Tag: lacinato/dinosaur kale

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Kale and bird poop

Lacinato kale is sprouting for Mom and Dad!
Scotch blue curled kale is up too!
Two dogs, having fun.
Look at the bird poop on the coralberry leaves! How unappetizing!
It’s actually a bird dropping moth. It’s even a bit lumpy! It’s probably Antaeotricha leucilliana but there are a few similar species that can’t be distinguished for sure without looking at the genitalia. Luckily for the moth, that sounds like a lot of work.
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Plants for Mom

Mmm seeds from home!
Seeds smell like people she knows.
We’ll wait a few more days to plant the tomatoes. Mom put a few more bags of topsoil in.
An unknown seedling volunteering. We’ll leave it for now.
We seeded lacinato kale, Scotch blue curled kale, Fordham giant Swiss chard, marigolds, red rubin basil, Italian large leaf basil, green wave mustard greens, and oregano.
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Warm day garden activities

We’re watering and fertilizing two straw bales to become potato growing sites.  The one that we’ve watered and covered with plastic to keep warm is growing straw. At least it’s not got herbicides on it!!
We trimmed the Salvia greggii back for bushiness and spring flowering. We also did the winter pruning for both new and old fruit trees but I forgot to take before and after pictures.
Several seeds are sprouting in the hoops.  If you can zoom in, you may see the two oil traps for earwigs.  It is leftover fryer oil so it should excite their senses. We also planted two varieties of lettuce seeds we forgot before, and sprinkled leaves from the Salvia branches on the idea they might repulse earwigs. Finally, a few seeds are already up: purple lady bok choy, lacinato/dinosaur kale, Scotch blue curled kale, and French breakfast radish.
The daffodils I moved from along the metal edging to among the Salvias are coming up! Hopefully the trim will also make these more visible if they end up blooming. They were previously overcrowded and in the shade, so maybe out here they’ll actually bloom.
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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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Evening rounds

Back in the AC shelling purple hulled pink-eyed cowpea. The not quite dry ones maybe look a little pink on eyes??
They do have magnificently purple hulls.
These two cowpea pods are still working on getting that consistent purple.
I think this is the “fluttermill” seed pod beginning to develop on the Missouri fluttermill primrose.
Lacinato kale is getting a bit overshadowed by the Fordham giant Swiss chard. We’ll have to have a salad to help it out.
One marigold! Unfortunately it’s orange in the yellow section?? I thought the mix looked mostly yellow so hopefully at a distance we can pretend it’s golden. 🤣
Big banana spider on the north side of tomatoes.
A slightly smaller one on the south side.
Last night when I mowed the yard, I put the grass trimmings on the rainbow beds as a mulch. Hopefully that keeps the plants happier. You can see Judy’s yellow iris looking lovely in front.
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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).