Cottage Garden Seed Swap & Chat #16

Ladies ... the last thread was getting really long ....

so for the dial-up gang... here's a new thread.

We came from here ==> #15 http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/893079/

Thanks! I was just meaning to ask about that... getting ready to download the piggy pic if I had to! :-)

LOL Jill... i have that Piggy Image on both my computers now, just for this instance.

Well, i asked about that Salvia, Mystic or Indigo Spire ... and someone just posted that the seeds are sterile. total bummer.

are there any blue/purple Salvia's that one can collect seeds from, and are perennials up zone4 & 5 ??

Therese a couple different people sent me seeds for Black and Blue Salvia last year. I wintersowed them and they are blooming right now! They are a very vivid blue and really quite pretty.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/54031/

I might have some seed left, or if not I can look on my spread sheet and see who I got it from. I'm pretty sure one of them was Suzy but the other person escapes me at the moment.

thanks L_J, i'd love to have some.

and Jill ... thanks for the link on the not so Obedient Plant. they are still very pretty.

terese

Thanks, tcs for starting another piggy thread. My computer won't download the previous one, so I don't know if anyone responded to my last posts.

Tcs, if you find a hardy perennial, blue-flowering sage that blooms as long as Indigo Spires, I hope you share it with us. For now, I'm wintering over a plant of Salvia guaranitica "Brazilian Black and Blue" indoors under lights. But I wish I were doing the same with Indigo Spires, because it never stops blooming and puts up with an awful lot of shade. Hopefully, I'll be able to germinate a small amount of seed of the species Salvia guarnitica around February or March - this one sets viable seed, but won't winter outdoors in your zone - worth taking cuttings of in the fall where space is limited. These S. guaranticas are such wonderful hummingbird magnets.

pps - everyone - I'm posting in Firefox and just noticed that there's a spellcheck feature here - if I wanted to check my spelling on this post, I could - how great is that? DG makes available free downloading of Firefox somewhere...on our home page?

Lea, I meant I was guilty of just wanting to show off the pic again lol : ) Sorry I should have explained better! I also wanted to mention I've been buying the skintastic bug spray, the one that says it's dry not greasy and it has a somewhat pleasant fragrance and still works! I've also tryed one that said family bug spray and scent was called tropical fresh. I recommend them because they smell 100 x better than regular bug sprays. : )

O/T, but DH says the new version of FireFox was finally stabilized with the latest release a week or so ago... so if you haven't downloaded the updated version, you might want to. It's a bit faster, works/looks pretty much the same in most respects.

Black & Blue is probably the bluest salvia I've ever seen, too.

I'm sure i have it... at least on this laptop, since that is what i've been using the past few weeks. I'll have to check my tower later today. thanks for that update. ;-)

OH -- yes, and it add new lil graphics... up in the address bar.. not sure if i like them yet or not..... I'm not much for change....

LeBug, this is what the leaves looks like of my mini, one inch "looks exactly like heavenly blue" MG

Wind, I have a suspicion that the MG in your photo is Ipomoea hederacea - To me, the leaves and sepals of your MG looks more like those belonging to Ipomoea hederacea here: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/8855/ - I. hederacea has a small flower, too

'Heavenly Blue' belongs to a different species (Ipomoea tricolor) and has different characteristics from the one in your picture. For example, the sepals of I. tricolor don't have any hair, and they are shorter and straighter than the ones hugging the pod in your picture. See http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3504567 . Also, see http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/8854/ in PlantFiles for how different the leaves look from those in your picture. In the past, in my garden, flowers of cultivars belonging to I. tricolor have all been at least 4" across.

Tcs, I just checked and saw that the Firefox icon is at the bottom of the DG home page to the left. I don't like change, either, but I discovered that sometimes when I can't download a long thread from DG on IE, that Firefox will do it. But - grrr - not always - still cannot download our piggy thread #15 either by IE or Firefox - shame to lose it - I was hoping to do a sticky thread for CG of useful gardening/germinating kernels of wisdom that Suzy and others shared here (if I do, y'all be aware that anyone can add another sticky - I'm sure there's lots of different kinds of knowledge particular to cottage gardening in this forum).

Great source to go hunting for a BLUE sage: http://www.robinssalvias.com/alphabetical.shtm - found it on the Agastaches and Salvia thread (S & A?)

Meredith, thanks for that more pleasant smelling bug repellent - will try when we use up the stinky stuff first

Karen

Lea -- yesterday i found a Swallowtail cat on the Bronze Fennel ... it was still there this morning, munching away.
I wonder if it would mind it i put him/her on my parsley... i have TONS of that.

Karen -- thanks for that link.

also, if you'd like thread #15 -- i can pop it into WORD and email it to you... lemme know.

Am very jealous of those cats in Lea's bronze fennel...we haven't seen them in our parsley, but some years, we get dozens in the rue about this time of year...bad year for butterflies around here...am suspecting the local aerial spraying for gypsy earlier...whatever spray they used would have zapped any member of lepidoptera in the caterpillar stage at that time grrrr Does anyone want any rue seed?

tcs, I'll dmail you with my email - would love to have that thread. I don't have WordPerfect - just notepad and word that came with this Dell computer

hi there
someone finally moved the thread...thanks :))
looks like everybody is doing great :))

update
celebrated a birthday and an anniversary not long ago ..have a grand daughter coming any day now
its been a very hot and dry summer we had a blanketing rain a few days ago but not much. everything is soo dry..even the apples quit growing after july. No apples worth harvesting even tho theres hundreds of tiny apples on the trees..even the blackberries dried up on the vines.
late harvest of garden veggies now after a long and wet spring. I hope the corn will be ready before frost arrives. weather conditions are strange this year all over.
still have plenty of seeds left over from last year..enough to tide me over til next year or so
ill harvest some malva and wall flower seeds only if anyone wants some. i harvested the poppies angels choir, coral and the lavender somnifernums and the sweet william newport pink.
i emailed suzy to ask how she has been....no answer and i checked the status and she did not read my mail :(
i have been potting up my hibiscus seedlings for next year and readying up other plants for winter. still need to prepare a couple beds, just need to haul in a load of sand/compost mix and build a lath house of sorts.


pam sue

Congrats on the new Grandbaby to be, Pam Sue. I bet you are as excited as I am. : )

Suzy must really be busy as a bee these days. I miss her, too. Hope she will finally read your email and let us all know how she is doing.
~Lucy

Bluespiral - If no one else wants the Rue I would. I promised some to a friend in the butterfly forum and my plants didn't cooperate and I can only send her a pitiful amount : ( I don't know if that's okay to do, I know she's willing to trade for them if you want I can tell you what she could send.

Hi Pamsue, congratulations on the new grandbaby! And happy b-day and anniversary too : ) I just became an aunt for the first time, my brother in law had a beautiful baby girl on Sept 18th : )

Meredith, I'll send the rue seeds to you for both you and your friend. Apologies to others that it was a small amount and not enough to go all around. No need to send me anything back. I love rue in the garden for providing pretty glaucous foliage in the vicinity of other plants with great flowers but horrible foliage...Rue is also one of those sun lovers that can take a surprising amount of shade...and then, there's those cavorting hoards of caterpillars in late summer...the rue always returns nicely after a sound chomping

Nice to see all these younguns cropping up around here - Meredith and PamSue, am just thrilled for you two along with Lucy about new and imminent niece and grandbabies. Congratulations PamSue on your birthday and anniversary, too.

We managed to bring some tomatoes, mystery pumpkin/squashs and snow peas to a munchable stage. One way or the other they all got themselves hoisted up into the air, but any other attempts at vegies disappeared into the infinite maws of local furry critters - we hauled off 5 racoons and 4 woodchucks so far, but grrrrrrr it just takes forever for a critter to make up its mind to take the bait in a Havahart cage.

PamSue, sorry to hear about those disappointing apples and bramble berries. So ironic that here, where apples and berries did well this year, that the endless paving over of arable land continues by developers. I wonder if there might be some relatively unknown economically useful plants that would do well in your area...those fruits on opuntia cacti are supposed to be enjoyable...JL Hudson - http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/ - seems to have some info on lesser known fruits/vegies...Maybe a small patch just for edibles that could get some soaker hose irrigation with punctuations of low figs and dwarf pomegranates through edgings of alpine strawberries and squares and circles of low drought-tolerant vegies...?

I think we'll hear from Suzy again...what she did as Queen Piggy had to be humongously consuming...she seems to really throw herself whole-piggelly into whatever she does...maybe it was her family's turn this summer

This was *s'posed* to be a morning glory arbor - Now, if I had planted this squash/pumpkin on purpose, you know we wouldn't have any squash around here - it looks like a critter had itself a few meals in our compost pile and wandered around dispersing the seeds over the winter. This vine just walked itself right up over the rue and a clematis with no excuse-me to the Ipomoea pandurata and settled itself up there.

Sorry - I am about to dash off to class - so I haven't read the thread so far . . . anyway, people will be allowed to return to Galvaston today . . . . do you know if anything has been organized on DG to help people there out? I mean, so many of us have oodles of seeds we could share (yes, I know that seeds and gardens are not exactly the priority for most of those poor folks right now . . . ) Anyway - just a thought that maybe something might be organized.

I gotta dash to class to but, I had sent when Ike first hit dmail to Dave, haven't seen him on forums, so he may be dealign with his own problems from Ike.

Some of us have been postign on the Ike threads and asking if anybody needs anything and offerign to help and soon as folks get things settled down, offers of plants and seeds comingin from all directions.

I holding back plants and some seed just for them when they ready. Others may want to do the same thing. Hold a tiny stash for them. When things get settled down, then I had planned to hold a big Ike plant and seed give away thread.

Star -- when you do... can you post the link?

there are so many forums here, i can't always find things unless there is a link or the specific forum is mentioned.

I couldn't find a link to any thread/forum for Ike, either. However delayed or changed their gardening may become in the future, there are seeds for every situation, which I'm sure that among us we can furnish.

hi there
thanks for all your well wishes.. this will be my 4th ..have two teenaged ones (ready made) and a girl that is a year and a half.

thats a great idea about donating to the benefit!

pam sue

hahahaha! Oh, Pam Sue - I thought you were expecting! I had to read back a bit to understand this will be your fourth grandchild! I was thinking - gee that is a big spread in ages - maybe it is a blended family!

oh -- i forgot to mention... that cute lil Swallowtail Cat.... i moved to the parsley, and he/she seems fat and happy in there.
Found it hours later running around munching parsley.

Tcs, the other day I had one cat on one lil bitty rue plant that I had bought. I let him eat it all down but was afraid he wasn't big enough to start his next faze, so I ran out and bought curly parsley. I put him over on it, and he wandered all over it for hours, until I went to bed. Next morning he was a hanging from the top of the cage, and 10 days later he was flying. : ) I guess he decided he didn't want that silly parsley. lol

He wasn't a very big cat either. Do you think that some of them pupate faster when something tells them they are running out of food? Sometimes, I wonder.

I have no idea about Cats. This is my first experience with them. this guy isn't real big either. maybe an inch and a half.... certainly smaller than that the monarchs. I've got him on regular parsley, not the curly... but if it had a preference, he could mosey on over there, as it's about 2 ft away.

I'd think with you being much warmer, longer [warm/hot] seasons - you have a longer butterfly season too.
I'm sure ours is coming to an end soon.

Here is a link, where most of the folks that got hit hard were checking in.
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/902635/

there a couple others around, like some folks in daylily forum that had some damage, but not like Texas folks.

Some folks still don't have any electricity and water and stuff, so I figured I would wait a while til everybody got power back on and had a chance to breath a bit and winter gonna be very depressign for them with all that mess still, so I will make sure I post a link here when I put it up.

I figure maybe by next month most folsk may be setttled again and at least they can have the seeds to look forward too. Some folks are now having lots of sunny areas from downed trees that are being cleared , so folks garden areas are changing and what they cna plant, and doing in late wall wil give them all somethign to look forward to and dream about.

We got folks in Texas all the way up to Ohio that lost stuff, so a Ike piggy thread should be fun fo rthem folks. Was thinking folks coudl all list what they have and Ikes folks who I doubt very much wil have anythign to swap can just go through the lists and pic out what they want. I also figured that they already got enough of a burden to bear on their shoulders so figure seeds they get wil be shipped free from sender. Some of these folks need every penny they cna get just for food and gas right now. Soudn good, or do folks see a problem with what I suggesting.

tcs, we have a slew of BF's flying around right now. Alot more than I saw last year. I'm just about afraid to get out on the hwy, afraid I'll hit one. I need a sign, I brake for BF's. lol : )

LOL!! i know what you mean.

I've been seeing a lot too .... years ago, maybe 5, we had not seen ANY for a long time.

I remember DH and I commenting just a few years ago when we saw ONE, that it had been a decade or more since we'd regularly seen monarchs. I'm glad to see they are on the return.... Or it's just the plants i am planting now. *wink*

I know that the ones in my yard are loving all my plants now. They are just happily fluttering around all day. : ) I have a field beside my house with weeds in it, and I see them out there, too. : )

Star, your idea sounds wonderful to me. : )
Blueglancer, I had the same thing happen with a bst, well the part that I thought it was too small to pupate was the same anyway ; ) It was the first one I had in spring, it was on rue and I put a mesh sleeve over the rue it was on then it went right ahead and pupated right there. The last ones I had this year were huge compared to that one. Now you have me wondering if the rue just produces smaller cats. The last set I had were on zizia aptera and they seemed fond of the seed heads, I wonder if the seeds have more fat kind of like sunflower seeds have? It's possible don't ya think : )
Here's the last one I had eating, they all wondered of and hopefully, successfully made chrysalids.

Boy, he is a fatty, Meredith. That's a real good picture. So clear. : )

I better keep prowling my rue - maybe the cat hoard will appear, yet. We're getting some Monarchs and Spicebush butterflies, now - they seem to be passing through.

Star, I like your idea. I would just add one thing - can we encourage them to list their wants? I will have some seeds in abundance, so listing them will be no problem. But I'll have others in small numbers, so I would want those to go to someone who wants them badly enough to put them on a want list. Those will make nice surprises to tuck in with ones they might be expecting.

Karen

What a great cat shot! I'm jealous you have such a good camera lol.

Bluespiral, thanks for the MG id, that was a nice surprise. I'm going to add that to my journal, it sure looks like that is what it is. It looked just great intertwined with the Heavenly blue this summer.

Thank you for the compliments : ) My camera is okay, it is quite finicky. The zoom produces louzy pics and I can only get so close to stuff with detail (like flowers and bugs) or it blurrs and if the subject moves just a little too fast it blurrs. I wish I could get one that had real good zoom and motion captioning. It's probably very outdated because I got it right before my 4 yr old DD was born.

Star, I was thinking about how much I'd be able to contribute to the ike swap. I had an idea so maybe more folks could participate, because for some it might end up costing so much between packing materials and postage if they are sending small amounts to individual people. I wonder if we can figure out a way to do it for less cost to everyone participating? Perhaps if enough large envies or boxes containing the seeds and plants that are being donated and a certain amount of postage to get them to who need them, were donated for the amount of people needing help and a host could do something similar to what suzy did, so everyones just sending it to one person then them making one package for each person needing stuff, it might work out better so more people could contribute without breaking their bank.

I'd be willing to donate a lot of seeds.

I am a happy donator (but not an organizer). If the Ike Seed Benefit flies just let me know where to send my seeds. :-)