New Cast Members

I'm always trying to grow something new. Thanks to a generous valentine gift from hubby, I got to order tons of new-to-me seeds from Baker Creek this year. Meet some of the new characters growing here this year...

Painted Mountain Corn - my family struggles with blood sugar issues, so high-carb goodies like sweet corn are off the table. But growing pretty colored corn for fall decorating is do-able so I selected this variety, even though it is advertised as a "flour" corn.





Lemon squash seems to me to be nearly identical to any other yellow summer squash in flavor, it just has this fun lemon-like form. I have 2 of these in the garden, one full and healthy, but the other wilted. I couldn't ever find signs of vine borers, so I can't say for sure what happened. I feared it just wasn't getting enough water so I watered it well, mulched it heavily, and watered then watered some more. It continued to die a bit more each day for about a week - until the last few days - now it seems the few unaffected vines are growing new leaves! Keeping my fingers crossed it pulls out of it.

Hollyhocks and wild strawberries...odd combination but I'm proud that I started both from seed! The bed these are in have a mixed and unplanned variety of plants, including marigolds, petunias, sweet william, coleus and calendula. The hollyhocks won't flower for another year, and I doubt the strawberries set fruit until then.



I want to make salsa, with the majority of ingredients coming fresh from my garden. So, this year I added 2 varieties of tomatillos to my plant list. I love the paper-lantern look! The verde variety has these husks growing in large numbers. The giant variety has only one husk on each of the 2 plants and the leaves are curled up....too much water? Anyway, the trick is to be sure I have enough peppers, onions, tomatoes, cilantro and tomatillos all at once. We'll see....