FW: Seeding, a winter sport-was favorites that shouldn'tbe

Title: FW: Seeding, a winter sport-was favorites that shouldn'tbe

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From: CooperTaggart <coopertaggart@earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 17:05:23 -0800
To: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Subject: Seeding, a winter sport

I loved reading this Cyndi!

What matters is the total picture not just the parts, and that the plant looks good and does well where you place it. It's great to have some unusual thing as well for the thrill of it, but they must enhance the picture and work with the climate as well. I also confess a great fondness for the old-fashioned plants that self-seed. Borage is a love-hate thing because as much as I love that blue and the silver fur that glistens with dew, it eats up everything by late Spring. Grows four feet tall or more and then topples over. But California poppies, poppy-seed poppies, sweet-peas, columbine, Centranthus ruber, red flax and blue flax, nasturtiums, Love-In-a-Puff, Nigella, and Clarkia unguiculata and my very favorite, Elephant-Head Amaranth (and other varieties) all pop up, either on their own or in appointed spots with seed collected from last year. Like Magic to throw something on the ground and watch it come up.......


An aquaintance was asking if I knew about seed exchanges, and I bet there are some great regional ones on the web. Anyone want to share a site they know about?


Happy Winter to all, hope you have time to curl up in blankets with seed catalogs! Without a blanket if it's not Winter for you.......I just remembered, we're not all in the same Season.........
-Laura

PS sorry for not doing all plant latin but figured you all knew these plants anyway.

on 11/16/00 11:25 AM, Cyndi K at cyndik@hollinet.com wrote:


> There's a dwarf maiden grass - Yakosima. Please know I am chuckling as I
> call it dwarf. It is about 4' tall and at least 6' wide now, and hasn't
> self-seeded anywhere that I've found. Needs zip as far as care. I mean nada.
> Every fall, my husband I go out, peer at it, agree it must be divided at
> once, then go back in and decide which tomatoes to grow. It doesn't care, at
> all.
>
> I tried wild alpine strawberries one year, much to the bird's delight. I
> forgot about them during one hot spell the next year and they croaked in
> their raised bed. In the fall, in a ring around the shade of the nearby
> maiden grass, growing amongst the remnants of crabgrass that will not leave,
> I found there were wild strawberries, far healthier and happier than ever
> they had grown when I had cared for them. They are there still, and their
> offspring. (And the stubborn patches of crabgrass. All I can do is keep it
> in place, and keep it from going to seed. LOL.)
>
> Gazania, scorned by all because it so frequently used in parking lots, is
> the signature plant in a deliberate meadow area. It is glorious. It has
> lovely glossy, dark green, grasslike leaves that look great year round,
> crowds out every weed we deal with here, and never needs any pest care or
> mowing. It doesn't look at all like it does in parking lots! We chose
> salmon, pink, and soft yellow flowered plants, so on summer days, it's
> colorful without being obnoxious. The color patterning on the simple
> daisy-like flowers is as intricate as anything you could ask for. Mother
> Nature had the fine tip brushes out when she painted these. They were
> supposed to live at most two years but no one told them that. They are in
> year four and showing no sign of faltering.
>
> Campanula, another scorned because it is an easy grower, runs through it and
> over it, and makes some solid blue patches where one gazania plant or
> another died off. There's a thyme path running through it all. We were going
> to keep it trimmed and mowed but we didn't. It looked awful for one year,
> with nice green tips growing over the previous years old dry stems. Now, it
> is a mat of tiny, shiny green leaves. I guess it must be out of bloom
> sometime but for the life of me, I can't think when that is. Our herbal path
> is a risky thing to tread on, as the bees cover it so thoroughly you can
> hear them from a good six feet away. Friends are always glad to leave with a
> bouquet of edible thyme flowers, and in short, simple to grow or not, it's a
> great plant.
>
> Blue honeywort pops up here and there, though mainly at the edges - it won't
> outcompete carpeting plants. Chamomile, long untended, is still in there, in
> spots. I only notice it when it blooms or when I step on it - the
> apple/champhor scent is unmistakable and always refreshing. Feverfew, tried
> the first year just to see what would happen, self-seeds in a ring around
> the back of the meadow. It had ferny, light leaves and little white button
> flowers, like a chrysanthemum in minature. It is a favorite of ladybugs - I
> don't know why, it never has any pests. Maybe because of the ladybugs... It
> self-seeds, so care consists of pulling some of the volunteers one sunny
> morning in late spring.
>
> A hybrid of lamb's ears, whose proper name I have misplaced, makes a fat
> woolly thicket of gray green leaves. It look horrid when it blooms but it
> too is a bee favorite, so I let it go till spring, by which time it looks
> hideous - all frost mushed and dead. We whack it back to ground level and
> that's it. The whole thing repeats again, with nothing to do but enjoy it.
> It comes up in the gravel path next to the bed, making a surprising tight
> mat with no height at all and tiny bonsai leaves no bigger than your
> littlest fingernail. It doesn't care much for being walked on but comes back
> so fast, we don't worry. Feels much nicer than the gravel on barefeet, too.
>
> Yarrow, really a weed I'd have to say, is across from the meadow. It won the
> fight for the end of a perennial bed, beating out several lavender plants, a
>
> I want confessions, since I've been bold. Don't leave me out here on a
> zinnia limb by myself! I'll even admit this - Mediterranian or not, I like
> johnny-jump-ups, nasturtiums, and borage, too, because they self-seed and
> come up where and when they feel like, bloom with abandon, and feed the
> critters. What do you grow in your mediterranean garden that is a favorite
> but you know "shouldn't" be?
>
> Cyndi K
>
>
>
>
>
>
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