Deck Garden – September 2015

The deck garden going to seed! I’ll have to collect the seeds for next year’s deck garden as the pods dry completely.  The Black Eyed Susans are all seed pods at this point. The zinnias still have some blossoms but about half have formed seed pods. I experimented with a drape from my camera lens (made of a white plastic shopping bag) to photograph this zinnia flower on a bright sunny day.

The basil is going to seed too but it is more difficult to pinpoint went the flower ends and the pod begins. I liked the color of the pod and leaves in this one.

The sunflowers have not done very well in my deck garden and it may be that they like deeper soil. They took a long time to create buds and the blooms were not large. They often look better from the back than the front.

The leaves of the purple peas have a lot of the color of the peas in their leaves along with the green.

The leaves of the sunflowers are just green but pattern of veins. Both of the leaf images were the underside of the leaves.

Deck Garden - August 2015

The deck garden has not gotten much attention this year so some of the pots have a few weeds…but I am still enjoying it both from the kitchen window and outdoors.

The sunflower seeds my sister gave me for Christmas have taken longer to develop than sunflowers elsewhere - maybe because the deck only gets sun for half the day….or maybe sunflowers need deeper soil than the pots provide.

The zinnias were started from seeds I had from previous years and some my sister gave me. The hummingbird stops buy periodically to feed at the flowers. I only had pink ones in previous years

So the red ones must be from my sister's seeds.

The gold finches love the developing seeds of the zinnias this time of year…and on into the fall as long as they last.

The poinsettia from last Christmas is a small bush at this point. I’m not sure what I will do with it. I may attempt putting it in a dark room to see if I can get some red foliage for this Christmas. It is more tolerant of getting a little dry than I thought it would be.

Last but not least - the purple pea vine is climbing all over the peacock pot sculpture. It has worked out well to have basil growing in the same pot; I like harvesting basil for a salad or cooking just before I need it. I’m likely to plant this combination again next year.

CSA Week 6

I am going to have a lot of veggies to process or eat when I get home next week. My husband picked up the week 5 share last week and the majority is still in one crisper of the refrigerator. It’s a good thing my refrigerator has two large crispers since the second one is now filled with the week 6 share from the Gorman Farms CSA share.

This week we got beets (I’ll make fruit beety as soon as I get home), leeks, onions, carrots, yellow squash, cucumbers, green beans (he put them in a mesh bag, and purple basil. He realized that I had green basil growing in a pot on our deck so when he had to choose between green and purple --- he picked the purple.

There was a cut sunflower as part of the share this week too!

I can hardly wait to pick up next week’s share since the ‘overage table’ has been started since I have been away - and is a new feature of the CSA this year.

Deck Garden - June 2015

Mid - June - and the garden is mostly green. The only plant that is blooming so far is one of the purple pea vines. It is climbing on the peacock pot sticker that the gold finches like to perch on.

There are buds on some of the other plants. By July there should be more color.

I am enjoying the greens at the moment.

Some purple basil came up in the pot that I planted some seeds from a packet that was over 5 years old. More of the seeds were viable than I anticipated! I’ve been pulling seedlings to use in salads so that there will be a mix of green and purple basil leaves in plants that have enough room to grow.

The mint in the turtle sandbox is root bound and can’t seem to grow any more around the edge. I’ll give it a through trim at some point then churn up the sandy soil and start over. There is a very thick mat of stems entwined over the surface so I’ll start the churn with long handled pruners!

I’ve already harvested some of the red potatoes (posted about it here) but there are several more plants from those same sprouted potatoes. My plan is to harvest when any of the potatoes peek above the soil. The pots are probably not large enough to get an outstanding crop….but maybe over the course of the summer they will all yield a serving!  The lighter green leaves of the celery that sprouted in the kitchen window sill is a nice contrast to the the darker greens of other plants.

I was trying to use old seed so I probably have cucumbers in some of the pots too. There were a few seeds left from last year and the cucumbers did well as ‘spillers’ in many of the pots. Thrillers will be whatever is not green. I am anticipating zinnias and sunflowers but there could be some other flowers too from seeds in the soil from last year. July will tell! RIght now i am enjoying the delicate red in the stems of last December's poinsetta!