Garden Notes

Friday, March 20, 2009

While cleaning the kitchen sink this morning, I realized that we have a lot of dishes in the sink that we leave to soak and I end up throwing the water down the drain. I decided to take my mop bucket and just see how much water I can save throughout the day. With what I had in the sink this morning (I confess, I didn’t do dishes last night because I didn’t want to empty the dishwasher and Huny said he wasn’t going to do it either) I was able to fill the bucket about ¼ of the way up. WOW. I used that to water my Bay tree that I have in a pot by the front door. I emptied the coke and beer cans from yesterday to start the next bit and we’ll see what the rest of the day brings.

Last night I put some old Cypress Vine seeds (unknown trade and date) to soak to plant out this morning by the tree stump in the side planter. These are very old seeds so I hope that they come up.

I have a basket of seeds that I have carted with me everywhere since I started seed trading in 1997. I sorted them all out last night and so now I must get some more beds going to get these flowers planted. I can’t really trade them since they are so old, but hopefully some of them will come up. Quite a bit of them are from my old garden and it will be like seeing old friends again.

I did plant some old poppy seeds that are coming up like crazy. I have no idea what color they will be. It will be a very nice surprise. The first time I planted poppies, my friend Audrey and I got some from then Kings Creek in Cedar Hill. We came home and threw out the entire packet. The next spring we had an explosion of red poppies! It was wonderful! I forgot about that when I threw these out, but then I really didn’t know if they would come up. They did and it reminds me of that first time. There are poppies everywhere.

I started a new bed yesterday against the back fence. When I was out on a Freecycle trip I found a wooden table and an old trellis that were being thrown out. I also found some bamboo that was cut down (these will be used for my tomatoes). I HAD to start a new bed with the trellis, of course, and I planted some of my old morning glory seeds, Spanish Flag seeds I got from Select Seeds in 1998, and I HAD to buy some new plants and got a French marigold, jalapenos, and I found a zucchini (Black Beauty). Huny screwed the trellis to the fence so I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I’m pleased with the way it turned out. When the zucchini grows out it will cover quite a bit of that corner and we also have pumpkin seeds going in that corner as well.

I went around the yard and planted quite a few of the morning glory seeds. Some of the ones I planted are Heavenly Blue seeds from a trade from Overton, KY, date unknown, MG seeds from an unknown trade and date, ‘Blue Star’ Morning Glory seeds that I bought from Select Seeds in 1998!

I also went around and put out a few Sunflower ‘Velvet Queen’ seeds that I bought this year (Livingston Seed Co.)

Put out some Marigold-Harlequin that I got from Seymour’s Selected Seeds, date unknown. First discovered in 1870 and today used for the back of the perennial border. Annual.

Planted lemon basil ‘Sweet Dani’ (2002) and sweet basil (1994) both Ocimum basilicum between my heirloom tomatoes. Two rows of Sweet Dani and one of the sweet basil. I have some seed from my garden from last year, but I want to use these old seeds and see what happens.