Recent Activity - Plant Opinions

I decided to try a Bush Bean this year because I was using my trellis for sugar snap peas. The Nash Bush Beans are a good vegetable plant because they produce a ton of fruit. It is amazing how the leaves act as a ceiling for the plant that shades where all of the fruit grows (see photo that I posted). I started out with seven plants. Only three of them made it to harvest because I should have staked all the plants to a stick. They blow over and break pretty easily. However, three plants was more than enough because Nash Bush Bean provides plenty of harvest. My beans were six inches long and delicious. They have been producing beans for over a month already. Nash bush bean only needs 12 inchees of space and only grows about 15-17 inches. It is good if you are looking for something compact for your garden.

This can be a difficult plant to start from seed for a beginner. The seeds are tiny. I dropped all of the seeds in the same place the first time I planted them. I had about 100 stems growing within a square inch of space. It was not fun to untangle the spaghetti like stems but I was able to salvage most of them. It is amazing how little they start off and how big they can get over the course of just three and a half months.

This annual is very easy to start from seed but rabbits LOVE to eat it. They go for it in my garden before anything else. Bloom starts out white and then fills in with a lavender color that gets darker and darker as the days go on. The best part about it is the variety of color you can have on one plant from a snowy white to a deep purple.

Great ground cover for semi shaded areas with a purple flower spike in the spring. Multiples rapidly in rich soil through runners/stolons

If you want a reliable onion that takes no care other than eating it this is the onion for you. Very small bulb, and somewhat tough greens. Good for soups, and saute's. The bulbs are formed at the end of the stalks, sometimes having as much as 3 or 4 generations on one stalk (in only a month or so). Any of the bulbs can then be placed into soil and you can have a never ending supply of little onions.

This is a hardy smaller lily with a nice blend of pink and white. It multiplies from baby bulbs formed readily from the parent. Everytime I have moved bulbs they have flourished. Since I have not been able to get all of the small bublets that formed from the parent I now have the Lollipops in several places throughout the yard. Some are growing, and blooming at the base of the apple tree, others are in full sun. Lollipop lilies bloom before the Stargazer lilies, so I have successive lilies in bloom.

Readily multiplies from plant. Thought to sometimes be a bit invasive. Flower stems are fine and having other plants or a fence to support flowers might be a good idea. Plant itself is low growing (less than 6 inches) even though the flower stems are 3-4 feet in height.

By picking spent flowers daily the plant will produce more flowers along flowering stem for pretty much continual blooming throughout the summer in my climate. If picking spent flowers is too much work, simply cut stems for a second flush of flowers later in the summer.