The Mixed Morning Glories

This year, in the Kitchen Garden, my morning glories came back stronger than ever. I originally planted some purchased morning glory starts in the corner of the garden over 5 years ago. I can't remember the exact variety that I put there but I do know it was a mix of purple, pink and white. The white quickly disappeared over the first few years but the purple and light pink plants have set seed and come back faithfully.

But this year there is a new comer climbing on the tower- and it has a dark pink bloom. All I can think of is the purple and the light pink finally crossed last year. Maybe a hummingbird acted as my hybridizer and the new cross set seed. All I know for sure is the new hot pink is a great addition and the three colors look really nice together. I hope it makes a return appearance next year.

Heavenly Blue Morning Glory

When I stepped out on the back patio this morning, a bright bit of blue in the Kitchen Garden caught my eye. The very first two blooms had opened on my "Heavenly Blue" morning glory plants. Although I have now grown this variety for many years, I still get so much enjoyment from these striking blooms. They have such a bright, intense blue tone, unlike any other found in my garden. I am looking forward to the next few weeks, when I should begin to have a mass of blooms covering the tower and nearby tomato cages each morning.

Early July in the Kitchen Garden

Now that July has arrived, I have finally finished planting the Summer crops in the Kitchen Garden - I think. It has been so very hot the last two weeks, but for the most part, the plants have come through with flying colors.

I spent some time Sunday re-building my onion raised bed. My watering had eroded one side badly. The onion bulbs were getting quite exposed and most of the water was just running off the bed. So I built up the right side once again and leveled off the top. The onions are much more stable now and my watering is more effective and much less wasteful.

Here's a nice "Candy" onion. I should be able to start harvesting them in the next month.

And here is a "Cortland" yellow storage onion. I am hoping that they will start to size up now that they are receiving more water.

My garlic has done terrific since it was planted last Fall. With the hot weather, I think I am going to harvest the "Chesnook Red" plants this week. They are already half brown and fading fast.

The large "Russian Red" plants are still 2/3 green so I will wait another week or so until I dig them up to cure.

I pulled out the lettuce a few days ago and amended the raised bed in which it was planted. Then I set in two "Bush Delicata" plants. I didn't cover them with remay and I am paying the price. It looks like the finches have eaten out the growing tip on one of them already. Sigh. Now I need to decide what to do in its place.

My two little "Butternut" squash have finally settled in and are putting out some nice, green new leaves. This week's forecast calls for temperatures in the 80's, so that should be a little kinder to them as they get established.

My two "Howden" pumpkins are really taking off. One has already toppled over and is starting to crawl and the other isn't far behind.

The three "Snow Crown" cauliflower plants appear to be surviving this heat wave. All three have white crowns of various sizes.

I am a cauliflower rookie, so I need to read up on them a bit more and see when I should harvest the crown. While they aren't perfect, I am pretty pleased with my first attempt at growing this finicky vegetable.

Both of my pepper plants appear to be on the way to a great growing year. They certainly should be loving the  hot weather. Pictured above is my "Gypsy" Sweet Pepper.

I now have two nice size "Gypsy" Peppers maturing on the plant.

I am growing a "Padron" pepper plant for the first time. It too is doing really well and is covered with blooms and nice, new branching foliage.

This is the very first "Padron" pepper on the plant. It just started to grow a few days ago. Hopefully it is the first of many.

The mixed variety Morning Glory plants have almost reached the top of their tower and are starting to put on a really pretty display each morning. Once again, even with thinning, I have a good mix of pink and purple blooms.

I put the second tier of the towers on my last three tomato plants this past week. I did it in the nix of time. As you can see, two of them are already half way up the second tower.

The original three plants that I put in the garden have almost reached the top of the second tier and it's only early July! And my "Heavenly Blue" Morning Glory, planted in between the tomatoes, has reached the top of its support and is now scrambling over the tomato cages. So far, it hasn't yet bloomed.

A truss of "Mountain Magic".

The  young "Matthew" tomatoes definitely have a plum shape.

The "Esterina" is starting to set fruit.

"Galina" has always been a reliable producer for me and my co-workers love it.

Here are two green "Matina". All of my tomato plants have now set fruit except for my "Mexico" plant.

After I removed my empty Potato grow bag this past weekend, I planted two of the "Hale's Best Jumbo" Muskmelon that I started from seed. They look pretty small right now, but its still early Summer and the weather has been very melon friendly this year.

My three "Blacktail Mountain" watermelon plants are really starting to take off. All three plants developed their first runner this week, so their growth should really explode. I am trying to be vigilant and fertilize them every other day.

I certainly have just about every size of beet possible in my two rows of  "Golden" beets that I planted. You would never know that they were all started from seed at the same time. I do have some fairly large ones now, so I need to harvest a few this next week and give them a try.

The "Gold Coin" cipollini onions continue to look good. Since this is a new-to-me variety, I am not quite sure how they should be progressing. But since they don't grow up into a huge globe onion, I think they are right on track. Also growing under the remay tent, in the kitchen garden annex, is a row of "Cabernet" red onions. They aren't too happy with their cramped growing conditions and are still pretty small at this point in the season.

Youth Garden Plant Sale and working in the Kitchen Graden

After getting up early to help set up our last LCDS tuber sale of the year, I drove over to Springfield to the Food For Lane County Youth Garden. I had heard about this garden for years but had never had the chance to visit it before today. It is nestle between busy Gateway Blvd and MLK Blvd in a quite oasis. The event that finally brought me here was their Annual Plant Sale. Apparently, this event has been going on for many years but I just became aware of it a few days ago.

A field on the farm was set up with row after row of green, lush plant starts. Thankfully they provided free boxes with which to transport your purchases. Since I was a rookie here, I had overlooked that important detail. I was also glad that I had arrive 20 minutes before opening. By the time 10 AM arrived, there was a very long line and parking was at a premium.

Right at 10 AM they sounded the whistle and shopping commenced!

They had an amazing amount of both vegetable and flower starts. Everything was very clearly labeled and there was a great selection of varieties with in each plant type.

There were lots and lots of shoppers but it wasn't so crowded that it was difficult or unpleasant. Really the only hard part was remembering the size limitation of my garden so that I couldn't buy one of everything!

I ended up with 4 purchases:

• 2 - 3" pots of Sunflower "Giant Sungold". Each pot had 2 healthy plants to I got 4 for the price of 2!
• 6-pack of Cosmos "Dwarf Bright Lights"
• 6-pack pf Cauliflower "Snow Crown"
• 6-pack of Zinnia "Yellow Flame"

When I got home from the sale and had some lunch, I decided to work in the Kitchen Garden. It had been more than a couple of week since I last spent some time working here and it definitely needed some work. I began by giving the whole garden a good weeding. Then I planted 3 of the Snow Crown" cauliflower that I had purchased that morning. Yes- I actually planted something the same day that I bough it!

I know absolutely nothing about growing cauliflower. I desperately need to read up on its care but for now I just stuck the plants in and gave them a good watering.

I also brought my rusty trellis out of storage and placed it over the many volunteer morning glory plants. Then I started thinning out the plants. I pulled up a whole bucketful and I know that I have still left in too many. But for now these have a bit more room to grow and I can do a second thinning later.

I then brought out my tomato cages and single leaf trellis and set up that part of the garden. Once that trellis was positioned I was able to plant the "Heavenly Blue" morning glory plants that I bought last week. I also transplanted a small "Heavenly Blue" plant that had come back from seed. This is the first year ever that I have had seed sprout the next Spring from the previous year's "Heavenly Blue" plants. They apparently have a much lower rate of germination then the morning glories planted around my other trellis that come up by the hundreds each year.

Once the morning glories were in, I also planted the "Matina" tomato that I bought last week. All in all, it was a productive day. I got the kitchen garden in shape and many of the plants that I have purchased in the last few week are in the ground. In a few more weeks, I will "finish" the kitchen garden for Summer when I put in the Winter Squash, the rest of the tomatoes, and all of the other heat loving vegetable.

Garden & Flowerbed Clean-up

With the looming threat of heavy rains arriving on Tuesday, I spent 3 hours outside today working on garden cleanup chores. I started in the Kitchen Garden. I first picked up all of the old Winter Squash vines and took them down to the compost pile. Then I cleaned off the bean tower and took it into the garden room for Winter storage. Then I disassembled my whirligig and set it in the shop. I need to clean it before storing it away. 

I finished up by raking the soil and starting to build up the raised bed for my garlic. I hope to plant my garlic next weekend.

You might have noticed the Blue morning glory in the last picture. My two plants of "Heavenly Blue" morning glory are outrageous this year. I haven't ever had two plants of this variety grow and bloom like they have this year. They have smothered and covered the four tomato plants.

It is literally a wall of gorgeous blue blooms and as a bonus, the blooms have lasted all day for some strange reason.

The blooms are still large and amazingly blue, even in October.

I next moved my attention to the West facing flowerbed. It was a mess, filled with large weeds, spent flowers and stalks, and  newly sprouting weeds. I weeded the whole flowerbed and it looks so much better. The next step, for another weekend day, will be to fill up the back of the bed with more Nature's Best compost. The bed slants horribly toward the back right now and all the water runs in that direction.

As I was cleaning up my my Sweet Pea tower, I did find one last "Royal Family Lavender" bloom.

After I finished all of the weeding, I took a shovel and dug up all of my "Kokopelli" narcissus. The dry Summer had caused many individual bulbs to heave out of the ground.

It was amazing to see the mass of bulbs. I originally planted 6 small bulbs on January 8th, 2012. They have done an incredible job multiplying. I decided against separating each clump at this time. I think I might do that next Summer but I had too much on my "to-do" list today. So I dug the planting hole as deep as I could and set in all of the bulb clumps as well as a bunch of individual bulbs.

The bulb clumps had already sent up tender new shoots and had large, healthy masses of roots. With the rains returning next week it was a good time to replant them.

As I weeded today, I was surprised to see that the Oriental Poppies have already begun growing again for the next growing season. These young plants will amazingly survive all Winter's harsh weather and start blooming once again in May. And I was equally surprised to see that our Peony plant had also started to sprout. I found three blood red shoots forming at the base of the plant. To give the plant some added protection, I dumped a bucket full of compost on its crown to cover up the shoots and give it some insulation against the cold temperatures that lay ahead.