Violas, dianthus, snapdragons, kale, swiss chard - bright lights, various colors of lettuce. I love using the traditional salad greens as part of the landscaping....

Lynne

Lots more California Poppies and sweet peas this year. Last year was my first year to try these flowers, and I loved them. I'm not sure if they will re-seed for me, so I am going to plant additional seeds just in case.

I thought of my California gardening buddies when they burst into bloom. :-)

Also, I'm going to try Hellebore for the first time. Thanks, Debbie!

In November, I'll plant small pots of pansies, snaps and cyclamen for winter color.

Marilyn

Oh Debbie, it takes you to talk about Fall gardening in the middle of all this Summer heat! I love your idea of the beets with scarlet violas! Hum, I may give it a try this year, thank you for that idea. I also have your hellebores to try out and will probably do more pansies as well. I will try to sow them earlier this year, probably mid September, as pansies sowed later in previous years were very slow for me. Some of my previous year's cyclamen are holding up through the Summer and one is actually starting to bloom, so I look forward to them as well.

I can hardly wait for cooler weather to come our way. Looking forward to Fall decorations. Hope Nicki posts her Halloween's craze again this year :-)

In the meantime, still a lot of August to go through :-( To distract me from the heat I've been in a cooking frenzy - I made melon ice cream, damson pie and damson preserve this afternoon. The quince tree is so heavily loaded with fruit this year that the boughs are almost touching the ground! If all goes well I will go in a "marmelada" frenzy come October :-)

Eduarda

We are looking forward to the peaches in a few weeks. I bought an ice cream maker this year, last year when the peaches were ready they were all sold out!

This will be my first year with seeds.....so I will be experimenting. I didn't realize I could sow them so early!
that is good to know!

Haziemoon

Haziemoon, you can only sow frost tolerant things now, and only if you get frost late enough to have the annuals make their entire growth cycle first. So you could probably plant lettuce now, it takes about 8 weeks to harvest if I remember correctly. But being zone 6 I am not sure this works for you. For us in zones 9 and 10, who garden all year, we have 2 growing seasons. For your winter sowed seed, you need to wait longer, I THINK.

Eduarda, too bad we are not close enough to share the harvest. I picked my nectarine tree this week and still need to do something with them. Likewise, I have more tomatoes than I can eat right now, but no cucumbers and no sign of a melon.

Debbie, tomatoes are simply wonderful made into jam. I don't have the room to grow them in my garden, but we are in a tomato producing area here, so I always take advantage of the best of tomato crop, around the August timeframe, and buy a few kgs for jam making. Really easy to do as well - remove peel and seeds, weight the resulting mix. Add the same amount of weight in sugar (a little less if you don't want it too sweet, but it needs to be high in sugar so as to keep), mix both together, add a couple of cinnamon sticks and simmer over a gentle heat until setting point is reached. Yummy on a slice of good bread on a chilly Winter day and a nice Christmas present as well, as the jam is a wonderful red color! :-)

Can you do ice cream with part of your nectarine crop? I've never tried it, but surely you can make jam as well. My Mom used to do peach jam and nectarines are not that different.

In July I made fig jam and greengage jam - two of my favorite. I love to do jams around the Summer time so as to have them around for Winter.

Haziemoon, ditto on what Debbie said regarding Fall seed sowing. For Winter sowing you need to wait until Winter's Solstice in December, which officially marks the calendar for the winter sowing frenzy :-) There's a forum here at gardenweb on that subject alone, have a look in case you haven't spotted it before.

Eduarda

Debbie and Eduarda,

Fresh nectarines, quince, tomatoes, figs...all I can say is Yummy!

Marilyn