Veggie garden updates, and more blooms (pics)

15 years ago

This is my first year to grow tomatoes from seed. Some were wintersown, and some were sown indoors, depending on their days to maturity. The wintersown ones are in the front, and are a bit smaller, but I'm sure they will catch up.

The first bloom on Cherokee Purple. It now has a tiny tomato on it the size of a pea!

New Red Fire Lettuce (before the broccoli swallowed it up)

Overall view of the veggie garden. Everything was either wintersown, or direct sown, except the peppers and some of the tomatoes. Oh, and I used onion sets this time, instead of growing them from seed, since they didn't form bulbs last year.

These next two weren't wintersown, but seeds from them were. The first is Dianthus knappii

Dianthus 'Ideal Select Red' (since this one is a hybrid, I can't wait to see what the babies look like)

Achillea 'Terra Cotta' with Blue Oat Grass (not wintersown)

... and finally, one of those hybrid Echinaceas. This one is 'Summer Sky'. Last year, the blooms opened more peach, and faded to pink, but this bloom started out this color. See I DO have a little pink in the garden ... just a touch : )

Hope you all are enjoying your summer!

Bonnie

Comments (8)

kqcrna
15 years ago
Very nice. I love echinaceas. I have 5 new ones blooming now, sown last year. I have a lot of volunteers coming up this year, too, but no place left to put them now. Hopefully I'll find spots for some in fall and can give away the rest.

Karen
proudgm_03
15 years ago
Beautiful! I love echiniaceas also. Hope my WS ones make it.
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booberry85
15 years ago
Love you pics. Everything looks nice & healthy. What's behind the onions and lettuce? Broccoli? Collards? Kohlrabi?
highalttransplant
Original Author
15 years ago
Booberry, behind the lettuce is 'Early Purple Sprouting' Broccoli, which has been a bit of a disappointment. The plants are huge, but still no heads on them, and it's July! If I don't see some development soon, I'm going to rip them out and plant some more lettuce or bush beans. When I threatened to rip out the peas, they started flowering the next day, so maybe the broccoli is listening : )

There's also carrots between the onions and lettuce, but the onions are so tall that they don't show up in the picture.

On the Echinaceas, all of the ones I have so far are hybrids, Sunrise, Sundown, Summer Sky, and Harvest Moon. If there was one, other than purple or white, that would come true from seed, I would try wintersowing it. I saw a thread on the perennials forum, that showed a photo of a new one coming out called Tomato Soup. As much as I love wintersowing, you guys know that I'll probably "have" to have that red Echinacea.

Bonnie
mo_girl
15 years ago
Your tomato plants are looking good...very healthy. I'm growing Cherokee Purple as well, and am very anxious to taste a ripe one.

I love that echinacea! The color is quite striking.
sophiarose
15 years ago
I took a class on WSing last winter, and in her slide show the teacher had some pictures of really awesome, unusual Echinaceas, she said that everything in her garden was WS. So... what happens if you WS the "fancy" Echinaceas? What do you end up with?
stage_rat
15 years ago
You gardens look great! Cherokee Purple is one of my favorite tomatoes, although I liked Black Krim just a tiny bit more. I'm growing both again this year.

The Achillea Terracotta with the Blue Oat Grass is gorgeous!

And, soon you will have poppy seeds to sow--I swear! I look forward to someday seeing what neat plants you combine them with.
highalttransplant
Original Author
15 years ago
Sophia, you might get something close to the parent plant, or it might revert back to the traditional purple one. If you keep sowing seed from each generation, it will probably be less and less like the original plant that you started with. I'm no genetics expert though, so someone else can give you a better explanation about why this happens.

Thank you Stage Rat, for the compliments and the seeds! Since the poppies bloom in late spring/early summer, I was thinking about planting them at the base of some of my later summer bloomers, like Daylilies, Blackberry Lily, and Crocosmia, to help fill in around their foliage. There's no shade there though, so I'm not sure how they will do. Maybe I can squeeze a couple into the main perennial bed, which gets fewer hours of full sun. Hmmmm ...

Bonnie