Not everything going great . Lost a Harken peach graft with thirty plus good size peaches on it due to tornado day before yesterday. Good thing lost half of it and another half is till good with 30 or so peaches on it.
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Are tornadoes fairly rare in your area?
Our average per year is 2 for last fifty or sixty years. I do not know if it is rare or common.
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I’ve been encouraging these unknown poppies (probably Spanish poppies?) to grow around the perimeter of my stone patio because they seem to thrive in small cracks but unlike their main competitors (dandelions and grass) they are easily pulled up when they volunteer somewhere they aren’t wanted.
This patch is pretty much done flowering and just started dropping its seed, and the patio stones are thick with it:
I just swept that pile of seeds into the next bare area where I’ve pulled out dandelions and grass.
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Genetics in these volunteer Rudbeckia results in surprising variation. Planted over 20 years ago they still seed themselves. Some have a single stem; some have clumps of 10 stems. Height varies from 1 ft to 3 ft. Colors vary.
This is a large bushy one about 3 ft high:
This one is only 1 ft high:
A double:
Another small one:
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2 a year isn’t rare but isn’t common I think. we get a heat wave for a week at least, every year. August usually and can last the whole month, it’s not rare. just not every day. other places get it worse.
today:
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My favorite thing about carrot flowers are the little purple-ish brownish irregular shapes near the center of most of them. I’ve heard the leading theory for why they have evolved this feature is it tricks predator insects into becoming pollinators, as they land on the dark spot, mistaking it for prey:
Here’s a lucky beneficiary of that mimicry:
Two years ago, I decided to plant the top of a single exceptional carrot from the local farmers market, and allowed it to go to seed. That seed head was used to plant last year’s carrot bed. However, there was clearly some cross-pollination with wild carrots, because nearly 2/3 of the carrots from those seeds were thin, white, and fibrously inedible. I eventually stopped pulling them last year because even the edible ones weren’t very good, and I let their raised bed get weedy.
I’m planning to compost them soon, before they start dropping their lousy seed all over my yard, but for now I’ve left them for the pollinators (and to spread further ruin to any neighbors hoping to save carrot seed):
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Oh Narem, I am so sorry to hear this!
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That was a good plan! Here is some information on carrots for the rest of us so that we can repeat your experiment. Many people try to prevent flowering but i like your plan better.
If Your Carrot is Flowering, You’re Not Alone. Here’s What’s Happening
" IF YOUR CARROT IS FLOWERING, YOU’RE NOT ALONE. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Dirt on Dirt’s Kristin recently experienced an interesting development when growing rainbow carrots in her garden. One of her carrot plants started flowering.
The flowers resembled Queen Anne’s Lace, and it wasn’t something Kristin had seen before. That meant she had no idea what the root underground looked like or if the flower would still produce an edible plant.
When she harvested the carrot, she discovered though it might be edible, the carrot was tiny. She joked she’d be making baby carrots with dinner. We did a little of our own research to figure out how common a flowering carrot is.
It turns out it’s not an anomaly. Often, a flowering carrot is a sign that the plant has bolted and will not be good to eat. Flowering carrots will grow every so often after a batch of seeds is planted for a few reasons. One is because of premature warm weather. Warm weather will trick the plant into putting energy into the flower rather than the root, causing white flowers and an inedible carrot. Flowering carrots can also occur if they are left in the ground over winter and a mild spring follows, as this confuses the plant on its life cycle.
Carrots are biennials, meaning they have a two-year life cycle. During the first season, they grow in a vegetative state with no flowers. Then after winter, they bloom and send their progeny into the world to reproduce and regrow. Just remember that some seeds in a package will always be outliers. They could either be duds or they could flower early, causing a bolted carrot before the two years are up.
To keep your carrots from flowering, try regularly sowing carrot plants every couple weeks during the season to assure some of them will do well, regardless of weather fluctuations.
Have you ever hosted a flowering carrot in your garden? What are your best tips for preventing premature bolting? an August full of gardening specials, on our blog"
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I put my carrot flowers into a bouquet this year. But I composted a lot of baby carrots and flowers. I still have 4-5 lbs in my fridge. But I’m not interested in turning my garden into a research lab. Main goal for me is to grow tasty vegetables. Tendersweet variety was very good.
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My first Augusta Louise in person, I killed this one last year so this year I planted in container. I do like the combination of this rose and baby blue delphinium, I think less intense than deeper blue.
Pope John Paul II, I think I have successfully got rid of the thrips, I like white fragrant roses but with the thrips the edge of the petals seem to be brown for some reason. So not as pretty. It’s also in container so I can move it around to suitable location
Spirit of Freedom, appropriate for the 4th
Elsa Spath clematis
My wall of roses, this originally was a tomato bed, that didn’t work out so well, then blueberry bed, than passion fruit, I think I now found the right plants for it.
Hostas in a very shallow area, a bit of green in a concrete area.
Lime green heuchera, a plant to brighten up another shallow concrete area
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I only plant one kind of carrot because it’s the only one I can get to grow well, so I save the seed.
If you do find out that the apple trees are still around, it’d be an interesting story to follow up on here. Would love to know the variety and if not known, get a few scions to keep it alive 
Santa Rosa is turning color, this year we don’t have a lot of birds so maybe I get to taste it at the peak flavor
I had one of these yesterday, Satsuma variety, it’s much more red than these, I was not too impressed, a bit bitter, red flesh, so I removed the tin foil, let the squirrel have them
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Don’t know the name of the cactus, it finally bloomed after 5 years
.
This rose was bought as bare root in the spring.
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Satsuma plums ripen in early-mid August for us here. So, I am assuming they ripen around end of July for you in a “normal” year. We have seen low temps throughout May and June (until late June) this year, so I am guessing the ripening dates are a bit late for all fruits. Satsuma is one of our favorite plums. Very meaty and nicely complements Santa Rosa which ripens earlier
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