Green Babies up for Adoption

About two months ago I started planning to have a big yardsale. In the process I thought it would be great to sell some seedlings - there was a bowl full of seeds from last year's "Autumn" variety that would never all be used in my yard. About of about 30 paper cups I ended up with a couple dozen with babies. And on the day of the yardsale...I was so occupied with so many things that I forgot to set out the seedlings!

So there are a couple dozen baby "Autumn" sunflowers in need of good home 'cause I can't keep and grow them all. Let me know if you're in the Southbay area and you'd like one (or several). Last year their mothers grew to 5'-8' feet tall and had multiple flower heads. The bees were in love with them, can't remember any time between sunrise and sunset that they didn't have several bees hovering around. Below is a picture of them, for comparisson the fence is 42" high.

Wow, we always had the cats fixed so we wouldn't have this type of problem and it's happened anyway!

the Waiting Game

My Green Children are forcing me to be patient...

I have so many seedlings started and seeds I'm waiting to see sprout. I really want to be sure I'm starting enough of the flowers to fill mom's beds well. Some of the plants I started for my mom are almost ready to transplant...but the new flower beds aren't even started yet. My parents keep changing their minds about what they're doing to the yard. Last night we had a quick gruop talk to go over the contractor's recommendations. Because of the bad drainage in the yard it seems we're going to start completely from scratch so he can re-grade. Seems dad is going to spend more on this than planned-but improvements to their house are long overdue and that's the price of procrastinating. I may further edit the yard plan since we don't have to worry about only disturbing some areas... But if they don't start work soon I will have to scour the 99 cent store for larger cups/containers for the flower...

Two nights ago I set some seeds to pre-soak. Usually I only do that for the chard, beets and sweet peas, but I thought I'd give it a try for my next round of seeds. I was suprised to see the basil seeds developed an odd jelly coating.

The Blue Butterfly Bush I moved a couple of weeks ago went into shock. It did fine the first week, hence my happy post, but with the unusually early hot weather not so much. Since Friday it's been losing leaves and showing some signs of pallor. It got it's weekly watering on Sat, and I watered it again last night. This morning I lightly watered again with some liquid fertilizer to make sure it's getting nutrients. Now I need to leave it alone a few days and cross my fingers.

And I want my veggies! It's been a month or two since some of my larger veggies have been growing in their beds/permanent containers. I'm most surprised that the Cauliflower which are actually in the ground still haven't started growing their heads. The cabbage are getting pretty big leaves, but no cabbage head yet :/ But I'm most excited about my broccoli! They've been developing heads for a couple of weeks, one is nearly ready (I need to check info on the best moment to harvest). They're hanging basket is currently sheltered  by the storage shelves, the current heatwave was not playing nice with them (nor the kale, chard and lettuce).

the Blue Butterfly Bush is doing well

Well last Saturday I moved the Butterfly Bush. I've been watching it closely ever since to make sure it's doing alright in it's new pot and it seems so. No saggy wilting leaves or branches and no major loss of leaves. I have high hopes for this bad boy this year :)

I want to add something around it's base but I haven't decided what yet. Perhaps some Creeping Jenny, the variety growing in my flower bed has peachish flowers instead of the typical yellow that would look nice with the blue flowers of this bush. Or I might fall back on the pink/purple Alyssum...