zucchini, anyone?
yesterday, my husband and i also went looking for some native plants. they are much better acclimated to our california weather and heat and are known to be drought tolerant. i want to convert at least part of our front lawn into a more decorative garden, mostly with native plants. this will probably happen next year in spring, but i wanted to see what was available close to us. i found a great nursery online called Ploughshares Nursery in Alameda. they are a non-profit company that uses any money made by selling plants to go to supporting programs to help homeless people learn horticulture. they work at the nursery as they learn a trade. how wonderful!
anyways, we went there and i was blown away by a few things...first, around the entrance, they have a grape vine hanging along the fence and it has GRAPES on it. all over. beautiful! then, i saw LARGE winter squash growing on the vine (at least two HUGE orange ones), 7ft-tall sunflower plants with flowers bigger than 2x my head, beautiful tomatoes (still green) growing along side a healthy bush of basil, a large sprawling vine of passion flower along the back fence, and etc...it was just amazing. okay, moving along, we decided upon buying 4 plants...one is a native sweet pea type of plant (it is still very tiny. i saw a bigger version of it and i loved the foliage and flower so the guy went in the back and brought out a tiny plant and 2 seedlings of it for me), a sticky money flower plant (don't you just love that name?), a red salvia and another plant that has wonderfully small blue flowers. here are some group pictures.
here is an orange sticky monkey flower plant. it had the most interesting name, therefore it was actually the only one i remember the name for. only ater i touched the stems of the plant did i realize why it had the word "sticky" in its name. pretty, though.
here is a salvia that we bought too. very pretty, feathery, bluish grey foliage with hummingbird-friendly flowers.
for this one, i totally forgot the name. but it is already quite tall (i'd say over 2 feet) and the tiny flowers atop the long stems have a striking blue color.
after planting the broccoli, i happened to notice the shine of a marble lying amongst the freshly planted plot. i have found a handful of marbles in the right garden. im thinking that the previous owner used these marbles to help with soil aeration.
this photo leaves no doubt...the scalloped-edged seedlings ARE infact broccoli plants. look at that tiny "real" leaf. that looks EXACTLY like the leaves from the broccoli i planted earlier in the left garden, just on a smaller scale.
the zucchini forest still going strong, even after 2 major trims. like the cucumbers, they are also trying to "escape" out towards the lawn for more space.
after some flowers showing up the past week, i spied some baby green beans growing! look at them! aren't they cute? (i really had to use the macro setting on this otherwise you'd need a microscope! remember to click on any of the images to get a bigger version.)
the grape/roma mystery tomato is getting ripe! i think i will pick this today since i will not be in the garden very much the next 2 days.
on sunday, we bought 4 more trellises to support the growing grape plants. i realized that my tiny hemp string will not suffice when these plants get on in age. i don't know how large these grape plants will get but i won't let them take over the entire top garden...i think once they take up all the space on all these trellises, it's time for a trim! and where's the grapes??
the cucumber plants going strong...no problems with cucumber production. this one is turning slightly lighter green than the other one to the right of it. i wonder if it is being affected by the cooler air lately...
a wrap up with a picture of the pretty dahlietta...going strong with many new buds showing.
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