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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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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Iron Cross Oxalis

My obsession with oxalis is not undocumented on this site. I’ve got an entire tag dedicated to it. What I haven’t said here is that I’m really not into the large-leaved shamrock-style oxalis you see in stores around St. Patrick’s Day.

Just not my thing.

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to me just how much I have come to adore this ‘Iron Cross’ Oxalis (Oxalis deppei). Although, it’s not exactly a big-leaved type, I’d describe the size as moderate…. somewhere between the big leaved types and the diminutive ones I’ve come to favour.
Read more…

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First Tomato of the Season

We ate our first tomato of the 2011 growing season on June 24, just days after the Summer Solstice. This isn’t the earliest tomato I’ve grown, but it’s been a cold, slow year so by those standards we are right on target.

The winning variety this year is ‘Ditmarsher’ a compact, tumbling determinate variety that takes very well to containers and window boxes. I started the seeds on March 20.

I first heard about this variety from my friend Julianna, the queen of tomatoes in these parts. It quickly became a favourite and one I always plan to turn to as a reliable early-producer. Like ‘Whippersnapper’ (a variety that is often the first producer of the year) it produces loads of pinkish, cherry-sized tomatoes. They just keep coming. Just look at the plant above. It’s laden with flowers that will become future tomatoes. Between it and the three others like it that I have in even larger pots, we should be set for cherry tomatoes for the remainder of the summer months.

If any of my other tomatoes are even half as productive, I’m going to have to go on a serious Nightshade Family fast come fall.

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