specific new cultivars & crops & such that I am planning to try

I hope to write an entry on the rest of these subjects soon.  Hope your 2009 is off to a great start!

Cover crops / Photos 22 November 2008

A couple months ago, I abruptly realized that I had wanted to sow cover crops this autumn but hadn’t ordered any.  Unfortunately, my poor planning meant that by the time I ordered them, Bountiful Gardens’ shipping was temporarily suspended due to being in the process of moving buildings, so I didn’t get my cover crop seed packets till just about a month ago.  Combined with the fact that we’ve had a fairly cool autumn and an incredibly cool past week, I’m not sure any of them are going to make it.  Here are the pictures I took of some of the seed packets just before I sowed cover crops almost exactly one month ago.

Seed packet of mixed cover crops

Seed packet of cover crop favas

Seed packet of clover cover crop

Please note that favas are not hardy in my climate.  I am saving the fava seeds to sow in earliest spring, “as soon as the soil can be worked” as books/packets always put it.

Here are a few pictures from around the same time as the above ones:

Patrinia seedheads with Japanese morning glory and cardinal vine

Nasturtium and ornamental peppers

Centaurea Colchester White, a bit wilty in the cold wind but still going

Beans forming: Some of the last of the season. By the time of this writing, the bean vines are dead.

Caryopteris, still blooming on 25 Oct 2008: I bought this at the end-of-year sale at the nursery. It bloomed through light frosts.

The fickle fingers of frost: A mix of frost damaged and healthy cardinal vine leaves.

New York ironweed seedheads

Ironweed and Maximilian sunflower seedheads. I recommend clicking through for the full sized version of this photo.

Healthy buds and leaves of cardinal vine: an undamaged portion of one of the three cardinal vines. Anise hyssop seed head and white zinnia flowers in the background.

Fall-blooming crocuses (with nasturtium leaves)

Nasturtiums and Beans 27 August 2008

There’s been no rain for a while now, this summer’s pattern of “feast or famine” continuing unabated.  After the last bout of soaking rain, the first nasturtiums finally bloomed.  For those of you that found this page through a search engine or tag, I seeded nasturtiums in myself, late, this year, and they didn’t start growing till partway through the summer.   I have photos of the blooms on my camera’s now-full memory card (which I’m hoping to upload to my computer tomorrow) but for now, let me tell you what they are:

• Nasturtium ‘Moonlight’ (fairly widely available)
• Nasturtium ‘Copper Sunset’ from Renee’s Garden Seeds
• Nasturtium ‘Golden King’ from Select Seeds

By the way, as I type this, Select Seeds is having a sale on nasturtium seeds.  Just in case you want to stock up for next year (assuming you’re in a climate as cold as mine; in a warmer one, you could probably sow them tomorrow).

The beans were doing quite well when I left on my vacation a month ago, as I think I said here at the time.  By the time I got back, the relentless rainy, cloudy days had severely limited bean production (perhaps just because pollinators are so much less likely to fly in storms).  By now, after over a week of no rain and a majority of sunny days, bean production has really picked up.  The heirloom shelling bean ‘Caseknife’ has been my stellar performer lately, and it is quite an aptly named bean.

More within the next couple days.

Plants go in, new plants come 12 July 2008

So typical of gardeners, today I went to the nursery, ideas in my mind of new plants to add to the improvements I just made with yesterday’s plantings, and curious as to what was there in the week since I’d last stopped in (and just looked, not bought) – and of course ended up finding new plants to bring back with me.  The front border is so full now that there’s not really much room left for large-pot plants, just on the back and one side (the other two edges are the hard edges of the retaining wall).  I’ve got an idea in my head to make a second, much smaller border against the house perhaps with hostas and astilbles (that area is both shady and hot, a difficult combination, though I’m not sure if it’s as windy as the rest of the garden), but that’s just a fragment in my head so far.  It would be bordered with rocks dug up from the garden like the current front bed and I generally think it would make a nice complement, and better unify the garden and the house, but it would mean almost all the grass in front would be gone then and I don’t know whether my landlord would really like that, and it would also leave a narrower path to the back yard, increasing the likelihood that people other than me would unintentionally damage plants near the path.

Anyhow, my original point was that the size limits matter more at this time of year because there are so many fewer plants in smaller pots at the nursery.  I ended up getting some more annuals (a number of the ever-shrinking tiny section of small-potted annuals; almost all the remaining annuals at the nursery are in big clumps in big pots) and two more herbs, a third catnip – this one just the straight species rather than the two ornmanetal cultivars I’d already planted, one last year and one this year – and oregano ‘Hopley’s Purple’.  Both of the herbs were in full bloom and the catnip was being wildly attacked by hungry pollinators, whereas the ‘Hopley’s Purple’ was just so pretty to me (looking at my garden, anyone can easily see my weakness for flowers in purpley hues).  Don’t listen to sources that say ‘Hopley’s Purple’ is hardy to my USDA zone or above; I’ve read from reliable sources that it’s only hardy to around USDA zone 7, dying if temperatures dip near zero.  Despite this fact, it blooms from early or mid-summer into the autumn, huge clusters of beautiful tiny purple flowers on deeper purple stems, with tiny leaves brushed with purple until they age, and it’s a lovely addition to a decorative herb garden. This brings my oregano total to six:  hardy marjoram (really an oregano), Greek oregano, sweet marjoram (a tender herb in the oregano genus), ‘Hopley’s Purple’, and the two ornamental oreganos I planted yesterday, ‘Amethyst Falls’ and cascading oregano.  (Despite being called Cuban oregano, my Cuban oregano is neither an oregano nor originally from Cuba.)

The largest potted thing I got was an agapanthus, which according to the tag blooms longer than other agapanthus.  It’s got beautiful white clusters of bloom (I believe it is ‘White Ice’).  Though it’s quite pretty, the reason I really got it was because it was wildly popular with pollinators, the most popular thing in an entire aisle of annuals.  It was so popular as I set it down upon reaching home, a flower fly was already hovering, waiting for it to stabilize so the flower fly could start eating.  I’ve never grown them before (they aren’t hardy here) and after reading about their super thick root system at this page I am thinking it might be good to place in in the sparse, especially windy, especially erosion proof section at the edge of the front garden.  Hopefully the page is right about how even gales can’t topple their bloom stalks, because that section of the garden sure does get some gales.

One of the pea plants has died and a second one is dying.  It looks like the fava/broad beans might have dropped some of their beans but there are some that are getting close to picking size (finally).  In what seems like overnight, the filet beans have gone from half-inch baby beans to near picking size.  I planted a Renee’s Garden Seeds mix I bought last year but didn’t grow, the ‘French Duet’ mix, which consists of yellow filet bean ‘Ramdor’ and green filet bean ‘Emerite’, which Renee’s says they get from a French seed house. I’ve not grown them before and so far ‘Emerite’ has been doing very well; it’s got a lot of developing beans on it.  If ‘Ramdor’ has any, I haven’t seen them yet, but the bean plot is kind of, well, messy. Between the garden beans, lima beans, akira beans (though they prefer cooler weather and I planted them late enough that I suspect they will die before producing) runner beans, garden peas, sweet peas (planted at the edge of the patch), hyacinth beans, and extra stakes to help keep the fava/broad beans and soybeans from toppling in the wind – there are easily thirty-five stakes in the patch!

Speaking of the sweet peas, I eat my words:  A second bloom appeared today, the rich pink of a summer sunset, edged with pure white.  The pewter blue bloom from yesterday is still there, and it’s visually the same height and about an inch over, so they look pretty interesting together.  It looks like each plant has one or two more buds already formed, but I don’t see buds on any other pea plants, be they sweet or garden.  Whether it’s dry or muggy, most days now it’s at least eighty, sometimes feeling like it’s about a hundred, and that’s just too hot for peas to generally really do very much. (And the front garden always, always feels hotter than the back, since it’s got a concrete retaining wall and is by a sidewalk and a road.)   I’m growing scarlet runner bean again, but this time I’m growing a different cultivar, ‘Dwarf Bees’, and it’s been blooming every day now for several days.  Hopefully it will keep up till frost as supposedly happens with this cultivar.  I’m pleased with this one; last year it took the other cultivar significantly longer to flower, though in fairness, I hadn’t added as much compost to the bean patch and there  weren’t as many other robust plants in the bed to help break the wind and cool off the roots.

The first two hollyhock blooms finally opened overnight after weeks of buds. They’re on one of the fig-leaf hollyhocks (which are supposed to be much more rust-resistant than the standard hollyhocks).  They are a rich magenta, deeper of hue at the center than edges, and are ruffled around the edges.  I never knew you could eat mallow family flowers and leaves (though presumably not EVERY mallow family member) until I met someone who’d lived in Cyprus for several years and said young mallow leaves are eaten as a vegetable there and the flowers are sometimes used for, say, holding dips at parties.   I’ve noticed that a lot of plants adapt to life in a windy site.  My perennial garden phlox, for example, are shorter than most of the other gardens’ phlox around here.  So far this is true of the hollyhocks as well (although they were planted last year, this is their first year blooming/budding); they often reached six feet in my old garden, and so far in this one the tallest is only about three feet tall.

Some recent photos 24 June 2008

I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to post any of the promised photos.  My computer and my camera have been having abrupt issues communicating and I’ve only been able to upload some of the photos so far.  Here are a random selection of a few of the uploaded ones.

Rudbeckia ‘Toto’ and dill (the latter grown from seed)

On the right is one of a copious number of lavender buds.  I wish I could share some big impressive trick about the dill, but really all I’ve ever done with dill is just take a handful of seeds and broadcast them in a general area, and then repeat it a couple times if I want to seed it in various places.  This rudbeckia was one I got at the farmers’ market this year.  It has done the best out of the six ‘Toto’s; some of them seem to have totally died.  Let this be a stark reminder to you that if you purchase rudbeckia after it’s already warm out, plant it promptly and keep it well-watered while it’s settling in.  Rudbeckias, especially the cultivars that tend to be grown as annuals, don’t react well to stress, and in particular, have a habit of reacting to hot, dry weather by developing mildew on their leaves.  Not only is it not pretty, but if the plants are still small, just a day or three is enough time for it to spread enough to kill them.  (And I even watered them more often than other plants, moreso after they developed mildew; apparently it still wasn’t enough.)  At least my ‘Toto’ tragedy has led me to be more vigilant of the ‘Indian Summer’ rudbeckias (also purchased at the market) and they’ve all survived so far.

Dianthus ‘Inchmery’ blooms with pansy blooms

California poppy foliage on the left; agastache ‘Acapulco Orange’ foliage on the right.

Lima beans and garden beans with lemon verbena

The limas (a bush variety, I think ‘Henderson’s Bush’ but I can’t remember for sure right now) are on the bottom of the photo, the leaves with the rounded dip in them.  The garden beans (vining kinds; I’ve always primarily grown garden bean varieties that are either pole beans or vine well enough to grow on poles) are the leaves that look somewhat similar but are less rounded in appearance, to the left and above the limas in this photo.  The lemon verbena is flopping around in this shot.  This year’s lemon verbena has had a lot of trouble staying horizontal.  I’ve tried putting a stake in the middle of it and it still seems to flop over even with the stake there.  I suspect it’s because last year I bought one that was leggier and that seems to have actually made it adapt better to a windy site than the one I got this year, which was shrubbier (more like lemon verbena’s natural form).  On the far right are some leaves and a bloom stalk of the sea holly, which develops new buds every single day but still hasn’t opened any of them.

One of my many beloved salpiglossis plants (center), backed by pansies, violas, a ‘Tangerine Gem’ marigold, and a California poppy:

The salpiglossis (AKA painted tongue) pictured here was the first to bloom; these were its first blooms.

Pansies and creeping snapdragons:

The coloration of pansies and violas is so fascinating to me.  The blue and yellow one varies in how much yellow it has depending on some factor I have yet to determine (amount of sunlight? temperature when the bloom is forming? I don’t know).

Chive blooms starting to fade:

In the background are a ‘Profusion Fire’ zinnia bloom (orange on left), two buds of a pinkish California poppy (right), and a bloom of ‘White Lily’ verbena (upper left).  ‘White Lily’ turns out to be fairly susceptible to some kind of mildew; one of my two plants has a pretty bad infection and the other has a mild one, and they developed it so fast that the bad infection sprang up literally inbetween times I checked on the plant.