There’s nothing delightful about carrot roots that have bolted. Yet, I’m here to sing their praises. Carrots are biennials, and are supposed to wait until year two to produce flowers. When they bolt in year one, instead of sending their energy into root production, that energy gets moved into reproduction, aka flowering, leaving the root…
Tag: flowers
We Grew it From Seed – Will Rogers Zinnias
One of the delights of my gardening life is trying new seed varieties – a pleasure that my husband Chad and I share. Lately though, I’ve been dealing with gut dysbiosis related food chemical intolerance, so choosing seed varieties of tomatoes or winter squash is no longer the easy breezy, fun process it used to…
Cosmos Flowers in the Garden
It’s summer, and summer is a good time for a break, a good time to send post cards. Here’s my summer garden post card to you. While the “official” purpose of our garden is to grow food that we can eat, my not so hidden agenda is growing flowers. Yes, they help attract pollinators which…
We Grew It From Seed – Plains Coreopsis
Coreopsis is a plant I’ve been fond of back since my high school days when I had an afternoon job working at a family owned garden center. There’s something reassuring and cheery about this plant’s bright, bobbing flowers. So when I noticed some seeds for plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), a native of the Great Plains,…
We Grew It From Seed – California Poppies
While we still grow some exotic garden flowers in our polyculture garden, such as cosmos and zinnias, this year I decided to add more native annuals to the mix. One of the native wildflowers I planted was California poppies. Our sunken garden rows are on a slight slope, so when I planted the seeds, they…
We Grew It from Seed – Lauren’s Grape Poppy
I’m not sure why, exactly, but I decided to grow several different types of poppies from seed this year. Lauren’s Grape poppy was one of my favorite varieties. With deep purple flowers, this poppy variety was pleasing to the eye – but also to our local pollinators, affording me many pleasurable moments snapping up photos…
Hearthwilde 