gardening again

Loooooong story short: We had a house fire a few winters ago and I wasn't able to garden the following summer, then not really interested for a while after. I'm getting back into it this year through, and will try to remember to blog my progress.

I started planting about a week and a half ago and started seeing sprouts in the last couple days. Cosmos, sunflowers, virginia stock, and some bachlor buttons so far. No tomatos or other veggies yet. I don't have any money to invest in seeds this year, so I'm using all my old stash. Whatever grows is what we get and it will just have to do.

Very tempted to grow a pumpkin in an "earthbox" or "earthtainer" type system on the upper deck. This would throughly annoy several family members, but I can't grow it by the back door this year as we now have irises there that once belonged to my grandmother.

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. `