Gay Gardeners Forum

[MossyTrail]

So here we are in May. Which means that, down here on the Coastal Plain, we've been gardening for about a month and a half. Long enough to have seen both successes and failures.

Successes: I have already gotten two cuttings of turnip greens (I planted "Seven Top," a variety that only makes greens, not roots). My neighbors in the other rental plots have already been cutting their broccoli, too. I also got a good bit of lamb's quarter from the unused plot just next to mine -- and just in time, because today, I found it all tilled under (I guess someone thought lamb's quarter was a weed?). My onions are doing nicely, already starting to swell, and I expect good results from them.

Failures: My cornsalad never sprouted. That was mitigated a bit by the wild cornsalad coming up weedy in the grassy areas nearby; but it is already in flower, and therefore all stemmy, not leafy. I'll have to try that one again in fall -- it is a cool season crop. My eggplant seedlings all died in the late-April heatwave (89 degrees in April!?! When just two weeks earlier we had a frost advisory!?!), but I put new seeds in their place, and maybe, with our fairly long growing season here, I can get something out of them. My peanuts seem to be starting to sprout, if the birds would just refrain from pecking them out -- at least one seed is already gone, the germ kernel eaten by something.

It is too early to tell yet about everything else.

[Jayden]

Early in the season here in NJ; at this point everything is fresh and new, little sign of failures!

We've had a great deal of rain, which the daylilies and the hosta appreciate.

[MurderHeWrote]

I have had a few successes and failures in the past year so far.

Some of my successes were accidental. I was trying to grow some Pineapple Weed (Matricaria discoidea) last year to hopefully dry for tea, since it's very similar to Chamomile. But the plants I gathered from the wild died off almost immediately. I made an attempt to gather seeds and grow them that way, but again, nothing grew.

Imagine my surprise this spring when I found it coming up in several of my pots. I have learned that the seed is at least viable and I have finally conquered growing a plant I was never able to grow before.

I also had great success in growing Boneset. I now have a large pot full of plants and a second pot with it in. Another success I had was with getting mints to grow in a pot. I have no idea what the one mint is, but the other I believe is Wild Mint.

Some of my continued failures never seem to go away. I have yet to grow any Clammy Cuphea from seed. I have a Scarlet Pimpernel plant growing in a pot, but I have not been able to get one to flower yet. I still need to figure out when to harvest seeds properly from Sheep Sorrel. I also need to figure out why I can't get Nasturtium to grow from seed.

I'd like to understand why some common edible weeds will grow huge in waste places, and yet if you try to grow them in potting soil, they refuse to get bigger than an inch tall and never flower.

I just planted a bunch of mystery seeds a few days ago.

I collected them and forgot to label what they were. Now I have to wait for the 13 different types of seeds to hopefully sprout so that I can label them correctly this year.

I have a full season of seed collecting to go and hopefully I will succeed against some of the projects I have been continually failing at.

[kipouros]

Successes: First blooms on the iris "Salonique," the old seeds of Nicotiana mutabilis that I brought last year (and then neglected to replant after neighborhood cats decided the box would make a good bed) finally sprouted! The rainbow chard is producing faster than I can eat it (but the neighbors are fascinated by it so I can always give it away too). And an especially fragrant evening primrose that we've been growing in our family since I was about 5, finally reappeared fro seed. - it behaves a bit differently here where summers tend to be dry.

Failures - I found that volunteer sunflower seeds do not like to be transplanted - the ones left in place are already a foot high but the ones I moved now seem to be brain-dead. Of the two American persimmons I started from seed and transplanted here last year, one seems to have bit the big one. And while winter squash like to take over the entire garden, I seem to be heading for a dismal record with gourds!

[Jayden]

kipouros, I really like your signature quotation! Reminds me of another one about Narcissus, something about a very elderly lady planting her bulbs in the fall, and "calmly plotting the resurrection."

[MossyTrail]

So I've had a few more of both. Got my first cucumber a few days ago -- which is odd, since I didn't plant any cucumbers. Must have been a leftover seed from last year. Also got my first straightneck squash. Turnip greens produced strongly -- I couldn't keep up, so I froze a lot -- and now seem to be succumbing to the heat and/or plain exhaustion. Tomatoes have green ones, not red yet. BY keeping the poke picked, I have kept it in the young, tender stage, but I expect that can't last much longer.

On the other hand, lentils don't look so good -- all yellow-brown and never produced. Maybe I'm too far south for them. And the eggplants were a total loss; worse, all the plants I can find available are the big purple ones, which obviously cannot substitute for the egg-sized white ones I was trying to grow. Sunflower seeds never grew either, so I put in sweetpotato there instead, and have the first purple shoots coming up now.

I compare my corn plants to the ones in the commercial farmers' fields... not too much difference, so hopefully that's a good sign.

[MossyTrail]

Corn was a bust. But the pole beans are just now coming into their prime, after most everything else is finished. Got reasonable harvest of summer straighneck squash; satisfactory. Onions were all pulled in early summer, still have most of them frozen. Carrots mediocre -- they have stunted roots, but at least they are still edible.

Cherry tomatoes kept up all summer long, but tomatillos only produced two little fruits.

Still waiting to harvest the peanuts and sweetpotatoes, but to judge by the size of the plant, I am optimistic.

[kipouros]

My corn was a bust too! I think the problem was that I didn't plant enough and didn't get good pollination. It was definitely knee-high by 4th of July! I kept it watered and the soil is not bad, but the ears that it did produce were really scrawny, only one of them had ny decent amount of kernels. Sweet potatoes - eh. Got some, maybe I could have left them in the ground longer though it's getting cool here now and I dont' know how much more I would have gotten from them. I planted them quite late as it was the only time I had someone coming in from the US to bring me some. Tomatoes were great, winter squash was great - I just found another Futsu out there yesterday as I was cleaning up. Fava beans (planted the previous fall) did really well in the spring and I got a good harvest even though I dug lots of them in for green manure before they could produce. I'm going to experiment/diversify with the cover crops this year. Favas will go in again in a month.

I also need to open up/amend at least another 100 square meters because there are a couple more winter squash I want to try next year! Moschee du Provence, Chirimen, Sibley and maybe one of the long "neck" squash (forerunners of today's stubby butternuts).

[MurderHeWrote]

I've had some successes this year.

I seem to have gotten the hang of growing Monkey Flower in a pot. It seems to have done very well for me this year. I believe the type I am growing is Square-Stemmed Monkey Flower (Mimulus ringens).

Here is a picture of the variety I am growing, however, not of MY plants. The color of mine is a light fuchsia and I had a much more "productive" plant.



I also had great success in growing Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare) this year. Here is an online photo of it.



I also had a surprise this year when Mad-Dog Skullcap (Scutellaria laterfolia) came up in several of my pots. I never planted it, it just appeared out of nowhere. Here is a picture of that.



And while it's too late in the year to flower, my Thin-Leaved Coneflower (Rudbeckia Triloba) FINALLY grew from seed. So now I know the seed is good. Here is a picture of what this plant looks like.



I'll relate other plants later.

[Jayden]

Great photos, thanks for sharing. Is the wild basil useful in cooking?

[MurderHeWrote]

Great photos, thanks for sharing. Is the wild basil useful in cooking?

It can be used in cooking, but it doesn't have a potent flavor like garden basil. In fact, I don't know if it has any flavor at all.