The Flower Bed

[sheepdog 10]

I just checked. I'm the only one that has started topics in this forum since Dec. of last year. That's 8 months folks. We may have to change the name of this forum to sheepdog's ramblings or something. Shame, cause it's one of my favorite subjects, gardening that is. Ya'll ought to get away from your computers and crummy dating relationships and try some gardening! So, to ramble on. Yesterday began my seed harvesting of my flower bed. This will be continued until after the first killing frost this fall, so it will be a major project. I just hope it goes better than last year, when I almost didn't get enough seed to plant it back. I'm not sure what happened, the flower heads just seemed to rot away without making seed. I didn't get a whole lot yesterday, some zinna's and my red and orange cosmos are seeding. The regular cosmos hasn't started blooming yet, it's a bit slow and seems to like cooler weather, but it fills in the bed nicely when the zinnias wilt down from the fungus that seems to blight them every year. I also planted a tub full of a different variety of zinnias, Candy Cane and I got some seen from them yesterday too. They are pretty with vary colored flowers, but I've had a hard time keeping them watered, they wilt unless you water them nearly every day. Another new flower for me this year is Sean Connery Cosmos. I think I'm really going to like them, they have the nice fern like folage, and pretty light purple flowers that look more like carnation blooms than the usual larger few petaled regular cosmos. I just hope they aren't both hybreds so the seed is good. I thought my flower bed was toast early this season. Dang Billy Goat bulldozed his way threw the fence and wrecked hell and havoc on my flowers. He topped off every single sun flower plant. I had gotten 2 odd varieties of sunflower, Lemon Queen and Autum beauty, along with the regular Mamoth Russian, I had just enough of the seed to get a good seed start for next year, until that damn goat got to them. I was really ticked off over that one. I took the Billy home to his owner, (he was just on loan) and we put up 2 strands of hot wire on the goats side of the flower bed. That sure fixed 'em. Goats didn't even go back in that pasture for several days, I guess they got stung real good! And fortunatly, my sunflowers all made new flower heads, so it looks like I'll get my seed anyway. The new varieties are really pretty, I'll try to get some pictures of them later on. My other problem with the bed this year was my own stupid fault. I have always layed a soaker hose down the length of the bed right after I seed it, but this year I forgot to put in the soaker hose. Now the past 2 years, I never had to use it, but this year after nearly drowing in rain all spring, when the rain stopped, it STOPPED. It just dried up to nothing. Now I have to hand water the bed every few days, which is a major pain. The plants are too tall now to try to get the hose in with out mashing a bunch of them. Hopefully I can get some pictures for my next rambling.

[sheepdog 10]

Well, the 2011 growing season is rapidly approaching it's end. A hard freeze is predicted for this thursday. I sure hope it hold off, but I probably won't get that lucky. I got a fair amount of Zinnia seed this year, early on, but for some reason, my cosmos was very slow to start blooming. It's actually just now in the past 2 weeks really kicked in gear and started blooming like crazy. I am just afraid that it's not going to have time to set good viable seed for next year before it gets froze out. I've never seen it take so long to bloom before. So I'm holding my breath on those. The merrygolds were slow too, they are just now starting to bloom too. I did notice I have at least 4 distinctive different types of merrygolds grown, some orange, some yellow, some tall and yellow, and some red/orange mixed. All are really pretty. I'll try to save the seed seperatly to see how it does next year. My big failure this year, as usual, is my white cosmos. For I don't know how many years now I've tried to propagate more of the white. My bed is mostly the light purple, probably 60% and then 29% dark purple, and one percent white. Every year I save white seed, and every year when I plant that white seed, it grows up purple for the most part. I planted a large bed of white seed this spring, and guess I got it planted too thick or something, and though I transplanted out a lot of it, 99% of the bed ended up dying off before it ever bloomed. It's getting pretty frustrating. I guess it doesn't breed true to color. My new variety of zinnia, Candy Cane, did nicely, I just had a tub full of those planted, I'll attatch a picture of them. I've been watching the last of the blooms, trying to wait until they were fully mature before I harvest them for seed, and I am amazed at how long they hold their flowers and keep good colors to the blooms. As a matter of fact, they almost seem to be blooming out more from the center of the original bloom with new petals! They are pretty amazing. I think they are going to make a great addition to future years of flower bed plantings. The Sean Connery Cosmos were a bit of a dissapointment. The blooms were beautiful, but they set practicly no seed whatsoever. I only got maybe 4-5 blooms that made seed. I do hope it's not a hybred, I tried looking it up but couldn't find any information on them. Maybe I'll have better luck with those next year, at least, if they aren't hybred, as I did get a few seeds.