How does your garden grow?
Jun. 22nd, 2004 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rscIf you want to see your garden change a lot, go away for a week in mid-June. Either everything will die of thirst, or everything will be much bigger when you get back.
Fortunately, since we watered really well before we left, and it rained a little bit late in the week and it was never scorchingly hot (at least not for very long), the former did not happen. Things look pretty healthy. The tomatoes in particular look better than they ever have, and they all have flowers now. The snow peas that had blossoms when we left are now starting to have edible pods; all the other peas have flowers now, including one variety that has reddish-purple flowers rather than the usual white.¹
It looks like we have exactly three Persian Carpet zinnias, which is a lot fewer than I'd hoped for. Well, they'll have to share space with the Profusions.
The cotoneasters, eventually planted by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jwg next to the driveway, seem to be thriving, and we had put down several inches of cedar bark mulch around them in the hopes of keeping the previous inhabitants of the space from reinfesting it. In a word, Ha. The blackberriers laugh at our cedar bark. Fortunately at this stage they're fairly easy to remove, but I foresee an ongoing war in this space. We probably need about three times as much mulch.
It was regrettable that this trip occurred right at the beginning of strawberry season. About half the berries we picked today were really too ripe, and will be turned into jam. Still we have more than we know what to do with.
Anybody want some fresh cilantro?
¹Unfortunately I've lost the piece of paper on which I drew my little chart of which kinds I'd planted where. so I don't know which variety this is.
Fortunately, since we watered really well before we left, and it rained a little bit late in the week and it was never scorchingly hot (at least not for very long), the former did not happen. Things look pretty healthy. The tomatoes in particular look better than they ever have, and they all have flowers now. The snow peas that had blossoms when we left are now starting to have edible pods; all the other peas have flowers now, including one variety that has reddish-purple flowers rather than the usual white.¹
It looks like we have exactly three Persian Carpet zinnias, which is a lot fewer than I'd hoped for. Well, they'll have to share space with the Profusions.
The cotoneasters, eventually planted by
jwg next to the driveway, seem to be thriving, and we had put down several inches of cedar bark mulch around them in the hopes of keeping the previous inhabitants of the space from reinfesting it. In a word, Ha. The blackberriers laugh at our cedar bark. Fortunately at this stage they're fairly easy to remove, but I foresee an ongoing war in this space. We probably need about three times as much mulch.It was regrettable that this trip occurred right at the beginning of strawberry season. About half the berries we picked today were really too ripe, and will be turned into jam. Still we have more than we know what to do with.
Anybody want some fresh cilantro?
¹Unfortunately I've lost the piece of paper on which I drew my little chart of which kinds I'd planted where. so I don't know which variety this is.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-06-22 03:20 pm (UTC)Yes. :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-06-22 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 07:50 am (UTC)The compensation for it being too cold here to grow most of those things right now is the beginnings of the Wattle season, I guess. Many trees in my area will look like lemon yellow woolly blankets have been thrown over them, in a progression lasting a couple of months.
Cilantro (which we call coriander) may well lose something in transit to Oz!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 08:46 am (UTC)I suspect so. I forgot to mention that ayone who wants some will have to come get it. (And some of it started to bolt while we were out West, so I pulled it -- it doesn't really belong in with the cosmos anyway.)
I'm not sure when this started to happen -- sometime in the last 20-25 years, I think -- but in the USA the leaf is generally called cilantro, while the seed is called coriander.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 02:06 pm (UTC)A friend grew it but let some go to seed: she had it popping up everywhere.
I can see that it might not be the ideal companion, decoratively, for cosmos!
no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 07:39 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's exactly what happened to us. It's now established itself in the bed where we always put "Sensation" cosmos (the 4-to-5-foot-high ones), and the cilantro is done before the cosmos start to bloom, so it's not so bad, except that it's rather far from the kitchen.
I also planted some seeds in the official herb garden, and they're still producing (in fact, I used some on the grilled pork chops this very evening). Of course, we'll probably have it everywhere except where we want it again next year.