I took the opportunity of a cooler morning a couple of days ago to rake up grass clippings. I don't need them at the moment, but when they're available, I get them and store them under an open-front shed. If I have dried clippings over the winter, it gives me something to mulch the early planted crops before grass mowing time comes around again.
I also spent some time weeding and cleaning in the garden. That's how I learned my stocking-covered tomato experiment showed that it's not a way to discourage raccoons.
When I found this tomato, it was broken off the plant. The stocking was still fully on, but the tomato was broken up inside. I wonder if the stocking didn't just give the critter something interesting to work at. He (or she) obviously didn't go after it because it was ripe.
I don't eat my Egyptian walking onions, although I have tasted them - green and bulb - and they're quite mild, almost sweet. The bulbs aren't very bulbous. They bunch together more like shallots, and their layers are thin and slippery, so they don't make a very good raw vegetable. They might work better for cooking, but I just let them grow as an ornamental.
I got the little bulb starts from a visit to Powell Gardens in Kansas City. They were giving them away, and I know why. I have lots I could give away, too, if I could find someone foolish enough to take them. Actually, they don't spread terribly fast, and they are interesting to look at. They look nice enough early on, but by mid summer they've fallen and look rather pathetic. This year, the bunch was large enough that I pulled them all out and replanted a few bulbs, which are produced at the top of the plant from the flower. Since I leave them as a perennial and don't use them for anything, I don't have them in my record, and I have a terrible memory - worse than ever since retiring - so I don't know when I planted them, but they're about seven or eight inches high again. And a borage volunteer is coming up with them. Not to mention a few weeds.
Speaking of volunteers - the volunteer basils are looking lovely. And flowering. I've used the flowers themselves in dishes for nice texture variety. These may be crosses between purple and sweet basils. But they may also be how those varieties came back, since if they were hybrids, and I imagine they were, they wouldn't come back from seed looking like the parent plant anyway.
I've got what I think of as two oregano plants that have come back each year and are now quite large. I'm not altogether certain one of them isn't marjoram, but I think it's also a basil. It's very peppery. The first year I planted the garden, I bought several kinds of herbs from Lakewood Lawn & Garden in Columbia, and I vaguely remember having bought a spicy oregano. I also bought a marjoram, but that may have not made it through winter. I did insert the labels into the ground with the plants, but after mulching and winters, that spicy plant lost its label. I read that the way to tell marjoram from basil is the shape of the flower calyx. This is going to require some more investigation with my microscope and some scientific literature. For now, I think I've got two basils - Greek and spicy. The Greek one has pink flowers, and the spicy one has white. Also, the Greek's leaves are significantly larger.
My Kent Beauty ornamental oregano is still quite small, but holding its own and growing. Flowering, even. I hadn't noticed the actual flowers on the one I planted the first year. The bracts are what's noticeable. This time, since I'm watching it so closely, I see that it does have tiny little flowers. I may not be able to find the seeds. No wonder they're expensive.
Pink flowers at 1 o'clock and between 7 & 8.
The large Mexican sunflower was looking pretty haggard, so I collected the seed from some of the spent blooms and pulled it out. Actually, I cut it out in order to leave a stem stump with roots to feed one stem that had fallen over and is still looking healthy, although it's nearly broken off from the main stem. When I pulled up the other stems, wherever they had rested on the ground, they'd sent out roots. (This may be why the true sunflowers I moved and stuck deep in the ground stayed healthy - they may have, like tomatoes, put out roots along the buried part of the stem.)
This is good to know for future cultivation. If I didn't want to see that length of stem lying on the ground, I could simply cover it with soil and mulch over it.
If you're in mid-Missouri, enjoy your next day or two of nice weather. It's going to heat up again real soon.
'Til next time.
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