garden plans, records, results, hopes.....

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....a crab spider waiting to ambush my butterflies🫤

How is your passion flower doing this year? Is it the native perennial P. incarnata? I picked some wild fruits and they were all hollow with dry seeds, maybe not filling up due to drought?

May Lotito wrote:How is your passion flower doing this year? Is it the native perennial P. incarnata? I picked some wild fruits and they were all hollow with dry seeds, maybe not filling up due to drought?

I have white flowering that I planted from seeds I brought with us from our old place and also purple flowering from seeds from Richters ...both are still blooming a little and also have fruit.  I'll have to check the pulp? none seem ripe yet but feel full.

Both are p. incarnata.

We grow it mostly for the herb for tea and last year dried way too much so have mostly let it alone to ramble this year...have never made anything with the pulp although I do like the taste.

edited to add photos...lots of seeds in both white and purple flowering ones...I think we had some good rains that you did not?

The passion flowers are so beautiful! Seeds seem quite big compared to those of P. edulis. I ate some while traveling in the tropics. Local people just picked fruits hanging off the roof, sliced the ends off and squeezed pulp in the mouth. I remembered that was a red flowering one. I will grow a few vines next year.

Here is what the 5-color pepper turns out.

May, I'll look forward to growing that pepper!

I rushed this last week to get sweet potatoes and moringa roots out of the ground before todays rain...just in time for a downpour and even scattered some austrian winter peas and rye seed...have not planted garlic or dividing onions yet...and then there's the two big peanut plants where they were supposed to dry out for the last two weeks before pulling them and I just ran out in the rain to cover.

I had already gathered a lot of seed... amaranth, lambs quarters, cosmos, broom corn, southern peas, burdock, celosia, a precious few butterfly pea, tepary bean, weld...

Nice patch of woad...seems to travel a bit?
I quit deadheading the tithonia to get some seed and I don't think the gold finches left me any, nor any echinacea or zinnia...should be volunteers though.

Sweet potato harvest was ok.  some nice  ones but still not pounds per plant as we sometimes have had in the past.
I need to get a soil test just for them I think and try to increase fertilization in one big sweet potato bed.  We are always tempted to get rabbits again.  Apparently potassium is especially important for root production and needs replacing after growing them.

expecting upper 30's tuesday night so I'll need to lift the dahlias and then there's the lotus roots...and the lemon grass comes in... just did a third cutting of leaves for tea.

...a few more photos and thoughts.

We have had only a few figs ripen this fall and they were some of the best we've ever tasted!
Earlier ripening attracts ants and we never get the fully ripe sweetness of fall figs...they will get caught by a frost soon though.

May, is the photo I've labeled broom corn something else?
I think I got some seed mixed up as last year what I planted from you made what I recognized as broom corn.

Do I wait for a freeze to store lotus roots? trim to just the white part?

Cosmos and tithonia have been blooming all summer and on into fall.

Have not ID'd my rose leaf chomps ...seems too round and regular for grasshopper?

I have 4 dozen small pots of dahlia plants that I started from seed in the spring and then all the big dahlias to bring in and find space for...the older ones I can clean the tubers and store in a tub...I think the newer ones need to stay in their pots...

Your broomcorns are shorter and more branched, as if they are millets. What about the back seedheads? Is the color from black husks or they are dead? I can resend some seeds.

You can leave the lotus roots in the pot unless there is risk of the whole pot frozen solid. Cool weather will speed up the senescence of leaves. If the leaves and stems are not totally brown and dry, the nutrient is still being transported to the end rhizomes.

I wonder if it is millet and I confused your broom corn seed with it...the seed was black.
The dark heads have a lot of mature very shiney black seed...that doesn't sound like millet though.   Maybe sorgum?

Good to know the lotus isn't urgent...I think I'm getting too many things that need to come in for the winter 😊

I've watched these garden spiders for years and always am happy to see them...this year there have been more and this one has built an egg case on the front porch where we can easily watch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argiope_aurantia

one more ...I think she's done now.

I wonder how long she'll stick around?

I didn't grow a lot of broomcorn plants this year. Usually taller ones have longer brushes while smaller plants and secondary shoots have a more compact look. Grow them as if they are corns with fertile soil and they can reach over 12ft. Having consistent water in critical stage of blooming is important too. Anyway, I have some old brushes from previous year, not the best quality as I mostly grow the seeds to maturity for chicken feed. Brushes for broom making should be harvested earlier than that.

We had almost spread our first load of chips and today they brought us two more!
Winter Work😯

I need to read Eric's thread on winecaps..we grew them once successfully but did not have chips or straw to continue.