Two of the accidentially hybridized sunflwoers have bloomed. While I'm not really a fan of the red & yellow head look I think they are rather adorable. Also pictured here is my bird house gourd and pumpkin vines (left and right respectively), garden balsam, and alyssum (sp?).

I'm using the full sized and uncroped version of this picture as my desktop background at the moment. Whateveritis is lovely don't you think?

Another picture of the little purple flowering plant.the spike jutting up in the bottom middle/right of the picture is a seed pod. I took this picture last week I think.

This is my first tomato on the first tomato plant in my yard to bloom. My family is under strict no-picking orders so I can get the seeds from it.

(click for larger image)

It is looking increasingly likely that the sunflowers I mentioned a few days ago are indeed hybrids. It will be interesting to see how much it branches, since Golden Hedge Incredible* was branchless and the tall red had a Lot of branches. If you look at the base of the leaf stems you can see small leaves and flower buds. Perhaps the additional heads won't grow out on branches, but there close to the stem?

Also in this picture is a leaf from my Birdhouse Gourd plant, Alyssum, orange Cosmos, and Garden Balsam.

*I just looked up Golden Hedge in an online seed catalogue and it i's a branching plant, so that can't be it. I think it must have been an Incredible.
I really need to keep better notes about what I've planted and where. This week I've got to go around the garden and take notes while I can recall what's what.

The flowering plants in this pot are the same type of plant as in the previous picture, but these are growing in a 3in pot. You can see how the plants are pretty short and get just the one flower at the end of the stem.

Little Purple Trumpet Flowers

(click for larger image)

These flowers are from seeds I saved last year.
I don't know what it is so I call it the Little Purple Trumpet Flower plant.
The flowers are small, shades of fuschia, purple, and pink, with yellow centres (sometimes faint and sometimes strong). You can also see veins in the petals.
It grows seeds in long pods, like beans and peas, with two compartments in the pod. The seeds are ready for harvesting when they look like dark spots in the pod, and when you've opened the pod the seeds are browinish red (they are green if you pick the pod too soon).

It seems to grow better in the ground or large pots. In a larger pot it gets long and has a fair ammount of flowers. In a small pots (3in) it grows, but has a thin stem, stays pretty short, and gets (so far) just a few flowers.

Upper Deck Garden

(I just figured out that I can post a larger image and have a thumbnail within the body of the post. So, you can click this for a larger image. )

This is the gaden beside the upper deck (the house is on a hill). There are about 7 sunflowers (two that are growing in the grass and in the path of the gate unfortunetly), a lot of cascadia pea plants, a few pole beans, and a couple of morning glories. You can't see them, but there are also some cosmos, garden balsam, and wildfowers. I don't know what the bush on the right is, but it gets pretty little pink flowers ocasionally.

Another shot of the "mini" ought-to-be-6ft sunflowers. I'm trying to remember if this is what the source plant looked like at this time last year.

On the one hand, I really liked the plant we had last year. I was looking forward to two of them filling up the bare expanse of wall at the back of the house. On th eother hand, if I have a cross on my hands, if I can get the seeds to come up true to this new mini next year, I might have just inadvertendly created a new dwarf. None of the dwarfs I've seen on th emarket are red, and this one looks like it will be. It also looks like it might be a branching plant. The base of the leaves has signs of something going on there.
On yet another hand (pretend I have a third), I swaped seeds with people and thought I swapped the pure seeds, but now I'm not so sure. I thought I was growing the pure seeds but these just don't look "right" to me, based on my fuzzy recollection of how last year's tall sunflower grew. I don't know how I mixed them up, but I seem to have.

So this is both really neat and disapointing at the same time. I don't know what I want to hope these plants will become.

This plant is from seed collected from the tall red flowering sunflower I grew last year. It is supposed to be 6ft tall and branching. It's only about a foot now and already getting a flower. Uh-oh. Something tells me I mixed up some of my hybridized seed (the tall red probably crossed with the golden hedge dwarf that grew near by for a while) with my pure seed. I traded some of this seed so I have my fingers crossed I set out just the pure seeds. (sigh)

Fungus?

This odd orange stuff started showing up on the my newspaper pots. It's also on the dirt around some of my plants. I suspect it might be a fungus. `

Awash in green

Watermelon, sunflowers, cosmos, petunias, pansies, corn, marigolds, basil, tomatoes, hollyhocks, morning glories, zebrina malva, english daisy, and wildflower mixes. All of those plants have sprouted for me in my winter sown containers.

Corn (two kinds), which most farmers don't have in the ground yet, sprouted in paper pots in a baggie. Their little green tips are poking up above the dirt. I have another stalk in a plastic water bottle (that I started earlier then the ones in the paper pots) that has a few true leaves and really needs to be transplanted soon.

I've transplanted a few of the sunflowers last week, and need to transplant a few more today.

I need to do something with the cosmos soon too, though they still look reasonably happy in the pots they are in now. I just want to get them off the deck, since it's getting increasingly crowded out there as I continue to add to my collection of sown seeds.

Last night I sowed chinese lanterns, lavatera, larkspur, and petunias. Earlier in the week I sowed a few more cosmos and hollyhocks.

The Cascadia peas I grew inside on a windowsill are now out in the garden, along with the pole bean plant. I directly sowed another dozen (more I think) pea seeds beside the transplanted plants so I can see which fares better, and produces more peas.
I;m transplanting the Fortune peas today, into a different part of the yard.

Speaking of transplanting, I've dug up the yard for two more beds, one of which we are thinking of turning into a raised bed. I like the idea of a raised bed there but I don't know when we are going to find the time to build it.

I took pictures of my seedlings the other day. Today, if I remember to and get around to it, I'm going to get some "before" shots of the yard. I'll try to post the pictures soon.

These are some of the plants I have along the kitchen windowsill. The 9-cell tray on the right has peas (Fortune garden peas I think). The 3" pot nearest the window beside the tray has Hershey pepper plants, beside that is a Gardener's Delight tomato plant. The rest of those pots have Cascadia (sugar snap) and Fortune peas.

A winter-sown Cosmos sprout.

A water bottle with the top on. There are 4 newspaper pots in the bottle.

The top of a water bottle I've cut up to use as a winter-sowing container.

Sprouts!

After having ignored them for the most part since planting them, I checked on my winter-sown flats today. Much to my surprise things are actually growing out there.

A couple colours of cosmos are up and a whole flat (9 cells, one seed to each) of morning glories look like they will be up any day now. I know this because I couldn't resist digging around in the flats to see what was growing. Some pepper and tomato seeds look like they are trying to sprout roots, hopefully watering them today helped and they will grow a little faster.

After I write this I'm going to plant a more cosmos seeds and some other stuff (haven't decided what yet) and then try to remember to take pictures of the plants I've got sitting in front of the kitchen window (the peas, a couple of tomatoes,...).

Just another 5 weeks until the last frost date. I'm tempted to print out a calendar just so I can X out the days. (grin)

Pea plants

I planted 3 Cascadia pea seeds on March 1st. Yesterday they were obviously outgrowing the starter cells in the trays I'm using so I transplanted them to 3in pots.
I'll post a picture later today. The little pea plants are very cute.

Yesterday I planted Fortune peas in the cells the Cascadia were in. Today I'm going to plant some tomatos and probably some flowers.

In other sprouting related news, 2 alpine strawberry seeds have sprouted and so has a goldenberry seed.

And then the bill came

That seed purchase I made? After thinking for a few weeks that the price I paid for the seeds was pretty much on par with the prices I found on the websites of other online seed companies, I got the bill.
On T&M's wbesite you can click on flags to pick your country. I clicked on the Canada flag and just assumed that the prices I saw were in Canadian funds. I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When the credit card bill arrived I found I had paid substantially more then I wanted to for the seeds. Not to mention more for some varieties that can be had for less from other companies. Bah.

Since my last post I discovered the wonderful world of seed trading (I'm hooked!), and also ordered some seeds from Vesey. I wish I had discovered Vesey before I ordered from T&M, their prices are a lot more reasonable.

I've already begun planting some of the seeds in trays I got from a dollar store. Some of the trays are outside (winter sowing method) and some are on various windowsills.
Sprouting so far: Peas, Peaches & Cream hollyhocks (in 4 days, instead of 14-21 the packet said it would take), carrots, and Daddy Mixed petunias.
Also planted: Assorted tomatos, golden berry, chocolate pepper, basil, parsley, and alpine strawberry. I have more flowers planted too but I don't remember which ones.

I was begining to wonder where I was going to put a number of the plants that require full (or near full) sun when mom told me I can dig up pretty much everything along one side of the pool. I can just picture that space full of tomatos, peas, corn, and perhaps a couple of sunflower plants.

Oh, speaking of sunflowers, this year I'm planting: Seeds saved from the red flowered plant, Kong, Early Russian Giant, Giant Grey Stripe, Giganteus, Teddy Bear, and Dwarf Yellow Spray.
That is a lot of sunflowers. I can't wait to see them all full grown and in bloom... assuming the slugs don't eat them. I have my fingers mentally corssed in regards to the slugs and most of the seeds I bought. Considering I spent so much on seeds, I hate to have most of the plants all wind up as slug food. Again.

The seeds have arrived

The seeds I ordered from Thompson & Morgan came in today's mail!
I have 47 packets of potential plants arranged in a newspaper basket on the table beside my desk as I type this. Why a newspaper basket? Because 47 seed packets need some sort of container to keep them in one place, and I was making newspaper pots while wondering what to put the seeds in to keep them visible but neatly stored.

This poor plant was taller earlier on in the summer (took this picture in early September i think), and had a few more branches. The squirls broke several branches and windy weather got one. Even still, it had a number of flowers that kept blooming through to late September.

This is the same pumpkin from the previous entry as it looked in the begining of September. The side on the ground turned out a bit flat, but that was handy when I carved it. I wanted to get some pictures of it carved and lit up but I forgot to take them.
By this point the leaves were suffering from an odd white coating that I think is powdery mildew. You can see it on the leaf on the left.

This head is almost ready to be picked. It is easy to tell the fertalized seeds from the unfetalized. Or so it seems. More often then I liked it turned out that seeds I thought were fertile hadn't fully developed. Just the largest seeds are actually going to be useable, the rest must have stopped growing at some point though they were fertalized.

A sunflower from the plant by the backdoor. It's just past it's prime here and petals are starting to fall off.

Ok, trying again. Orange cosmos flower.

A flax flower and an orange cosmos flower.

Another big spider. This one did move quite a bit, it was difficult to get a clear shot of it. Even this picture at it's full resolution is ever so slightly fuzzy. This is a garden balsam plant it is sitting on.

I walked right into the Big web this spider made between the bush under the window you can see in some pictures of the back wall, and the sunflower plant beside the back door. When I backed out of the web I looked around and spotted the spider, was wigged out for a moment (it's big and harry, you'd be wigged out too), and then went to get my camera. It was a well behaved subject and didn't move much. Due to a bit of wind I had to hold the branch of the bush steady to take pictures and I kept thinking it would move any moment and crawl on my hand. It didn't.

One of our bees on a sunflower in the upper deck garden. The bees live under the pool walkway. We see them coming and going from between the slabs. They've been there for two years so far without it being a problem so we've opted to let them be. The full version of this picture make a great desktop image.

Adorable little bleepity bleeping squirl that crawled between the fence boards with the intention of stealing sunflower heads. I was sitting outside taking pictures of the flowers being visited by our resident bees (hive in the yard) when he came along.

These are the two potted pumpkin clones I had outside. Both lived, though the one in the larger pot fared better. It even had a number of flowers. I kept meaning to bring the pots inside before it got too cold, but I never did and consequently they died. But hey, at least I know growing pumpkin cuttngs can work. Useful information for this year if I decide to try it again.

Here you can see how the pumpkin vine is taking over everything. It's crawled up the bush on the right and is heading voer the evergreen in the center. That is the vine that later grew down the other side and devleoped a 6th pumpkin that we didn't let mature.

This was supposed to be posted with the previous picture of the vine. See the previous entry for a breif explination of what is going on in the upper right.

My sister was moving the couch out of the back door the day I took these. She's going to be thrilled that I posted a picture of her in her PJ bottoms, but that is one of the better pictures that shows how the pumpkin plant took over the yard. In the other picture you can see that the vine has grown over the edge of the pool and is just about to touch the water. Later I trimmed it back to where the gravel and the walkway around the pool meet.

The first of many long overdue pictures of my garden. This is, obviously, a young pumpkin. As you can see something tried to eat it. I don't know what, but it was most likely slugs or squirls.

Buyers remorse now, fun later

I just (two seconds ago) bought the seeds from Thompson and Morgan I mentioned in the previous entry.
I took a couple of pansies off the list and lowered the total by $10, but couldn't give up anything else.

Shopping

I spent far too much time on Thompson & Morgan's website today looking though their online seed catalogue. I'm trying to not sepend a fortune on seeds but it is very difficult to resist the pretty flowers and the interesting vegetables.
Earlier my shopping cart total was estimated at a little over $100, which was more then I wanted to spend. Now, after removing some plants and adding others, it's just under $150.

Spending so much on seeds seems a little silly in some ways but when you consider the number of hours of enjoyment a garden gives you in comparison to other forms of entertainment you can spend money on, suddenly $150 for seeds doesn't seem so bad.
It looks even cheaper when you consider the savings I'd have from collectiong seeds from this summer's plants for next year's use. Gardening pays for itself if you do that really...

Yeah, I'm trying to talk myself out of taking things off the list. (sigh)

Square Foot Gardening

Mac at Pesky'apostraphe mentioned the other day that she will be square foot gardening this year. I followed the link in her entry to the SFG website and found the method outlined there quite interesting. It might also be a solution to the probelm of wanting to grow a pumpkin plant again this year but not having the vertical space for it, as was proven by last year's pumpkin plant.
Acording to the SFG website you can train a pumpin plant along a trelis like any other vine, and you an do that with watermelon too.
This has me considering building a couple of very strong trelises and grwoing a pumpkin plant and a watermelon plant. If it worked I'd get the plants, my family woudln't be irritated by the vines, and as a bonus the fruit would be protected from the slugs and whatever else it was that chewed holes in my pumpkins last year.

I'm also planning to grow tomatos, peas, corn, sunflowers, flax, and misc. wildflowers.