Bizarro Beans

In my plot in the Miami Township Community Garden, I decided to grow some types of beans that not only had I never grown myself, but that I had never seen growing anywhere! In my 4x10' space, I planted two outer rows of 'Fordhood 242' bush lima beans, one inner row of 'Black Turtle' black beans, and one inner row of garbanzo beans.

The weather has been warm and wet, and I've been busy with the plantings in our yard, so it had been a couple weeks since I checked on my plot. As I entered the community garden, off in the distance I saw these tendrils waving in the breeze like the arms of some science fiction creature. And then I realized...those were my lima beans!

Since I bought bush lima beans, I had naturally assumed that they would grow like bush green beans—about 12-18" high. But perhaps in the lima bean world, "bush" means "less than four feet tall."

The black beans looked like I expected, but what were these plants that looked almost like mimosas or polemoniums?

Those, it turns out, are the garbanzo beans! I'm extremely eager to see how these delicate plants produce those big, fat chick peas!

Anyway, it looks like I'm going to have to take my pea fences over there to give the lima beans something to climb on. And I hope that the black beans and garbanzo beans don't end up shaded by the limas—had I known the lima beans would grow this way, I would have planted them on the two inside rows. Yet another garden lesson!

Becky's Back!

Last year I started some Rudbeckia x hirta 'Cherry Brandy' from seed, and got a few itty bitty plants that were nibbled by bunnies and otherwise didn't put on much of a show. And since it's ostensibly not a perennial (like Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm'), I thought that was all I was gonna get.

Come autumn, I cut back the flower stalks, but left the plants in the ground, just to see what would happen. Many years ago, I gave a friend some Rudbeckia hirta 'Indian Summer', which is also supposedly an annual, but she said it kept coming back year after year. So maybe, just maybe, I thought, my 'Cherry Brandy' would, too.

And it did!

Early in the spring, the plants did sustain some critter damage, but not enough to discourage them from forming beautiful clumps!

I couldn't be happier with its performance in the garden. It started blooming a couple weeks ago, and shows no signs of stopping or even fading. I know that its cousin, Echinacea, provides long-lasting cut flowers, so I really ought to bring some Beckys into the house to enjoy them there as well...

...although the butterflies would miss them.

On a Lark(spur)

One of my former neighbors had a huge patch of larkspur, which I remembered as a dense mass of airy foliage topped with multi-colored Delphinium-like flower spikes. So this year I decided to give it a try myself. I started Consolida ajacis 'Sydney' from seed, and was very pleased at how vigorously it grew under the lights.

You would think that I would read the package to find out how closely they should be spaced, but I didn't. I had it in my head that each plant would branch, producing several flower spikes per seedling, and therefore should be planted maybe 6-8" apart.

It was a nice theory, but bore no resemblance to reality, at least not so far. My little larkspurs look like isolated specimens rather than the mass planting I had hoped for. Plus, with no support, they do tend to fall over quite a bit. And they're much shorter than the ones I remember my neighbor growing, although hers might have been a different variety.

Still, they are pretty. My seeds were supposed to provide a mix of colors, and there are three of them, but it's like 45% pink...

...45% white...

...and 10% violet. (And by 10% I mean one.)

Oddly, almost all the pink ones are on the left side of the patch, and almost all the white ones are on the right side, along with the lone viloet flower. How did that happen??

Anyway, larkspur is an annual, so pehaps it will self-seed, and next year I'll have enough of them that they'll hold each other up and be a little heartier. I have often found that to be the case with annuals—the ones that self-sow or over-winter do soooo much better than the ones I start indoors. I sometimes wonder if I should forget about starting annuals under the lights, and just direct-sow the seeds in late summer/early autumn and let nature take its course.

Tic-Tac-Toe Gardening

If Mel Bartholomew can get a whole book out of square foot gardening, then surely I can get a blog post out of my own invention, tic-tac-toe gardening.

It started with my favorite cole slaw recipe, which calls for cabbage and scallions. Last year, I grew just the cabbage, but this year I decided to grow the scallions as well. However, I didn't want to dedicate an entire 4x4' bed to them—the recipe calls for only four scallions per head of cabbage—so what to do?

Well, the book on companion planting that I read this year said that cabbage and scallions grow well together, so I decided to pair them up. And the way I did it was to sow the scallions in four intersecting rows that formed a grid, like in tic-tac-toe. Then I planted the cabbages in the "boxes". (Since cabbage heads are round, I guess they're the O's—not sure what I would use for X's. But perhaps I'm taking the metaphor a bit too far.)

Anyway, it was a whimsical way to create my cole slaw patch!

I Like Big Butterfly Bushes

One of our best seed-starting success stories has got to be our butterfly bushes. When we added this border in June of 2007, you couldn't even see the nine buddleia that we planted along the back.

By August, they had grown significantly, no doubt thanks to the soaker hoses that we ran constantly throughout that drought-ridden summer. They got almost as tall as the gazing ball.

This year, you can barely see the gazing ball for the buddleia!

Each of the shrubs produces dozens of flowers...

...that look kind of like lilacs...

...and earn their nickname!

'Foxy' Ladies

The foxglove is beginning to wind down in the garden. We started the seeds for Digitalis 'Foxy' last year, and they bloomed for the first time this year (typical for a plant that's normally a biennial, although I thought this was an annual variety). 'Foxy' is a little on the short side for a foxglove (perhaps only 20 inches tall)...

...but it did end up producing some lovely flowers. There were some pure white stalks...

...a very pale pink...

...and of course the classic purple with its spotted throat.

I've been letting the flowers dry and drop in the hope that they'll do a little self-seeding, and we'll see how many come back next year!

Big on Little Henry

One thing that I've learned over the years is that any flower border really benefits from having flowering shrubs as well as herbaceous plants. Shrubs typically provide structure and year-round interest, and one that I particularly appreciate is Itea 'Little Henry', also known as sweetspire.

'Little Henry' is a compact, slow-growing shrub that has white flower spikes from mid-May to early June. They look like a mass of fuzzy white caterpillars floating in the air. The flowers are very attractive to bees, who hopefully visit the adjacent veggie garden when they've had their fill of Itea nectar.

And if flowers in the spring weren't enough, 'Little Henry' has spectacular fall color.

What more could you want in a shrub?

Peas-ful, Easy Feeling

I harvested the last of the 'Sugar Sprint' sugar snap peas today—a variety that I've grown in the past, and it didn't disappoint. The plants are half as tall as the 'Super Sugar Snap' that I planted last year, and yet yielded more. My little 4x4' bed produced just shy of five pounds!

I picked the first three pounds at just the right time, when the pods were 2-3 inches long but hadn't starting filling out, and we're still eating our way through them. I was tardier with the last picking, and they got way too plump, so even though they're intended to be eaten in the pod, I decided to shell them.

I can definitely tell the difference between shelling peas and sugar snap peas! Shelling peas have thin pods that open easily and yield about 8 peas per pod, while sugar snaps fight to keep their 2-4 peas. Still, it's a pleasant experience, sitting out on the back porch, listening to the birds and shelling peas. And an equally pleasant experience eating them!