Started sowing the fall crops this week.
A 12pk of Chinese broccoli, a 6pk of lettuce, and two seed snails of beets. I'm going to do an additional 6pk of lettuce weekly to stagger the harvest. Plus I'll get at least a 6pk each of kale and spinach going in a week or so to eventually plant into bucket planters in the cold frame for the fall/winter. The forecast is for a mild winter so I'm going to load up the cold frames as much as I can.
Picked apart the Black Krim and White Tomesol seedlings and repotted them one to a cell, giving me 12 potential seedlings to work with each. The Carbon variety seems to be just sending up one seedling per cell so I won't have to worry about repotting those. Got a spot all prepared in the enclosed raised bed for a few seedlings of each once they're transplanting size.
An addition to the saga of pests eating my seedlings this year—flea beetles are converting the Pearly Pink cherry tomato transplants into lace. I puffed some diatomaceous earth over them, so hopefully they'll recover. I do have one seedling leftover so I'll probably just replace the worst affected one. (The white grate is to keep critters from digging up the seedlings before they establish—usually looking for worms in the disturbed soil)
Critters have also been eating all the leaves off of the sweet potatoes in the raised bed in the back, leaving just vines of petioles behind. This is of course the bed of sweet potatoes that I was growing for eating—they're leaving the vines I have for decoration completely alone. Sigh.
Pole beans are finally blooming. The second round of bush beans is almost ready to do so too. Plus I've gathered enough seed from the early planting of French filet bush beans for the spring planting next year and they're still going—think I'll continue to collect seed and maybe plant double next year.
Collected seed from the Pink Flamingo celosia. The flowers start as a small tuft that gradually elongates upwards so seeds set on the bottom while the plant is still flowering at the top.
To collect the seed, I held the flower over a bowl and rubbed the bottom to dislodge the seeds. Basically it looked like I was jacking off my plants. I am the entertainment for my block, I swear.
Volunteer moss rose popped up in the railing planter. I saved a bunch of discarded moss rose plants from the green waste dumpsters last summer and I wasn't able to collect any seed, but I guess some made it into the potting soil. Love this color. The darker part in the center is a bar of deep orange-red, not a shadow.
So two years ago I sowed some four o'clock seed in a pot and grew it up on the porch steps. It apparently dropped seed off the side at the base of the clematis and volunteers have grown there for two years now. The azalea bush that normally shades this spot died this winter, so the additional sun has resulted in an especially vigorous plant this year. Hopefully it will also vigorously reseed.
