Pink and Yellow Radishes

This year I decided to try two new radishes in my newly built raised beds and have had equal success with both.

The first is ‘Zlata’ a small radish from Poland that is generously described as soft yellow (and often Photoshopped that way in online seed catalogues), but in my opinion turned out something much closer to beige. I didn’t pull any Photoshop trickery with the above image; that’s the colour they’ve been consistently coming up as. The interior is white. Regardless of colour, it is a good mild and crisp radish. It’s doing great with recent heatwaves and drought. My ‘Sparkler’ and ‘French Breakfast’ radishes have run out of steam, but the ‘Zlatas’ seem to be pulling through. I bought mine from Solana Seeds but they seem to be fairly widely available now.

Equally crisp and mild are ‘Pink Punch’ a variety I ordered from Renee’s Garden. Some seeds were sent to me by Renee’s for trial while others were purchased and I can’t recall which category these seeds fall under so I’m making that disclosure in case they weren’t a purchase. ‘Pink Punch’ is a very apt name for this variety as they remind me of my homemade Pink Lemonade. I will definitely grow these again next spring, but for now it is onto ‘Rattail’ radishes as the heat is too high for the regular root kind.

More can be found here about growing radishes as well as growing in containers.

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The Aliens Have Landed

Stemless Thistle (Onopordum acaulon), hands down the most memorable plant of our trip to Denver.

I REALLY want to grow this one in my own garden and am now looking for some seeds to purchase.* I have a soft spot for thistles, so much so that I won’t pull the wild growing ones when they are seedlings, only to suffer the consequences later.

* Some places have declared this plant an invasive pest. Worth looking into before adding it to your garden.

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Chance Xeriscaping

This image functions as a good demonstration of just how dry gardening is in Denver without the benefit of a hose. This landscape is nothing more than a random scattering of common mullein (Verbascum thapsus) with a few hot pink-flowered hollyhocks and dry land grasses thrown in. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a garden in the traditional meaning of the word since it looked to be completely untended and the product of a few resilient volunteer plants.

And yet it works. I’m sorry I didn’t capture it with the digital camera, but the silvery verbascum alongside tall, hot pink hollyhocks really made a stand-out pair. I was intrigued enough to ask our friend to stop the car and let me out so that I could take a few (or several) photos with all four of the cameras that I had in tow. I didn’t make that request for any of the “proper” gardens we saw. But then again, I am a sucker for the soft, statuesque grace of verbascum.

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Nylon Hedgehog Cactus

Davin and I were taken with this flowering cactus (Echinocereus viridiflorus)
in the Alpine Garden at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

Here’s an in context shot so that you can see how the plant was growing in a stone trough.

I looked the genus up on the United States Department of Agriculture Plants Database and was shocked to find that some species of Echinocereus are distributed around parts of Colorado and the surrounding states.

I can’t believe how much unexpected plant knowledge was picked up on our short trip. I really want to go back to this part of the United States again. There was so much to see that interested me. I can’t wait to show you more.

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Colorado on the Way to Nebraska

Yesterday we drove to Nebraska to see some fields. That was not a difficult task to achieve and is in keeping with what I expected.

But what has surprised me on this trip is just how dry it is here.

Take this picture, shot in Colorado on the way back from Nebraska. This is High Plains and Front Range land that sits in a rain shadow, and not the lush farmland I wrongly imagined.

I love it! I didn’t prepare myself much for this trip. I decided not to look at tons of pictures online or try to imagine what I would see. I came here with little knowledge, leaving open the possibility to be happily surprised.

Mission accomplished.

What’s that hiding in the grass? Opuntia! Hardy opuntia grows everywhere here. I’ve learned so much about the plant by seeing how it grows in the wild and how it protects itself at these high elevations. This has been the happiest surprise so far. A dream come true.

I’ve shot lots of images of all kinds of hardy opuntia and will do a larger post when I get back home on what I’ve observed here.

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