What's Blooming

Every once in a while I like to use Picasa's collage feature, especially for flowers. I don't have an extensive or well-planned flower garden, but here's what's in bloom this week:

• Asiatic lilies from a collection I remember being called Peaches and Cream (top right, upper right center, lower left) -- these opened up within the last week.
• Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea (top left and bottom right) -- these just started blooming in the past week or so.
• Oxeye daisies (upper left center and lower right center)
• Cranesbill geranium (hardy geranium -- a different group altogether from the popular potting plant known as garden geranium but actually members of the genus Pelargonium) (center) -- this has been in full bloom for several weeks and the blossoms are not as profuse as they were earlier in the season.
• Penstemon ("beardtongue") (lower left center) -- this close-up makes it look larger than it is - -these are quite small flowers on perennial plants with nice foliage that comes in a dark purple at first and changes to green as the season progresses. The flowers are very attractive to bees. We've also read that hummingbirds like them, but I haven't happened to notice them among these blooms.

Sage in Bloom

I have a good-sized clump of common (or garden) sage, Salvia officinalis, in my garden that flowered quite impressively recently. It's part of the same genus as ornamental salvia that you might buy at a garden center; the genus is part of the mint family and includes hundreds of species, which cover the spectrum from annual to biennial to perennial.

Common sage is a perennial, but I was surprised to discover other herbs well established in my garden recently, including parsley, cilantro and dill. I have not paid sufficient attention to my garden this year. We joined a CSA so I'm not growing much for our own eating pleasure, and it's been so very wet that I haven't done much working with the soil.

The surprise parsley (visible behind the sage flowers in this photo, and which was so thick and mature I think it must be last year's plant in the second year of its biennial cycle, protected by our heavy snow blanket this past year) and cilantro have already flowered. Herbs tend to be more coarse and bitter once they have flowered and gone to seed, so maybe I'll think of this overlooked patch as next year's plants in production.

I do also have a nice little clump of lemon thyme, which I imagine would work well with roast chicken but never really did anything with last year (I am notoriously bad at actually using the herbs I grow.). Does anyone else grow this and have suggestions for its use?

Patio Garden Hits the Road

We moved this weekend, and the final step involved moving the patio garden - three tomato plants and one small bell pepper plant, mainly. I've decided not to be quick to use "patio" varieties in the future; what the term seems to mean, really, is plants that don't get very big and don't produce very well... but it has been such a dry summer, I'm sure that had an effect as well. I got about two tomatoes per plant, four or five small peppers (which is actually better than I usually manage with peppers) and no cucumbers. Some of the same varieties performed better in the big garden, not surprisingly.

Green Tomatoes and a Fishy Funeral

I have eight or nine tomato plants in my larger garden and three in my container garden (see top left photo for one of these; the rest are from the other garden). The plants in the big garden get quite a bit more sun , probably have better soil quality, and the soil (as is the nature of a garden plot vs. containers) stays a more even temperature and doesn't dry out as quickly. Also, the plants in the pots are a compact container-suitable variety which just doesn't tend to be a large producer. As a result of all of these factors, tomatoes are busting out all over in the larger garden, while it looks as if it will be rather slim pickings from the pots.

I liked this view of one of my zinnias peeping out between encroaching tomato leaves.

The zinnia patch was the site today of a solemn little ceremony. My eight-year-old son discovered to his sorrow this morning that one of his two goldfish had expired and was draped limply over the ornamental hollow log at the bottom of the aquarium. Since we are moving back into the house with the larger garden in just a few weeks, we thought that would be a more suitable burial site, and we hoped that a spot under the flowers would both mark the site nicely for the next few months and perhaps lend some elegance to the end of this small fishy life. Freddi Fish (named for a kids' computer game character) was about four years old -- a large and beautiful goldfish with a lovely wafting tail. We dug a hole in the soft soil, said a few suitable words of appreciation and respect and never-forgetting, and covered her over. I told Henry about how (at least as I've heard it; I don't really know) the Indians would bury a fish head under their corn for fertilizer, and that Freddi's body would enrich the soil of our garden.

Then we went straight to Aquatic Pets to acquire a new little friend for Freddi's bereft younger tankmate, Harry James Potter. Henry picked out a handsome little black goldfish -- I had no idea they came in black -- and soon settled on the most suitable name of Sirius Black. He informed me firmly that he was still sad, but he was at least outwardly decidedly more chipper as we installed Sirius in the tank and welcomed him, or possibly her, to our family.

Update, posted 7/25: Sadly, Sirius Black did not thrive with us and was found floating in the tank about 24 hours after his arrival. Perhaps H.J. Potter will need to be an only fish for a while.

One Year of Penelopedia

Container garden, July 18, 2008

Last year's garden in mid-July

Penelopedia was launched one year ago this week with the words "This is my garden" accompanying the image on the right, above. On the left is this year's container garden, doing quite well but -- thanks to our cold spring, later planting, and pleasantly cool June -- noticeably less advanced than last year's at the same time. I've got a nice thick crop of leaf lettuce, rather crowded in its pot. I've got a container pepper that's appreciated our recent warmer weather, as have the several container-size tomatoes. My neighbors picked up some rather slim, leggy pepper plants at a garage sale and have added them to my cluster of pots; only one looks as if it might become sturdy enough to bear any fruit.

In about a month I'll be leaving this duplex, but I'll carefully transport my pots to the deck of my new residence, which is actually my former residence. It's all rather confusing really, as a character on the Goon Show used to say. My other garden, which I've blogged about recently, is there already, just waiting for me to come home again. I'll be starting a new life with a new spouse in a familiar location. Our families will blend, and my two gardens will become one. I'm looking forward to the adventure.

Container Garden, June 8

A week after planting, my patio container garden is waterlogged but otherwise coming along nicely. There's obviously been no need to water, except for my basil pots that are on a window ledge under the roof overhang. When severe weather was forecast Thursday night I pulled the pots back against the house, under the same overhang, to help protect them from a pounding by hail, which in the end never materialized.

The sturdy container-size tomatoes are growing well, and the lettuce, chard, radishes and cucumbers I planted as seeds last week have all germinated (cucumber seedlings can be seen below). My hand slipped with the radishes and so I have a veritable forest of little radish seedlings. They will clearly need to be thinned considerably -- and soon -- to allow them room to form proper radishes, but the thinnings can be tossed into a salad. In the foreground of the top photo, in the white pot along with some lobelia, is a cluster of three little marigolds my son started at school and brought home for Mother's Day.

Gardens One and Two

It's been a late, cool spring -- but now, let the gardening begin.

At right is my patio garden, much like the one I had last year. This year I am planting only varieties that were described as suitable for container gardening. I have four patio-type tomatoes, a small pepper plant, a container-suitable cucumber (though actually I had good luck with my standard cucumbers last year), and some lettuce and chard. I made sure to fill the pots about as full as I could get them with a combination of potting soil and mixed compost and manure. Last year some of my pots were only about 3/4 full, which led to quicker drying-out and probably to higher than ideal soil temperatures, as my patio gets good sun all afternoon.

Below is my other garden, which I haven't planted for several years, at my ex-husband's house. He doesn't garden and is happy for me to use the space, so this year Dave and I are going to do that. The back of the 30-foot bed is planted with perennials -- day lilies, phlox, black-eyed susans, joe-pye weed, spiderwort, rhubarb and more. Last weekend Dave borrowed a tiller and we (well, mostly he) really got the front portion of the bed in good shape. I've never used a tiller before; all my digging has been done with the garden fork. That's good exercise, but back-breaking when the ground is hard and overgrown with grass, so I usually don't get the whole area dug. This year will be different -- it's now nice and loose all the way along.
I've got several tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, lettuce, zinnias and down at the far end planted seeds for a couple of giant Cinderella pumpkins. We are contemplating tilling up some of the nearby lawn as well so we have room for squash. (Ex is always happy to have less grass to mow.) The neighbors at the back are in the process of moving their garden to a sunnier location; you can see where they have been cutting up sod. As trees mature, shade patterns change and a space that once worked well for a vegetable garden no longer gets enough sun.

How Are Your Gardens Holding Up?

Tomatoes
Originally uploaded by Penelopedia

It's been dry! After quite a lot of rain in the late spring but very little since then, we are running quite a moisture deficit. Since my garden is all in pots, I have to water just about every day. I can tell that the cucumbers have been stressed -- they start to form, and then some of them just shrivel up. The tomatoes are doing okay, particularly the ones in the largest pots, like the Golden Girls in the accompanying photo. What's doing well in your garden, and what's suffering?

My Garden This Week

Container Garden
Originally uploaded by Penelopedia

As I wrote in my inaugural post, my garden this year consists of a few largish pots on a patio. I have several varieties of tomatoes, and this week they are really starting to ripen in quantity, though it appears that my two cherry varieties are never going to produce well.

One of the reasons I am a vegetable gardener at heart is the never-ending thrill of seeing a tomato turn from green to deep red or yellow, or seeing a cucumber triple in size, over the course of just a few days. See that cucumber in the photo to the right? That's the same one shown in my "Why Eat Locally" post of just a few days ago. I've since picked it and eaten some of it in a cheese, tomato and cucumber sandwich. I've been very happy with this variety (Burpless 26), which produces long fruits with a thin, completely edible skin and a delicious, almost lemony crunch.