I love having fresh flowers in vases scattered throughout the house, but many times it means hacking away all the flowers in my garden and not being able to enjoy them outside.
A good solution to this is a cutting garden. Many common varieties of flowers make excellent candidates for a cutting garden. Check out this list of 45 fantastic cut flowers at Organic Gardening. Simply plant extra of the flowers you wish to cut to avoid having bare spots when you do pick flowers, or separate the plants you have and place them into a separate garden designated as a cutting garden, and get cutting!
I came across a packet of seeds for Cleome, or spider plant, when purchasing my seeds to plant veggies this year. Intrigued by the unusual flowers, I threw a few seeds into my greenhouse kit and waited to see what happened.
Here are the plants a few months later. As you can see they’ve grown big and bushy, and are thriving in the outdoor (and the recent heat).
It looks like soon there will be a big round of brightly colored flowers blooming. The flowers are a great attractant to butterflies and hummingbirds, and the plant is drought tolerant.
The plant is self seeding, grows three to five feet tall, and blossoms from early summer until frost.
It’s not every day that I go to the grocery store and fall in love. But when I saw this little Micro-Tom tomato plant sitting outside the store with its buddies, all for just $1.99 each, I couldn’t resist.
The Micro-Tom is “world’s smallest tomato variety,” and was developed at the University of Florida. Plants grow up to 8 inches tall and produce tomatoes about one inch in diameter, or the size of a crouton.
I can’t wait for the fruits on this little plant to ripen. But for now he’s keeping the basil and parsley company on the back deck, strangely sitting somewhat in their shadows and getting partial sun, but lots of TLC from me.
While I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it is already July (where do the days go?), it’s time to start thinking about mid-summer gardening to-dos.
My gardening to dos are as follows:
- Water all containers regularly.
- Prune and deadhead all perennials to stimulate further blooms.
- Pull spent annuals and replace with fall bloomers such as mums.
- Weed, weed, weed.
- Pull the lettuce that’s bolted and sow some new seeds.
- Keep picking raspberries and strawberries, keeping an eye out for evidence of pests.
- Divide the bearded iris before they take over everything.
- Prune and fertilize roses.
- Keep checking on those tomato plants, watering regularly and watching for any color (other than green, of course) on the fruit.
- Keep cutting and using the herbs in the garden to encourage further growth.
- Enjoy my garden! As fast as summer arrived, fall will be here and the temperatures won’t be nearly as friendly and encouraging for outdoor activities.
What’s on your to-do list this month?
I love to put a new spin on a classic. So when I was planning my Fourth of July centerpiece, my mind wandered to all the flowers and plants growing in the flower beds around our house and in the garden. I was reluctant to simply pick a few flowers and put them in a vase - where was the creativity in that? - when I thought of something I had seen in a flower shop a while back. The florist had taken ordinary daisies and dyed the petals in pretty colors.
They’re super simple to make, and a fun project for both adults and kids. Simply pick some daisies and put them in a vase (a different vase for each color). Add fresh water to the vase, then a few drops of liquid food coloring in the desired color. Leave overnight, and by morning your daisies’ petals should have taken on the color of the dyes.
