Specialty Gardening: Cottage Garden Seed Swap & Chat #13, 1 by Illoquin

Illoquin wrote:
Thanks to everybody who was worried about me :))

Meredith, Yes to the seeds for the red dianthius, thank you for thinking of me! - that's really pretty!

Wind, My Mina germinated just fine, but I have to agree on the Purple Majesty Millet -- mine is green, too. No, I never got Gartenmeister Fuchsia; the little garden center had all different things this year. They also didn't have my pale butter yellow Lantana, and though I got some seeds to germinate, they were flooded out with all the rain. On the other hand, the peppers with the black foliage are actually black. (I pulled out the seedlings which were green, and just kept the ones with some black, but I didn't really think they would darken up like they have. Pretty!)

Star, I have Knautia 'Melton Pastels" from Bluestone. I bought 6 last year. They are supposed o be all different colors, but mine are all the same color: vivid jarring magenta. They have a basal rosette of foliage with some crazy bare tall weird stems coming up and little flowers on them sort of like a smaller Scabiosa daisy. I had a million flowers and they just happened to bloom at a time where there was nothing near them, so they looked ok. Now the oranges and scarlets are up and it is a riot of color, but I can honestly say no one would plan it!

Luckily I didn't have the time to even glance at the T&M sale!

Tuink, You could probably supply a couple of florists with all those cut flowers you're going to have! What is the name of the one flower (pink with a white zone) that you said was your favorite?

Lala, The Coral Nymph Salvia gets gigantic -- you wil love it even more 6 weeks from now! Oddly, mine didn't reseed at all. There MUST have been a Million seeds that fell to the ground -- where'd they go? NO RESEED! Harumph!

Star, Girl, what are you doing? You sent osteospermum pluvials tetra sunshine Giants to the swap, didn't you? I got some Tetra Sunshine something from you! In any case, I had them, the plants were big...as big as garden center plants. I put them out...and the BUNNIES ate them! They also had a bachelor's buttons buffet, but those came back...as if they had been pinched. They are just now blooming when they should have bloomed a month ago, but at least they didn't eat them to the ground.

Lea you are dry enougth for cracks??? Oh my! How did all the rain get past you without falling down? :) Sweep or put some sand in those cracks and you can see how far they go down. I love those veins of sand!!!

Pam, Your border is wonderful!!! I am so jealous that I don't have a nice long shallow border just like it!!! (Fairy, yours is the same idea, complete with a fence in the back...I am jealous of yours, too, but Pam posted first and got top billing.

Fairy, What a surprise on that Mystic Merlin Malva! It doesn't look anything like the catalog pics, or at least not how I imagined it based on the pics. I really like it -- very full. I'd like to hear for you in about a month and see if the Japanese Beetles have eaten it to nubs or not. Also, I wanted to tell yo the compost tumbler has a flaw in the design. To get the compost in 2 weeks (ha!) you need ot have a couple of pices of rebar welded or bolted inside to make an x. That way, when stuff tumbles, it will hit the bars and break apart better. Just tell your grand pa that and he'll know what I mean. The x is stationery and bolted to the drum.

Meredith, Your Silene is pretty -- 750 seeds to a pack...hmmmm?

Wind, that Petunia and ornamental oregano is a really pretty combination!!!! Tell me about the ornamental oregano - is it perennial?

I have a million pics on my camera and some tings I missed in full bloom. Some really , really pretty double semi-pale pink poppies. They look actual;y okay where they are -- on the paler side of my bright hot orange and coral border. The Hollyhocks are jumbo-big. I am serious -- they are like 36"-48" across and I have several of them.

The dahlias, Zinnias and other heat lovers are looking sick. It is just so cool here, esp at night. We are almost always in the 70s by this time in June, and this year we are still in the low 60s.

My fave combination is those little short daisies (I'll get a name, I just forget right this second, but they are like a regular daisy, just only 9" tall.) with a yellow scabiosa-flowered Calendula called Kabloona Yellow.

My least fave combination was orange Calendula with the pink, rose, and red peonies--- YUCK!

The hydrangeas I started from cuttings last year are all blooming - I have about a dozen of them (only 2 or 3 flowers, each, but still, not bad for free.

The pic is "ragged Silene"...I think it's Silene Ragged Robin, but I'd have to check for a tag. I cut them back after bloom and only saved a few seeds, but that is only like 5 or 6 plants in the pic, so you don't need many!

Suzy





This message was edited Jun 24, 2008 2:06 AM