Most of the photos in this post were taken on July 30th. This was a good time for taking photos, with many things at their peak.
I’ve put the front-yard photos (mostly flowers) first, and the back-yard (food crop) photos second. Otherwise, they are in no particular order. To save time, I’m not consulting any references. If I know the scientific name for something (or forget the common name) I may include it, but I don’t guarantee accuracy. If you want more info on something, drop me a note.
This is the first year I’ve grown amaranth, but it won’t be the last. These plants are large and showy, growing to 6′ tall or more. This particular variety (Burgundy from Seeds of Change) has deep red veins, stalks and blossoms. The blossoms and seed heads last well into fall, but may need to be staked. Mine were not staked, and I cut them down a couple weeks ago because they were falling over. I also didn’t want all that seed to end up in the flower bed.
Bachelor Buttons. The flowers are pretty, but the plants are scraggly and didn’t do much past July. They don’t seem to care for the heat. Might put some of these in the back for cut flowers next year, but not in the front yard.
Bee Balm, or Monarda, (var. Panorama Red Shades from Johnny’s) a perennial in the mint family. It wasn’t supposed to bloom the first year, but it got an early start, so I guess it did anyway.
I’ve grown Borage once before, but it didn’t do much, so I didn’t get a good look at it. The seed packet says “the plant stays attractive a long time.” Attractive to bees perhaps, but not to me. There are about eight borage plants planted around a young paw-paw tree here, and that is about six too many. It will go in the back yard next year. Aside from keeping bees fed, the leaves and flowers are edible, with a cucumbery flavor.
Butterfly Weed, Aclepias Tuberosa. We are growing this to help out Monarch butterflies, which must feed on milkweed as caterpillars. There are fancier milkweed species, but this one is native to the area and should be carefree. This is another perennial that was not expected to bloom the first year. This is not always a good sign; in some species it can be a symptom of stress. I don’t know if that was the case here.
Cardoon blossoms. Cardoon is the species of thistle from which globe artichokes are thought to have been bred. The leaf and flower stalks are eaten rather than the flower buds. We have not tried them yet, and by the time the plant flowers it is probably too tough to be good eating. Since this photo was taken some young shoots have come up that we may try before the frost claims them. But I mainly grew it as an ornamental. The cardoon, along with the amaranths got the most stares and questions. A showy plant, but it isn’t truly happy in this hot climate and it also isn’t hardy. Next year I’ll probably put a different ornamental in front and continue to grow artichokes in back. I can always let some of the artichokes flower if I want to see these blooms again.
This is the first year I’ve grown Okra and what little we had we enjoyed. The problem was that we never had more than a few fresh pods at a time. The plants set pods in succession, and if you don’t catch them right away they are soon too big and tough to be good eating. We’d go out to find plenty of pods, but most of them too big. This heirloom variety, Aunt Hettie’s Stays Red from Victory Seed, is a nice ornamental, but next year I am going to grow Okra in the main garden and try one of the varieties bred to be more productive, with pods that hold longer on the plant.
I tilled up my tree lawn this spring with the plan of cultivating it multiple times to deplete the weed seeds and kill perennial weeds without resorting to Round Up. A fine plan, except that we had little rain and so the weed seeds were slow to germinate. So I never got around to planting it. It’s still dirt now, and likely to stay that way until spring. The zinnias, a variety from Seeds of Change, have been amazing, blooming non-stop from June. And the Elephant Head amaranth has literally stopped traffic on occassion. Both are planted around American Elm trees that will shade this area many years from now. Until then there will be sun for growing annuals like these.
Sungiku edible Chrysanthemum. They do have an interesting taste, but they aren’t showy plants. A smaller number will go in the back yard next year to be snipped for salads.
Mountain Mint. It is in the mint family as the name implies but not as invasive as true mints. I find the flavor to be inferior to true mints, but it does smell good and, as you can see from this photo, the bees love it.
Calendula grows best in cool weather, and even with some shade from an ash tree in this spot and some deadheading, they were mostly done by the end of July. Next year I may plant some in back.
A small Chaste Tree. Pretty blue blossoms are fairly plentiful, especially given that this is a first-year planting. The berries play a role in folk remedies.
Black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta, growing around one of the three young paw paw trees.
A variety of sunflowers growing beside the burgundy amaranth.
Delphinium doesn’t like the oppressive heat here in Ohio, and I didn’t treat these seedlings very carefully. But before they died, a few of them offered up some blooms of the most gorgeous blue. It’s enough to make me want to live in Oregon.
Creeping Thyme and Johnny Jump Up in the rock garden that borders our driveway. The thyme got off to a slow start but seems to be happy now.
Hollyhock and Blanket Flower seedlings waiting to be planted. These will flower in 2006, and since this photo was taken have leafed out nicely. Hopefully we’ll have a good show next year.
Our bed of everbearing strawberries did so-so this year. We got plenty of strawberries, but the size was small. Part of it may be that I didn’t keep the blossoms pruned off until the July as one is supposed to do with a new planting. But I also suspect a shortage of nitrogen. The soil here has almost none to start with, and I don’t think I fertlized these enough when I put them in. I’ll have to add some cottonseed meal this fall.
I almost cut down this pear tree thinking it would never amount to anything, but Noelle persuaded me to leave it be and I’m glad she did. It is a small, old, tree but we got maybe four dozen medium-sized pears this year and they are delicious. (Last year there were only a handlful of pears and the oppossum ate those.)
Root crops for this fall and winter. From front to back: scorzonera, salsify, parsnips, belgian endive, root parsley. The thing I like about these roots crops is that you plant them once in spring and, aside from a little weeding, you can pretty much ignore them until they are ready to eat, and they store well for a long time in the ground or in a root cellar.
Boy, those sunchokes sure are pretty. Last week I dug up a few to see how many we have. I planted five pounds of sunchokes, and while I didn’t use a scale to weigh my sample, I estimate that we now have a hojillion pounds of sunchokes. We have enough sunchokes that if you dig up too many, you just throw the extras out.
We also (re-)discovered the hard way that freshly-dug sunchokes have their calories in an undigestible form called inulin. If you don’t give the tubers some time to convert this inulin to starch, the aftermath of eating them can be… unfortunate.
Grape vines that I planted this spring. All of them are seedless, and suitable for both fresh eating and simple wine-making. Hopefully we will get a few grapes next year, but grapes don’t start full production until the third or fourth year.
I planted these cabbages and other cole crops in mid-July, and it was just too damn hot for them. The larger ones towards the back only survived (I’m guessing) because of the afternoon shade offered by the sunflowers next to them. Next year I need to provide shade and more water if I want to plant cole crops that early. Successively later plantings, like the kale seedlings shown here, have done progressively better. And over the past two weeks or so all the cole crops have taken off as the weather has cooled.
Various peppers. I believe the varieties are Aconagua, Hot Hungarian Wax and Boldog Hungarian Paprika. Yield on peppers was lite this year. I suspect not enough nitrogen.
Lousiana Long Green eggplant. We only had five plants this year, and that was about enough. We didn’t get to all of them, but not too many went to waste either.
The tomatoes were disappointing this year in terms of yield and taste. Not sure exactly why. But Noelle and I did have our little tomato taste off, which I’ll post about separately.
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Flying Saucer summer squash. These are pretty but the yield was not much and the eating quality so-so. Next year I want to try some old-fashioned yellow crookneck.
One of the benefits of avoiding pesticides as much as possible is the diversity of insect life it allows. Here we have a praying mantis and a beautiful caterpillar that apparently likes carrots.
Filed under Random, Politics at 11:15 pm 
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