Port Potager

Some old favorites along with a new flower this week. The zinnias are enormous, with great big blooms as well as long stems. These have suddenly shot up to five feet high, and I'm not at all sure why. In other news, the strawflowers are finally here. These are some of the flowers I started from seed back in the winter, and I was beginning to doubt I'd ever see them bloom. They're worth the wait! Zinnias Strawflower and Chinese forget-me-not

Glad I made it outside to cut flowers yesterday before today's downpours came and crushed a bunch of our cutting bed plants. Here's what I'm enjoying in the vase this week: hosta, snapdragons, and zinnia black-eyed Susans rose, Chinese forget-me-not, lavender, and yarrow

There are still lots of flowers going strong in the cutting garden, and they seem no worse for wear as the ride out the dry spell we've had this August. This is one time where the deep afternoon shade is a blessing, but in general I think most flowers would enjoy a sunnier location. Alas, they will always play second fiddle to tomatoes and beans, and so must learn to adapt to less than optimal conditions. Anyway, I really love blue flowers, so I was excited to have enough blooming at once to make an all-blue bouquet: Chinese forget-me-not, bachelor's buttons, and lavender  I also grabbed a few other really bright flowers for a different room. That zinnia grew with a crazily bent stem so it looks a little funny, but I like the way the yellow center exactly matches the other yellow petals:   Zinnia and black-eyed Susans I almost put some pale pink snapdragons and baby's breath in that blue bouquet, but decided against it. Pink and blue always make...

Today's Flower Friday is a tale of two cutting gardens. On one hand, we see the happy mayhem of just cutting whatever happens to be blooming and throwing it into a mason jar: Baby's breath, phlox, black-eyed Susans, zinnia, bachelor's buttons, penstemon, hosta, and snapdragon.  On the other hand, we see the result of some carefully controlled color selections. When I first started planting the cutting garden , I chose perennials in a range of sunset colors: orange, peachy-salmons, golden yellows, plus deep purples and blues for contrast. I also tried to choose seeds for annuals that fit that scheme this past spring as well (though looking back, I can see that some things didn't bloom). Anyway, the idea was that anything in bloom at any given time would look good together. I guess that's true of the first bouquet, but below is a primo case study of what I was going for with that sunset color scheme: Echinacea, yarrow, roses, foxglove, and Chin...

I introduced a lot of annuals to the cutting garden this year, and since they were all grown from seed, it took quite some time for them to finally come into bloom. But here we are in mid-July, and the cutting garden has a lot going on. I should have taken a picture of the garden itself before doing said cutting, but I didn't think of it in time. Here are some vases I threw together to bring inside: Chinese forget-me-not, echinacea (two kinds!), and yarrow. Snapdragons, Chinese forget-me-not, yarrow, delphinium, echinacea, astilbe, zinnia, and baby's breath. Chinese forget-me-not, snapdragon, delphinium, astilbe, echinacea, yarrow, and bachelor's buttons.

Going to Central America and leaving the garden behind for a month in high summer is a bit like living out one of those traveling at the speed of light theoretical paradox deals. You know, like the astronaut who gets sent to Saturn and it feels to her like it only took a couple hours to get there and back, but when she returns, her grandkids are her own age or something. Well, it's kind of like that. When I left, I was coaxing some fall seedlings along. Cilantro, radishes, carrots, kale, and beets were newborns. The zinnias were only just beginning to bloom, and everything was tucked into neatly into its assigned, geometrically ordered quadrangular patch.  And here's what it looks like now: The fall babies are stout and strong, and need thinning. The zinnias are in full bloom, and now stand about eye-high in the cutting border. As for our obedient and orderly July garden, let's take an aerial view tour for old time's sake : The...

Ok, this is it. We've had a full six months of cut flowers, but we're having frosty temperatures here now, and these are the last bouquets of the year. It's been a great first season for the cutting garden, and I'll be sure to go over the photographic record before going shopping for more seed and perennials next year, so I can fill in the gaps of color and bloom time for even better arrangements next year. Baby's breath, calendula, and zinnia. Zinnias.

I'm glad that zinnias are such a powerhouse of an annual flower. I just wish I had colors other than pink left. Lavender, zinnia, and calendula. Zinnias. Zinnias and wild asters.

Cool nighttime temperatures are definitely causing a slow-down in the flower department. I barely even have any zinnias left, and that's kind of all we've got for this month. Limping our way towards frost, at least as far as unprotected annuals are concerned ... Zinnias and calendula. Zinnias, blanket flower, echinacea, calendula, and chrysanthemum. 

I have to admit, there's not much left in the cutting garden. Next year I will definitely need to plan better to have some more perennials and annuals that last and/or open for the first time in the fall. And I want some deep purple, all — the last I had of that color was done months ago . What we have here are just more riffs on the same theme of all of September: snapdragons and zinnias.  Snapdragons, blanketflower, zinnias, and yarrow. Zinnias and calendula.

It's hot, and the 100-degree high in the garden on Wednesday may have confused our flowers. There are lots of dried-out zinnias and marigolds to be found out there, but I managed to find some good ones anyway this week.  Zinnia and yarrow. Tiegan's birthday present wrapped with zinnia and cosmos. Snapdragons, echinacea (flowers and seed heads), and zinnia. Hosta leaves and zinnias. Rose and hosta leaf.

This is my last Friday of summer — from here on out it's work, work, work, with gardening squeezed in between getting home and sunset and chauffeuring kids around. I'll try to keep Flower Friday going through frost, but it could be a challenge.  Zinnias and echinacea. Snapdragon, zinnia, echinacea. Echinacea and artemisia "Silver King."

Another kinda lame Flower Friday , but I am on vacation. Instead of vases of flowers that will definitely be dead by the time we get back, here's what the cutting garden looks like in its current, pre-cut state: Here you can see short marigolds in the front, tall orange cosmos in the back, and some pink zinnias mixed in. This is from another angle: The cosmos are on the right, with zinnias in the middle and black-eyed Susans to the left. Not much going on here in the way of perennials lately, although I do have some echinacea, salvia, and veronica trying to make a go at a second flowering. I hope so — I don't think there will be much left for September and October unless I pick up some new annuals to round out the fall.

I have to admit that this week's flower post is seriously lame. The kids are away at camp, and we used the time to finish the walls of our renovation. That is a dirty, dusty, terrible job, and it didn't leave me with much energy for flower arranging.  And where would I put them? The house is a construction-zone disaster, and I can't even blame the kids. Anyway, yesterday I went out and cut a handful of snapdragons and some matching zinnias for our bedroom (a safe haven from the dust). By next week the house should be back in our control, with running water and working appliances and everything — including flowers. Snapdragons and zinnia.

Not too much to choose from right now — just the late-summer annuals are still going strong. The marigolds and zinnias also last pretty long in the vase, so I don't need to replace the bouquets as often. That's good, since I'm busy dealing with peaches, pickles, and tomatoes right now. Zinnias and hosta leaves. Brown-eyed Susans, snapdragons, echinacea, and zinnia. Marigolds and zinnias.

Most of the perennials in the cutting beds are past their prime — or in between their first and second flushes of flower. I'm relying a lot on annuals (or snipping from the border out front for those hyrangeas) to make up the difference.   Zinnia, cosmos, and calendula. Echinacea. Hydrangea. Zinnia (in shades of pink that I actually like — not too fuchsia). Marigolds.