New In My Garden?

First time growing Sweet Corn in my garden.

Seeds packet: Botanical Interests

Buttergold (hybrid)

Sowed directly into my raised bed on April 14th

So far a few have spouted and they are about 2 inches tall.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  I have netting over them to keep the crows out.  They love to mess up my beds.  According to the seed packet, I can continue to sow them thru May and the next round in July - August too

Next but not new in my little garden, Larkspurs.

Seeds packets: Renee's Garden

Heirloom Imperial "French Alouette"

Heirloom "Parisian Pink"

Sown late summer 2019

 You can click on to the photos to see them larger too.

 You can never have enough of these beauties in your garden.

Some container herbs 

 Sage and Chives that wintered over in the same container.  I added top dressing of compost.

 A favorite herb of mine is tarragon.  This plant has been in this container for a couple of years.  Wintered over and I also tilled in some compost around the plant.  Alyssum and tarragon do well together.

This is my raised bed set up. I use either small gauge chicken wire or PVC pipes and add netting over to keep the birds out.  So far so good and once the plants mature, I will take them off.

 Here is a Sweet William for you too.  Thank you for stoping by for a visit.  Have a wonderful day.  Blessings to all.

Larkspurs

A rainy week for us in Southern California. 

A break in the rain, I went out and picked beautiful bouquet of larkspurs.  

 

 The seeds were sown in late August, seeds packets came from Renee's Garden. 

Heirloom Larkspur, "Parisian Pink" and Heirloom Imperial Larkspur "French Alouette"

A photo of the birthday boy, Opie!

Have a wonderful day.

Changes In The Garden - Summer 2019 (Raised Beds)

BEFORE (2018 SUMMER)

AFTER (2019 SUMMER)

The raised beds make a difference in my garden.  A lot more easier to garden too.  Not so hard on my hand and back.  I was not sure what I wanted my garden to look like or what I wanted to grown. But so far, I liked how this past summer turned out.

Showing the rose area in this photo and an area that I'm still working on.  Lower part of the photo shows Borage.  Oh my what an amazing plant and it was the first time growing it too. 

But I want to share some winners for Sumer 2019

These are called "Minnesota Midget" melons.  Fun to grow and they produced well in my zone 10a here in Southern California.  Towards the end of the growing, I had to deal with the powdery white mildew.

So tasty and sweet.  These are my Husbands favorite fruit.  You can see the powdery mildew on the leaves.

The next surprise that grew for me were the mini eggplants called "Little Prince" container eggplants.  Seeds from Renee's Garden.  

They grew well in large containers and amazingly well in one of my raised beds, huge as a matter of fact. They were great producers.  I had to stake the one in the bed because of all the fruit it had on the plant.  First time growing this variety  of eggplants and I had much more success. 

It seems last year, I did not grow as many flowers.  This year I plan to not have that happen.  That is depending what type of summer we have here.

Yarrow, Gina Lollobrigida and zinnias.  

First time growing cover crop.  This is a beautiful and fun cover crop called "common Buckwheat", seeds from Botanical Interests.  Love the tiny little flowers. The plant is good for soil conditioning and attracts bees.  A warmer type cover crop and it will reseed itself.  Need to be careful, it will take over.

It makes great filler to flower bouquets too.  

This is one amazing herb, Borage and it is still growing in my garden.  It loved the summer heat and it really attracted the bees and lay bugs too. Not the most attractive plant but if you need to attract pollinators, this is the plant.  I think I will always be somewhere in my garden.  It has many good uses too.  You need to make sure you wear your garden gloves. A very prickly plant and may cause irritation to your skin.  But it is always good to wear glove while working in the garden.

The long hot days of summer along with the humidity bring this interesting insects, dragonflies.  They were in abundance in summer 2019. 

I could not have done it all without the help from my Husband and my garden buddy Opie.

I hope to post some of the fall and winter garden soon.  The lettuce has been amazing.

Thank you for visiting my blog and have blessed day.

Cosmos

 It has been a long while since I lasted posted.  I need to do some catching up.  So lets start with these beauties, Cosmos.

 A sweet gift from a dear friend, Bev had sent me seeds from Renee's Garden.  They were the Dancing Petticoat blend and I bought some seeds from Botanical Interests.  It was their Double Click Blend.  So I had an amazing variety of cosmos.

 Double Click

 Sea Shell

Versailles

 Amazing

 It was sad when their season ended.  I had hoped that the cosmos would have a longer growing period, but in my area this year, we had a very humid summer.  That brought a lot of powdery mildew to them.  But I enjoyed every bit of what I was able to grow and enjoy in beautiful bouquets.