Asian greens are so yummy! I've had great luck with bok choi and some mustard green I can't remember the name of. Haven't heard of Portugese kale -- it looks a bit like collard greens! How do they compare?

I almost bought some "unusual" New Zealand spinach and Armenian cucumber seeds the other day, but then I told myself I only have so much room in my postage-stamp of a yard...

There's a bunch of tulsi (a.k.a. holy basil) coming up indoors, which isn't as common in some gardens, as well as a few fun experiments I recently started: growing strawberries, blueberries, and herbs from organic grocery store produce*, as well as checking the germination rate on my parrot's seed mix. (pretty high apparently, which means the seeds are fresh.)

Outside it's still a bit of a wind-blown wasteland, but I'm hoping the cover crop I put out -- a mix of clovers and legumes -- will hold the soil down while I give those beds a rest this year. I also hand-sowed a bunch of old annual flower seeds in the vole-eaten back bed. If they don't come up or freeze, no worries, I'll just plant it with more sacrificial plants later.

On the porch various marigolds, violas and calendulas are popping their first true leaves. Every year I tell myself I'll start porch flowers earlier, like in February, but I always forget to do it! So I end up with lovely flowers....by July-August. Ah, well.

So that's the report from up here in Fort Fun. :)

--L

*I already have avocado trees, a lychee tree, a date palm, and a pineapple plant from earlier produce experiments. I guess I get bored over our long winters!

Good Heavens, Laura

I've had all these years in the garden and I'm ..

. behind the eight ball !

Steve

Laura said, "Haven't heard of Portugese kale -- it looks a bit like collard greens! How do they compare?

I have taken a little time and I am still not sure how to respond to this. Portuguese kale and collards look much the same. They are both in the cabbage family - sisters in the species. However, so are the Scotch and Italian kales and they are quite a bit different, taste and appearance.

The only way that I came to appreciate collards was by eating the greens after hard frost. I was surprised that this not only tenderized them but moderated their flavor. (I was also surprised how frost-hardy this Southern garden icon is.)

Portuguese kale flavor is more like cabbage than the other kales, IMO.

Steve

Cool! Thanks for the feedback Steve. I love trying new greens. This year I'm also going to attempt in containers:

• Perpetual Spinach (a type of chard)
• "Mild Mix" microgreens (beets and others)
• "Siamese Stir Fry" mix (all sorts of asian greens, including a few I'm not familiar with like Tong Ho chrysanthemum.)
• "Dazzling blue" kale (a flat lacinato type)
• Pink Dandelion (A.k.a. Taraxacum pseudoroseum. The flowers are so cool! And they don't re-seed everywhere like regular dandelion. From Kazakhstan.)

--L

Oh hey!

I planted "perpetual spinach" twice. The first time, the seed packet was small and the plants were attacked by leaf miners. At that time, I didn't realize that what might be the best way to control the pests was simply removing and destroying individual leaves. Instead, I was just discourage ... The second time, it may have been in a too sunny location and the plants didn't grow well.

I have had good luck with Verde de Taglio chard. It is a thin stem chard and I much prefer those - don't like the heavy stem, wonderfully colored, or not.

I'm not much of a fan of lacinato. Siberian kale is more to my preference (along with the Portuguese). I wonder if the only thing that separates it from "Russian" is color but I like it.

Never, ever tasted a chrysanthemum!

I have an Italian dandelion for 2022, also. If we just stick with the common name, it won't be the first time that I've eaten dandelion. However, this will be the first time with a Cichorium intybus. So, you see, not the same as yours ...

Steve

Cichorium intybus is a kind of chicory, I think? But yeah, the leaves totally look like ginornmous dandelions.

Verde de Taglio looks kinda like the Perpetual Spinach chard. I might have to try that one out, too. Thanks for the recommend.

As for the mums -- I've never tried them, either! Will try to give a taste report....

--L

I WAS out in the distant garden a couple of times last week. Soil prep with the tiller and now have some pea seed, carrot seed and seed potatoes in the ground! Talking with the retired farmer neighbor, we agree that the season and our gardening are both about 2 weeks late this year.

Some fairly serious thunderstorms as the week came to a close and the temperatures are back to below normal. But, we had about an inch & one-half of rain! Close to freezing this morning and it is likely to freeze tonight with a 30% chance of snow.

My unusual kale vegetable this season is trying to bolt and it isn't even in the ground yet! This isn't a kale/collard/cabbage sister, it's a Brassica carinata - Highland Kale. I don't understand what might be causing this. We have had little sunlight for the plants in the greenhouse but trying something new in the kale patch may not be working out.

Steve

who decided to post a picture of his Mom since this is Mother's Day!

this is just a little part of my Grandmother's garden (and from the date on the photo, I'm around there somewhere ;o)

Here's the bed I always call the "salad bowl" (different bed every year but same name). I need to thin the lettuce today and have a nice salad...

Here's the frost-tender gang, out for some fresh air as it's been so warm this weekend:

Several tomatoes are already in the ground under frost protection - you see one in the background here.

So glad to have a garden going! Have fun everyone! -GG

I’ve been really struggling with what to plant outside. I did plant some peas and chijimisai. It’s been awesome in my hydroponics and wayyy easier germination then my spinach and tastes just as good. We’ll see how it does outside. I quit growing arugula. I don’t like it so why am I growing it?
My tomatoes and peppers are doing the inside/outside dance.
I just planted all my botanic garden sale finds and we finished getting all our trees in.
Just trying to decide on whether I should start some sunflowers inside since I’m so late. Last year I tried outside but the squirrels had an expensive snack.
And my rocks are tagged and ready for delivery. Does that count?

Alyssa -- Yup, tagged rocks count. Hehe.

GG -- Thinning lettuce and then eating it is the bestest, isn't it?

You've a beautiful momma, Steve! I've not tried highland kale; maybe it likes lower light conditions, if it hails from cloudy Scotland?

I've been doing a massive re-potting operation of the houseplants while I wait for the weather temps at night to stabilize for planting out tender stuff.

Ooof I have So. Many. Plants.

Somewhere on RMG, there's a picture of Mom from the 1940's also in her Mother's garden. The one above is dated 1954. Laura, Highland Kale is also called Ethiopian Kale - Kilimanjaro, maybe.

Alyssa, I have had Asian greens in the garden for years and never knew anything about Chijimisai. Oh my Heavens, how do I pronounce that?! A cross between Tatsoi and Komatsuna ...? Well, I grow Senposai, a cross between Komatsuna and Cabbage. I have it again this year, along with Komatsuna and, uhm Cabbage!

Fresh greens for salads in your garden is a very good way of saving money by not buying them at the supermarket, GardenGrl66. AND, fresh fresh fresh! Us growing so many "storage" vegetables sure doesn't save much by comparison.

Steve

Huh. I might need to host a greens tasting. I once went to a basil tasting and it was great. They had a couple dozen plus types of basil both fresh and in different dishes. Turns out I’m boring and only like sweet basil but it was still awesome.

Well, around here Pawpaw trees are unusual.

I thnk that mine are 5-6 years old and are still small, but removing some of the landscape fabric/river rock from around one of them and replacing with compost/wood mulch seems to have helped quite a bit. It is blooming nicely this year. Doing the same for the second one is on the list for this year.

The blooms are not much to look at. Less mature blooms are female and opened up blooms are pollen-producing male. I will eventually hand pollinate, but I need both plants blooming as 2 cultivars are required.

A pawpaw tree? That's cool. For some reason I assumed they were tropical 'cos my mind mixes them up with papaya. And also because of this song I grew up with:

I've got avacado, mango, lychee, and date palm trees grown from grocery store produce, but they aren't planted in the ground, that's for sure.

I'm hoping the seeds I got from the last lime of my (sadly) dying key lime tree will take off soon. (It was a gift, and came with an unholy trifecta of mites, aphids, and scale. Ugh.) So far, only one seed has sprouted. We'll see....

--L