Six on Saturday: June 5

It’s Saturday, and I begin this selection of six with this photo, which asks the question “Who’s eating all the leaves off my marigolds?” These are in the fenced in potager, so it’s not an animal (although squirrels easily climb the fence). As you can see, all the foliage is gone with just the stems and flowers left. There’s three or four new “bare” ones each morning! Who likes to eat stinky marigold leaves? Any clues? Nothing else seems to be touched, not lettuce, other flowers, baby seedlings, just the marigolds.

2) For the first time, I’ve actually grown beautiful Napa cabbage. I harvested the largest head and made a salad that we first had in Germany. It was fantastic, and I took a photo on my phone, but for some reason I can’t seem to transfer photos from my phone to my computer. So, the photo is the second largest head, which still has a bit of growing to do, but they are so tasty and tender. “Baby Napa Cabbage” from Renee Shepherd Seeds. Normally, in the past the Napa has bolted before it even formed heads, or they are tough and bitter. I’ll be growing more as a fall crop for sure.

3) Finally this week there was time to build an obelisk. Nothing elegant, but serviceable so I can see if it’s something I really like. D immediately called them “the oil derricks” and wants to be informed as soon as I strike oil or gas. Our area is famous for it’s natural gas wealth, so it’s not totally foreign. Our neighboring town is “Gas City.” I looked at it for a day, and then decided to stain it to match the fence. It’s in the background. A second one was built, and I think I like them well enough to stain the second one as well. The furring strips are inexpensive and leftover from building the berry boxes last fall. The length of the scraps determined the placement and number of horizontal pieces. The stained one has already been planted with cucumbers. The second one will have pumpkins.

4) The roses burst forth this week and “Adobe Sunset” rose, planted two years ago is by far leading the bud count. She’s just loaded with gorgeous blooms. I’m so delighted with this rose purchased from High Country Roses. It’s a little crowded with nigella, but still performing so beautifully!

5) The focus of this photo is not the rose, but the blooming cutting celery to the right. It was planted last year to provide lots of fresh-cut leaves for salads that needed a bit of celery flavor, and dried to perk up soups (especially leek & potato soup) all winter. This spring it came back thickly, providing a few more harvests before it began to send up bloom stalks. They resemble parsley or cilantro in looks, and make a wonderful filler for bouquets. However, I won’t be cutting many stalks because what I want are the seeds. We use a lot of celery seed in cole slaw and this is an easy way to refill my jar.

6) Is there anything more satisfying to a gardener than a freshly edged and mulched garden? After the potager’s paths were mulched, the first garden to get a facelift was the Front Island. Nothing makes a garden look more tended than a good edge and a tidy mulch. The blue alliums in the foreground have been a nice addition this year. The very first daylily opened up in this garden yesterday, little “Bumblebee” but somehow, I didn’t get her in the photo!

That’s my SOS for this week. If you’d like to see more gardening photos and ideas from around the globe, check out The Propagator, who hosts this meme. Happy Growing!

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