[Cross-posted at My Left Wing]
Good morning, and may you live in a B movie! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
We've had another week of fall here on the Colorado front range. Although still no threat of frost -- lows have stayed in the 40's -- the highest we've been is the low 80's; yesterday was drizzly and in the low 60's, with more of the same today. Which is really a bummer, as I need a day of dry weather to rescue the veggie patch from the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
And I need to see if another of these Vegetables from Outer Space is ready for picking.
This is graffiti cauliflower; a great success. The white cauliflower I planted bolted during our early spring heat but the graffiti came through with flying saucer colors.
Only problem is this first head got a little over large, so it isn't as tender as I'd like. With the The Big Move, and its aftermath, I wasn't paying close enough attention, and it got away from me, almost to the point of bolting. Although I suppose it would be gorgeous if it bolted, with shoots of purple flowers. The taste is good, and the purple remains with cooking -- it even tints cheese sauce purple.
As to the Killer Tomatoes, jeez louise. Damned vines are everywhere, and getting through to pick the ripe tomatoes -- and there are a lot of them -- is truly an adventure. I think I need a machete. To make it worse, a wild morning glory escaped my notice so is now thoroughly entwined amongst the tomato vines. Tomorrow -- if it does, as promised, stop raining -- I need to hunt down the base of the morning glory so I can cut it, and at least get that amount of foliage out of my way.
I could go on with my veggie patch woes, but think I'll switch instead to what is going right. Like this lovely little salvia. These were among the annuals I bought in early July, when Paulino Gardens had started marking down its annuals. I really like this salvia; I've actually planted it before, earlier in the season, but have never had it thrive like it did this year. It's planted near my favorite catmint (calamintha nepeta nepeta), and the pale peach flowers of the salvia are beautiful against the backdrop of the lacy white catmint.
Also, I need your help! We need to add some plants to the new office and, as I'm not a houseplant maven, I'm open to suggestions. They'll need to be able to survive on mostly fluorescent lighting (they'll get a little sunlight when office doors are open, but that's it); not too large (they'll be sitting atop file cabinets, providing a living screen); and, of course, interesting for me to look at.
An alternative to low-light plants would be ones easily moveable, which can be rotated every couple of weeks from one of the outside offices -- two have southern exposure, two have eastern exposure. I'm wondering if we did this if, perhaps, I might be able to get some sort of flowering plant rotation going.
And now, on to garden blogging calendar news. We have closed photo submissions; if you go to our Flckr page you can see the submissions. We are now winnowing out those photos of sufficient size/resolution for being the feature photo of the month, and, after those decisions have been made, will continue on to selecting photos to be used as filler in the calendar grid.
We then need to figure out how to go about how to set up an on-line ordering/payment system, and how we will handle shipping; is there anyone with any expertise in these areas willing to lend us your advice? If so, please e-mail me at frankenoid at conen dot net. The calendars will be ready for the holiday shopping season.
So, what's going on in your gardens?