garden

The heat and a summer of growth has sapped the soil of its ability to keep this little pepper plant in the water, so I’m bumping it up a pot size. I bet it will produce anaheims late into the fall. Mmmmm.

There are some wonderful profusion zinnias in a planter box in the front of the house, and as the flower heads have dried up, I’ve snapped them off and tossed them on the ground in front of the porch. Well, some of them have germinated, and we’ve got 4 new zinnia plants growing in the dirt. They look gorgeous. I’ve been wondering if I should pot them.

So now I know. If planted early enough in the season, zinnias will reseed and spread.

Of all the seeds I started a couple of weeks ago, the ones doing the best are the trailing Nasturtiums, which have these wonderful leaves that look like green potter’s wheels, and the flowers are a soft but warm pink that look good enough to eat.

At some point, I’ll have to figure out how to display them to their best advantage. I had thought to add them to the hanging baskets that have the moss rose, but they’ve just exploded and there isn’t room. Maybe we could hang one of those flush-against-a-wall planters for a few months? I’m not sure how that will go over, but it’s what I would do, if it were totally up to me.

I’ve started about four different kinds of thyme to plant along a barren fenceline, and I also started trailing nasturtium for containers, plus more lobelia, which is a really lovely annual that should help fill out the front beds a little. I know I’m starting them late, but it gets so hot here, that if I keep many of these things on the porch (which faces east), we could have them growing and blooming well into the fall. That, of course, depends on the weather (especially August, which tends to be brutal here).

So, it’s a common quandry: I don’t have my own place to garden. It’s alright. I can keep reading, planning, making small container gardens that don’t require much space, so that when I do have my own yard, I can just dive right in.

There are many tangential interests that work in with this. I would like to learn to dye my own spun yarn for custom knits, and I would also like to branch out more in terms of herbalism for medicine and cooking.

Learn and do. Learn and do.