A Growing Curiousity: I'm back.

Well it's been awhile since I've posted. I've been busy coaching two girls softball teams. I was asked to coach an 8 and under recreational team. The local sports association was short a coach, and my friend Jim is on the board and recommended me for the job. This team practices once a week and plays twice a week. I am also helping Jim coach his daughter's 8and under Challenge team. This team practices twice a week and then plays tournaments approximately every third Saturday. The tournaments take all day and if my rec team usually plays early on Saturday so when I finish that game I go right to the tournaments for those games. So as you can tell, it keeps me busy.

Enough of that, though, here are some blooms from the gardens. This first picture is of the Torenia (clown's bells) . It is starting to go to seed and I've been collecting the seeds. The seeds are really tiny, so I just shake the dried plants over a piece of paper and then fold the paper and pour them in a baggie. Around late February I will sow them and then pick the individual seedlings out and pot them up to grow out under the lights until it gets past our first frost date.

This second picture is of some thread leaf zinnias I tried this summer. They are called Chrystal zinnias. They repeat bloom all summer and stay nice and compact. I got them because their seeds were cheaper than Profusion Zinnias, and so I gave them a try. I really liked them, but I still think profusion zinnias are the best bedding zinnias (and perhaps the best bedding annual of all). I grew some pink profusions this summer and collected seeds from them as well. If you continue to collect seed from profusions year after year, eventually they will tend to start to get leggy and not stay nice and compact. I have gone as long as four seasons before starting over with hybrid seeds, so all in all not a bad deal.

These are the last of the zuccinnis for this year. I had tilled under the melon and cucumber bead back in July, but I missed picking some of the fruits and so I got some self seeded zucinni and cukes. I noticed that the self seeded zuccinis were fatter than their parents even at a young age.

I am moving my strawberry bed this fall, so I am taking starts from the old bed. It is best to rotate your strawberry plantings, just as it is with most every crop. I find that I can grow good berries for two years in the same spot, and then the plants will start to die off and not produce. DW and I just love our fresh strawberries in the spring so this is a must do chore!

Here are a few pictures of the cosmos that has self seeded itself all around the grounds here. If you can put up with it's weedy appearance most of the summer, the blooms are beautiful in the late summer/fall. There were many a day when it was all I could do to not pull up the plants this summer because they do look like a common weed. I am so glad I didn't but I am apprehensive about having even more of them in my beds next summer.

I have some ginger growing up through my antique rose. It is right at the corner of the deck where I hang out when grilling. They smell fabulously sweet. They spread by underground stolons, so be careful where you plant them. I have the unwanted task of trying to prevent them from overtaking the rose. So I'll be digging some of them up this winter.

I finally got around to getting some soil sample test kits to send in to the state for testing. I took samples from all four veggie beds and mixed them in this bucket. I also took samples from around the yard for another kit. Once the soil is good and dry, I'll box them up and mail them off to Raleigh for testing. I expect to get the results back in 8 to 10 weeks and we'll see what my soil needs.