Tag: zinnias

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Sort of a rainbow

‘Diane’ purple Salvia greggii and purple moss verbena (non native, bought it by mistake), mealy blue sage, ‘Fordham giant’ Swiss Chard and lacinato kale for green, marigolds for yellow (but they turned out more orange…), Linnaeus burning embers marigolds for orange, and ‘Will Rogers’ zinnias for red. Needs some work on colors, but not bad for a start!
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Sprouting and preserving

The sterile wheatgrass cover crop is sprouting!
You can see the slower germinating buffalograss seed hanging out.
I have especially put a lot in the narrow places where the water runs off from the raised beds.
The grass with the red zinnias.
Both chimayó and jalapeño peppers. Neither super hot.
Everything from the garden except for garlic!
Yum! Salsa verde complete!
Picked green beans for dinner while waiting for salsa to finish simmering down.
The Chef takes over for canning, my department is just vegetables, thank goodness.
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Primary colors!

The rainbow bed has blue, yellow, and red blooming now. The iris is helping but is not part of the actual beds.
Paula’s plant lounge.
A big bird grasshopper!
Love our banana spiders. I know we have at least three big ones around the garden in the front yard. This one has used the loofah gourd tendrils for its web anchors. Or the gourd is using the web as a support. Who knows!
The zinnia has opened!
Looking from the red end of the rainbow towards the street.
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Growth in rainbow beds during rain – July 1

This rain barrel normally catches rain during light storms but Thursday afternoon’s downpour was too much.
This barrel’s gutter downspout is often very aggressive and sure enough it hit the rain barrel perfectly.
After the downpour (and after work), I got bits of sedum to press into the mud. Hopefully they can root since it’s supposed to be in 80s for a few days longer at least.
If you zoom in, you can see I put two rows around each of the rainbow beds on the side slope.
You may also note that the zinnias are doing well!!
The back bed got smoothed down more by rain. See my previous post for how I continued shaping it on the next day (Friday). So glad I’m almost done with the major earth moving.
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Quarter Gram = 1.76 kg

I left this zucchini too long and it was 1.76 kg (about 3.9 pounds). Gram the cat weighs about 14 pounds last we weighed him.
Paula’s moss rose has a lovely flower!
Briar yawns. Photography of plants is borrrriiiiing.
Several inches of rain is settling down dirt over geothermal pipes nicely. Once it’s not slippery mud, I’ll go spread it out more and continue leveling and shaping.
You can see seedling ‘Will Rogers’ variety red zinnias on the right, and harder to see are ‘burning embers’ Linnaeus marigold seedlings near the peach tree, for quick orange.
Briar looks over green and yellow bed. A triangle of Fordham giant chard with lacinato kale in the middle. The two scraggly plants are coreopsis recovering from being potted up for a month. Around it are dwarf marigold seedlings for more quick yellow.
‘Country gentleman’ sweet corn is flowering.
Supervisor exhausted by his earlier brush with the monster zucchini.
Book “Bean by Bean: a cookbook” by Crescent Dragonwagon. Lent by the Bean Queen herself, thanks Heather! Lots of interesting bean trivia. More focused on cooking than bean varieties (ie differences among Lima, green, cowpeas, lentils, etc, not varieties within those).
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Rainbow garden ready for rain

The marigolds for yellow have started to sprout!
Zinnias continue to sprout.
This picture shows a broader view of the zinnias.
Break time in the backyard. Fun native grass.
I like the yellow near the middle of this red moss rose.
An interesting fly.
Alright back to rainbow garden! These are the recently arrived plants in the clever box. They even put finger holds to help you get the pots out without dumping them out!
Ready for planting.
In the front, two pineapple sage and ‘Jacob Kline’ beebalm, all red.
Looking the other way from purple. Here I added three ‘Diane’ purple Salvia greggii.
Once I got the plants in, I worked on the back trapezoidal bed. I got the general shape of it and the forecast rain over the next few days should let me get it smoother afterwards.