Garden Pictures

[The Future]

Chysanthemum - budding now, no flowers yet.  We love these greens (chop suey).  More  Calendula (calypso orange)

Leeks, parsley, new red fire lettuce, curly indian mustard (courtesy of Atash).

Heading lettuce.

[The Future]

Tres Fin Endives (4 of them), Chinese Mizuna, Frigga Savoy Cabbage.

Borage - anyone use this?

[The Future]

Asparagus Winged Peas have startedto flower.  Quite ornamental deep coloured little flowers.

Borage is looking quite beautiful too.

Another angle on Borage.

Calendula and Chrysanthemum look bright even in front of avery colourful tablecloth...

[The Future]

These are my uberlandia carrots flowering (the large flowers) with daikon (white) and komatsuna (yellow) mixed in there.  The daikon are huge, maybe 15 pounds.  I let 2 go to seed.  The flowering carrots are prolific.  Thanks again Atash for the single season no chill carrot selection!

[The Future]

I found this in the garden yesterday.  I saw it some weeks ago while weeding and thought it looked to civilized to be a weed and thus keft it.  Some weeks later it is blooming.....what could this be?

[Dame]

I use Borage.  I started growing it to attract bees to the strawberries.  It self-seeds all over my garden now. 

With the short season here it is a good substitute for cucumber (flavor) in salad before the cucumbers produce.  The flowers are interesting in salad as well.  The leaves make an interesting herbal tea and once cooled the tea is an excellent eye wash, better than many commercial products.  When made into iced tea, it quenches thirst better than Gator-Aide (accidental discovery).  If you get bored and want a different salad dressing, add some dehydrated borage to the thousand island mix.

Does anyone use borage oil and what for? 

It dries well for use as a tea all year long and the seed is used commercially for its oil. 

 

[The Future]

The oil is very nutritious although I have not managed to get mine to set seed yet.  For some off reason, several plants just turned black and died after flowering profusely.  Seperately, my experiment to create carrot seed from my purple dragon maybe going ary in that while the plant is flowering after being refridgerated for 6 weeks, all of a sudden it is limp....seems permanently wilted.  Dunno why.

[The Future]

Brussel Sprouts, Calendula, Cabbage, Echinacea

[The Future]

Included here is the star among my 5 Imperial star artichoke plants.  Twice the size of other plants and the fruit are 4 times as large.  Do the bottom leaves of the big one qualify as 'open'?  Or should I leave it longer?

[The Future]

Tom Wagner's F2 Green Zebra X OSU Blue cross included here.  I never got to cage them so they are going to have to survive on the weed barrier.

Also, ironically, the perpetual chard is the first chard I've ever seen flower in my experience.  i get to save my own chard seed for once...

[The Future]

Uberlandia (no chill) flowers and Arugula gone wild

[Lady Lilya]

It is nice to see what chard flowers look like.  :)

[Atash Hagmahani]

Your mystery flower is the common Snapdragon.

They are not native to the Americas, but they go feral readily in my part of the world and are common along freeways.

They are pollinated by bumblebees, which are the only bees strong enough to open the flowers, which normally are closed.

[The Future]

Thanks to both of you.  Ok the snapdragon has got to go then...in fact the flowers are drying already....a showed a co-worker the picture and they said it was snapdragon to...

[MnJRutherford]

Definitely a snapdragon.  I love them.  That one is a particularly pretty specimen.  They are a member of the pea family.  I have no clue as to edibility.  I've never known anyone to try to eat them.  I wonder if they are related to thyme somehow?  The flower and leaf habit are very similar.