RED LIKE I’D NEVER BEFORE SEEN
First Sightings
The first time I saw cardinal flowers, they were growing in a drainage ditch along a farm field in southern Delaware. Their intense, red color took my breath away, in part, because of their surroundings. After all, this was no well-tended, perennial flower border, where colorful flowers would be expected. No, growing along that ditch, those cardinal flowers were “mere” wildings.
What’s more, the plants were blooming in deep shade, a place usually lit, if then, by white flowers.
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MY SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
Reasons to Save
I’m saving seeds of some of this year’s juiciest tomatoes and most colorful flowers to plant in next year’s garden. Why? Saving my own seed from year to year gives me a bit of independence from seed companies, which, for one reason or another, may stop offering certain varieties.
Picnic Orange pepper from saved seed
It’s also a way way to maintain an annual supply of seeds that seed companies never offer, so-called heirloom varieties that have been handed down for generations from parents to children and from neighbor to neighbor. Read more
TWO GOOD FLAVORS IN ONE
Friend or Foe?
Is it a weed or is it a garden plant? Garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) is among those plants — paulownia tree, Jerusalem artichoke, mint, and anise hyssop are others — that has paraded under either guise.
Garlic chives comes from a good enough family, the onion family. There is one definitely weedy member to this family, wild garlic, but so many of its other kin are valuable garden plants. Star-of-Persia, Read more
