here is the photo of them. neat huh? They tower over my swingset and you can tell they need to be divided. This is going on the third week of them blooming - it was fuller before. literly 100s of flowers. make nice cut flowers too.... make me an offer

Lois - It is realy everything I can do to keep from ordering "something" this year. I am not moving or at least I hope not but Dad is not well and I don't know what is up for the coming year. Many changes I suspect. I am only getting my reserves and some annuals. I doubt that I will have even tomatoes this year unless I grow them on the deck. We are hoping to buy this old house from the rest of my sibs as we are all part owners. I have been here taking care of Dad for 5 years and the flowers are mine! We would like to rebuild and design my new yard/gardens. As it is I will have to move a lot of my Peonies and Irises in order to build or I will be sending a lot of you people some very expensive plants if we don't stay here! Maybe I will rent a field or two. :) Till then, all my babies are in holding beds. :D Ginny P.S. Anyone know where crazygardener has been?

I know the original message was posted almost to years ago... But I cross all my vegetables. Just to see what I get mostly. I have many squash crosses. And many, many brassica crosses. I've also crossed peppers. Bell peppers X jalapeno. Jalapeno X ornamental Thia Hot. If interested in the results, let me know. As for brassicas. One intersting cross I made was a red indian mustard (Brassica juncea) and Chinese Cabbage (B. rapa). I mostly got empty pods with vestigial seeds. But I did get one viable seed. This bolted immediately and grew into a tall (about 4 1/2 feet) weedy looking plant. Leaves were very small and narrow and only slightly reddened. It branched heavily and flowered profusely. I only allowed other chinese cabbages and bok chois to flower at the same time and cut back any mustards that bolted. I let the bees do the work. At the end of the season, I had 13 seeds from this plant. I planted all of them the next year and they all grew. They all basically looked like mustard plants, some very red, some slightly red, and some green. I allowed them to be pollinated by other indian red mustards and and southern giant curled mustard (also B. juncea). I now have a very mixed mustard that I grow every year. They range from red through green. Some leaves have jagged edges, some have curly edges, while most are more rounded. Their seeds are bigger than typical mustard, more like B. rapa. They also cross more easily with othe B. rapas as well as B. juncea. Aproximately 25% of the seedlings have 3 or 4 seed leaves instead of 2! These for some reason are usually red. I once pollinated a brussel sprout from a wild winter cress just to test viability. The brussel sprout produced well developed fat seed pods but they were totally empty. I have many crosses including kale, kholrabi, broccoli, and/or cauliflower. I now have a strain of broccoli with white cauliflower heads that produces as early as broccoli. An annual kale X broccoli derivative was still growing and flowering in a pot in my yard here in N.H. until two weeks ago when I brought it into the heated greenhouse. It has been unuasually cold and into the 'teens many nights!! Two others potted next to it froze weeks before. Any more interest, contact andyspigeons@yahoo.com

This will give you a little bit of an idea of what I am dealing with (we have about 3 acres... nothing is finished... and I have no idea of where to start... other than we need to level the yards to have a good base to start with lol... we have alot of pasture around the house. Alot of rocks, and unlevel hills (which is where alot of the irises are growing (It was a bit bright outside and so these pics aren't very good ss) These are on the edge of the cow pasture, between trees, along the gravel driveway. You can't see this very well... but there are patches of irises all the way along this "cliff" to those tires (and more behind me lol) you can see some flecks of purple irises darn overcast, but bright light lol... this is a hillside that goes up to my vegetable garden area... the dark spots are flowers This is that same hillside looking down these are in the middle of the path that is driven on with 4 wheelers right above that hill near my vegetable garden old garden stakes, next to my raised straw bale garden beds.... these weren't up when I made the beds last summer (they just keep popping up all over!` poppies in a field irises in the middle of a drive! the wider light green are little iris shoots... in an area just outside of the fenched yard for all intensive purposes, a side yard (it's really dry lol... need to plant grass, but need to level it all first)