In the garden today by SIGNYM

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In the garden today

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, July 9, 2013 17:35
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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 4:38 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Boy, it's been hot! Been on vacation, and cleaned up the garden- Went to the nursery... always a dangerous place for my credit card!... to get some asparagus that my sometime gardener accidentally dug up. While I was there, saw some really pretty white yarrow (it was on my planting list for this fall, so I guess that purchase was justified) and some beautiful blue scabiosa and a blue-purple verbena. And some more long Japanese eggplant, cause I like them and the ones in my garden this year weren't as productive as last year. And some blood meal. And a hand trowel. Decided to leave while there was still some money in the account!

In the veggie garden, my tomatoes are shoulder to head-high. Had the first cherry tomatoes... boy, were they good! Waiting for my Early Girls to start ripening. The long Japanese eggplant are blooming and setting fruit. The watermelons are blooming too, but not seeing much fruit yet. I've heard they really like hot weather, they should be happier now! I have five different peppers, they seem a little laggardly... I picked a few already, but not seeing many new ones. There are always a few honeybees on the rosemary- I love brushing against it when I garden, it reminds me of Colorado. Oregano is blooming like crazy, there are always a dozen honeybees on it at any one time now. The basil will be the next Big Thing for the bees, I think.

In the xeric/ flower garden, the rudbeckia is waist-high and blooming huge blossoms, the yellow yarrow is blooming and the coreopsis is RE-blooming, so there is a sunny-looking spot in the back. That's where I planted the small white yarrow and blue scabiosa and verbena, for a yellow-white-blue mix.

I found out that French marigolds are garden thugs. They were in a wildflower mix, and I've seen blue flax and bluebells and clarkia here and there but... oh, those marigolds. There was one plant last year, this year there are at least a hundred! It wouldn't be so bad but the flowers are one of my least-favorite colors... orange. Ick. SOME of them come up yellow, so I'm trying a little biological experiment: every orange-flowered plant gets yanked, and the yellow ones stay. I'll be interesting to see if I skew the color ratio at all!

Both sages are blooming experimentally (Salvia clevelandii), the snowberry has finished blooming, and the california currants and hollyleaf cherries are growing like crazy. I expect blossoms next year.

Looking forward to adding a groundcover currant (ribes viburnifolium) and a groundcover grape (mahonia repens), replacing a heavenly bamboo with a serviceberry , and planting my newly-created wildflower patch with a beautiful intense blue salvia (chamaedryoides or sonomensis), fall-blooming bulbs (blue and white crocus, with some lutea for yellow), prolly some verbena lilacina, and sundancer daisy. Also lloking to stick some milkweed somewhere for the monarchs.

That's it for now! Sorry I haven't yet gotten to posting pix.

But here are some commercially available pix to give you an idea of what's there...

rudbeckia

yellow yarrow

coreopsis

scabiosa

white yarrow

japanese eggplant flower, so beautiful!

and what's planned...

salvia sonomensis

ribes viburnifolium

mahonia repens

serviceberry

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013 5:35 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I found out that French marigolds are garden thugs.

Oh yes.

This is why I reccommend to folks who have no luck with gardens or flowerbeds to plant the damn things - remember the old adage, if you water it and it dies it's a flower, but if you stomp it and it lives, it's a weed ?

Well, them things are pretty weeds, you have to TRY to kill em, and even then it ain't so easy!

-F

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