General growing and maintenance guidelines. Your plants and how to care for them…
New alpine strawberry plants were put in a bit late in my community garden plot, so we’re getting our first berries from these plants well after most of the everbearing cultivated plants have finished their first flush.
If you’ve never had alpine strawberries, they’re intensely flavoured, not unlike wild strawberries. They have an almost spongy texture and remind me a little of dehydrated strawberries… yet not.
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Red currants I harvested from our bush last weekend. It doesn’t look like much in this big basket, but it amounted to about 1 1/2 pounds of berries once the stems were removed.
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Question: I am in South Mississippi and my Mother wants to know where you get the pink watermelon radish seed and how she can get some? – Betty
Hi Betty,
Watermelon radish are a fairly unknown winter radish that are beginning to gain popularity. The seeds themselves aren’t particularly easy to find; however, the radishes have begun to show up in farmers’ markets. Look for them in the fall.
While chances are slim that you’ll be able to buy seeds at your local garden shop, they are readily available online. Search for them by one of their many names, including: Red Meat radish, Beauty Heart, Chinese Red Meat, Asian Red Meat, Watermelon radish, Rose Heart, Misato radish, Xin Li Mei (心里美), Shinrimei, or Roseheart.
I found my pack of seeds back in the spring at a local seed sale. The company I purchased them from, Greta’s Organic Gardens is Canadian and located in the Ottawa area. I’m pretty sure they ship to the U.S.
A few other online sellers include:
Back in the spring, I mentioned in an interview that I would be growing these radishes for the first time this year. What the interview doesn’t include is that ‘Watermelon’ is a large, winter radish that does not fair well in the spring. The best time to start them is in the late summer/early fall as the days grow cooler. There’s still lots of time to order seeds and get on growing a crop this year!
Oh, and if you’re wondering how to eat them, the flesh inside is deceptively sweet and tender. We eat them raw, just like a regular radish, but chop the harder skin off first. We also grate or slice it thinly on top of salads, and they also taste yummy pickled.
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I’ve never been able to determine why borage (Borago officinalis) flowers, which are typically blue, sometimes turn pink. Some books mention the possibility of pink and even white flowers but don’t account for why they appear.
I don’t think it is related to soil pH as is the case with some flowers.
Could it be fertility? I’ve been amending and improving on the soil at my community garden for years and am noticing more borage flowers this year than ever before.
This leads to the possibility of weather as a factor since it’s been unseasonably cool and rainy around here. But then again, it was awfully rainy last year and I don’t remember spotting any pink flowers at m plot.
Borage has been self-seeding in my community garden plot for as long as I’ve had it, most likely inherited from Peter, the gardener that came before me. Plenty of little seedlings come up around the plot but I don’t find it to be as aggressive as dill, feverfew, or artemisia. Do not get me started on the invasive nature plant! We’ve been locking horns for years and the artemisia always comes out on top.
Every year I let most of the plants grow to a certain size before I start culling. Borage tends to fair better in poor soils. The borage at my community plot have grown taller and lankier as I’ve improved the fertility of the soil. I let the stockiest plants with the thickest stems stay put as long as they’re not in a spot predestined for something more important like a tomato, zucchini, or pepper. Some plants have grown to be taller than me with stems as thick as 2″ or more!
I add the flowers to salads and drinks, and sometimes eat the very young, most tender leaves raw. Many books suggest adding the chopped leaves, which have a slight cucumber flavor, to cream cheese but I have never tried this.
The best recipe I have been able to come up with for the pricklier leaves and stems are fritters. To make them simply make up a batter, add chopped onion and borage leaves and fry spoon-sized dollops in hot canola oil. You can quickly blanch the leaves and stems if they seem too hard.
Borage is also an anti-inflammatory that is sometimes used in beauty products such as creams and toners to treat skin conditions.
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A friend gave me a pack of these “I Double Heart Jesus” hair bobbles years back and I’ve been trying to find an excuse to keep them ever since.
I lived the bulk of my life with long hair until I cut it all off around age 30. Chances are good that I’m well over the long hair phase. Say in the future I did fancy long hair again, would I really tie it back with “I Double Heart Jesus” flower-shaped hair bobbles? While pushing 40? And not attending raves or under the influence of any drugs whatsoever?
Never say never, I suppose.
I’m on a Get Rid of it All bender lately, which is oddly corresponding with a Must Preserve Everything bender. So basically I’m casting things aside and hoarding simultaneously. There’s a paradox. When I’m not spending my free time canning, I’m digging through drawers and closets searching for items to purge.
And then I came upon the “I Double Heart Jesus” hair bobbles. Stay or go? They can stay, but only with the provision that they serve a purpose.
And that is when it occurred to me that a hair bobble would make a simple to add and remove tie (just pop it on and off) for my growing tomatoes.
Some would be horrified. Some would say I am cluttering my garden with junk (too many pieces of flare!) and should stick to tasteful ties such as carefully knotted lengths of jute or quietly camouflaged pieces of green wire. I like those too, but right now, I’m enjoying the giggle I get whenever I spot an “I Double Heart Jesus” flower-shaped hair bobble while watering or tending to my plants.
One can’t always practice good taste. It can get a bit dull.
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