Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Other





These belong to other people in the Community Garden. I'm just posting them because I thought they looked neat and so I took photos of their neatness. From the top: a sunflower, purple cauliflower going to seed, broccoli totally gone to seed, dill.

And look who finally showed up!


Eschcholzia californica, or "California poppy."

You may recall that last year, I planted several varieties of poppies: oriental (failed), "Pizzicato" (failed), "Falling in Love" (epic fail, of course), Icelandic poppy (limited success) and Flanders poppies (wild success, 4000 seeds producing massive amounts of flower that produced massive amounts of seeds).

This year, I decided to be reasonable and seed only one packet of poppies, and I picked these, Eschcholzia californica var. "Appleblossom".

Then I waited.

Then poppy flowerbuds appeared.

Then they opened... and every last one was a Flanders poppy. Well, not for nothing that it's actually a weed in Europe.

So, I spent the summer watching for Flanders poppies and uprooting them as soon as they showed their colours, and hopefully before they could shed seeds.

And then, finally, September 4, 11 days before the average first frost, I have a California poppy. And it's every bit as pretty as I had hoped... Now I just have to produce a hundred more, two months earlier, and everything will be copacetic. Hopefully they're like flax and they'll take care of themselves once they get going.

I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Finally, after four years of unremitting effort and aggravation, a dozen seed packets, and three attempts to propagate from wild specimens, I got a flax flower to bloom. Typically when something takes me that much trouble, I quit once I get what I was after, but since flax makes very long taproots, seeds itself readily, and is almost immortal once established, I'm guessing I won't have to worry about it much from now on. So that's one thing that worked out in my flower garden.

Well, technically, it's two: the J.P. Connell rose bloomed all season, never showed any sign of discomfort, and is about two feet tall not. If I can make it survive the winter, it has a bright future, I should think.

Sigh...


Brussels sprouts: another plant I don't think I'll be growing again. Like the cauliflowers, they take a lot of room and a lot of time to produce very little. I haven't harvested a single one yet, though I see someone stole a plant from me. Another reason not to grow them, by the way. Some depraved detritus of humanity steals from the Community Garden on a regular basis, which is annoying, but it only eats certain plants: beets, carrots, onions, cabbage and apparently, Brussels sprouts. No theft of peas, pumpkins or turnips have been reported, so mostly my food is safe. But I'm certainly not going to waste my time growing food so that some lazy jackass can steal it.

Fractal-iflower


This is my "Orbit" cauliflower. Though it might be actually "Orbitz". I forget. And some suppliers sell it as "Veronica" which is just lame. In any case, it's a green cauliflower that looks like fractals.

It looks cute in the catalogue, it looks cute here, but it has two problems: one, it makes gigantic plants that take up half the garden, but produce a very small head in the end. And two, it's not that tasty. My peas were exponentially more delicious than store peas. My turnips were exponentially more delicious than store turnips. This cauliflower tastes more or less the same as store cauliflower. It just happens to be green, fractal, and organically grown. Considering that I would generally not buy cauliflower anyway, I'm not convinced I gained anything by growing my own.

Also, it takes forever. I've eaten one head so far. This one is the biggest of four that are currently developing. And one plant is just at the very beginning of forming a head. I think there is a finite chance that I'll try it next year, but right now I'm underwhelmed.

Still, it does look pretty darn cool.

The Great Pumpkin cometh!



See? I have FOUR pumpkins! Five, actually, but the other one is on a different vine at the other end of the garden. These ones, there are three on one vine and one on the other.


This is the Chief Pumpkin, the first and the largest one (in the background in the second photo above). Now it has two more pumpkins on its vine. One is a good size and might make it to orange colour if it doesn't freeze too soon. The other one is about 3" across and won't make it, and I really should remove it, but I think it's too cool to kill it. You can see it in the bottom left corner in the first picture.

What I should also do is harvest the Chief Pumpkin, as it's been fully orange for some time and is probably ready. The thing is, I have a friend who claims to make the world's best pumpkin soup and is indigent, and I've been meaning to give him this pumpkin, but I haven't seen him in weeks to check if he would like a pumpkin. Also I have to get the seeds back. This vine flowered way earlier and produced way more than the other vines from the same seed packet. I want to reseed it next year for sure.

For next year, I also have some Lumina and Neon seeds, and we're building a greenhouse at the Community Gardens. Although by "we" I don't mean me. I had planned to volunteer on it, but the people who have put themselves in charge of the project annoy the crap out of me (and their dog bit me), so I'll volunteer for something that doesn't involve annoyance. But anyway, where I was going with this is, starting pumpkin seeds early in my house didn't help much because I don't have enough light or room to keep pumpkins for more than two weeks, so they got leggy and then the wind broke them when I bedded them out too early. But for next year, I can start them in the greenhouse, and hopefully that will be more successful.