I hope your cilantro is doing as good as mine - I have whole bunches of it now eight or ten inches high already. There are also lots of basil plants that have come up on their own, and the fennel you sent me is coming back in one of the planters too.

 

Wouldn't it be nice like back in my folks days when you could load
your old F1 up out of your garden. Than go to town and set up
on the street and sell your fresh over flow. Now days the last time I
was in the lower 48 it was hard to find a farmer that would or could
sell bulk spuds or flats of tomatoes and stuff like that. Does that still
go on anywhere anymore? Last I was "Down South" was 99 and 2000.
We loaded up on whatever we could get. Than drove home through
Canada on the Al Can. But the Border Patrol guys took most of everything.
They wouldn't tell me what they was going to do with all the fruit and
veggies they had confiscated from us and others. I am sure it didn't go to
waist.

Maybe that is why Canadian Bacon and whiskey is so cheap up here.

 

We have two regular flea markets that happen just up the road from me once or twice a month - and it is common to see people with trucks and trailers full of garden veggies set up along the roads around here.

I have the advantage of being 150 yards from a major three way intersection of the local feeder roads. People sell everything at that corner.

 

Beware, many market venders are selling shipped goods like they are fresh off the farm.

 

Wolf----glad to hear the fennel is doing well for you. My original 2 plants finally did NOT come back this year (after 3 years). I will plant some more soon.

We have people set up tables all over town with extra stuff from their gardens, particularly in the Eat Brainerd & Hwy 58 areas. I always try to snag some when I see a stand.

We also have several unofficial flea markets at various corners and closed businesses. I will hit them every once in a while when I need something, particularly when making chow chow.

 

ANYONE in the Atoka Munford area -
I have probably about a hundred or more Virginia Bright Tobacco plants (seedlings) that are ready to be planted in gardens and containers.

The joke here is that I no longer smoke, I use a personal vape instead.

If you are into handrolling, or ever wanted to see what real tobacco plants look like as they grow, all you need is a container with some potting soil in it/them and I will GIVE YOU some of my plants free for the asking. They are averaging about 4 to 6 inches across in leaf spread right now, so the hard part is done. Each one of them is well past the difficult sprouting stage and will easily survive transplanting.

PM me if you are interested.

These plants have been outdoors from the beginning, and adapt quickly to most any type of soil. The seeds can be collected, or allowed to self-broadcast in whatever spot you put them. They will come back year after year. Tobacco is technically a weed, and once a plant is successful in your garden it will self-propagate.

If you have the smoking habit and are not yet ready to quit - at least you can break free from watching so much of your hard earned money go away to a corporation that really doesn't care what their products do to you or me.

Natural tobacco without any chemicals in it is still tobacco, but at least it won't have strange chemicals in it or other harmful stuff like gene tailoring.
The seeds for these plants came from a hobbiest grower in Arkansas who appears on www.friendlygardener.com as "Ozarklady"

A "Head of Household" is allowed so many plants per year. For all I know there may be no limit provided they are not offered for sale. Take your habit into your own control, and save all that cash once you have plants big enough to harvest. At the same time, growing these plants cannot fail to be an interesting experience for anybody interested in plants since they are an unusual thing to acquire for the home garden.

So if you ever said to yourself: "I'd grow the damned stuff if I knew where I could get the seeds for it!" now is your chance.

Once again: FREE FOR THE ASKING

PM for driving directions.

PS: Doesn't it just figure that no sooner did I quit smoking than I had huge success at sprouting these???

 

I picked 7 nice peaches from my small tree on the estate....maybe a couple tarts later this week.

Apricots are just about ready for picking.

 

I've got buds on one of my tomato plants, and a few of my ancho pepper plants.
I set out three rows of tobacco plants, since no one seemed interested, about twelve or so plants per row.

Cilantro is at seed height, and basil is a foot tall already. Couple of potato plants are about 18 inches. A day or two ago I used some of my lettuce in some taco salad, there's a lot more going on...

The floral display this year is going to be fascinating - I can tell already. I have coleus a foot or more tall interspersed with hummingbird vines, Gladiolus, Marigold, Morning Glory, Catnip, something that looks like it might be St. Johns Wort, and (this is the one that always used to screw me up) CELOSIA coming up by the road.

The Celosia is in only one area by the street, but the rest are all intermingled in a patch that is deliberately varied.

CELOSIA is very hard to explain.
If I tell you it is a BIG plant, and looks like FIREWORKS - it still doesn't express it exactly...

SO HERE IS A LINK TO PICTURES OF THEM

There are so many varieties and colors of it that like coleus - it's amazing...

There doesn't even seem to be any one set shape to the flowers, they often resemble a patch of coral growing on dry land.

The buds (or BRUSHES) are composed of many hundreds of tiny florets, and the plant is a stunning Butterfly attractant, as well as fetching bees and other prime pollenators.

~In fact, if you wanted to keep honey bees and other such at a distance from your home, putting some of these at a distance off works well. They will be the busiest plants in your whole arrangement for that. Setting a few of them near your vegetables ensures that pollenation happens thoroughly.

All manner of Butterflies gather around them and Dragonflies too.



*COLEUS, CELOSIA... CELOSIA, COLEUS... "BLAH!!!! Is it any wonder I got confused a few times?"

(!)

If Peter Piper picked a peck of Pickled Peppers -
Did Peter Piper pick them off of Pickled Pepper Plants?
But if the Pepper Plants were not Pickled -
How could Pickled Peppers have possibly been picked?

Or was Peter Piper "PICKLED" when he went to pick his plants!

PICK one...

I VOTE Peter Piper was a Pickled Pea-Picker!
~A couple pints can do that....

 

You know the funniest thing about a garden?

PLANTS are PLANTS, and once the plants you want are in there - the ones you don't want in it don't stand much of a chance.

IE: It gets easier over time......

 

Picked about 1 1/2 bushels of apricots off my trees this weekend. Spent Father's Day canning 24 pints of apricots and 25 pints of apricot butter.

Also-----ACE Hardware has all their vegetable plants at 50% off. I now have almost all my containers full of tomato and pepper plants.

 

Apricots make for some damn fine brandy.

 

I'm out of containers and soil...

But I was looking at a catalog from Michigan Bulb Co. and they have a couple of plants - including pale blue roses - that intrigue me endlessly.

Among them is a Banana tree that can survive frost, and an Elephant Ear Plant that has leaves four feet wide and five feet long - it grows to nine feet in height.
Both of those ideas just blow my mind when I think about it.

* I just checked on the Elephant Ears and they are out of stock - bummer!

 

I harvested a motherload of Cilantro today and made some amazing Pico de Gaio!!!

Tomatos are coming out, I have several ripening, and some Poblano peppers starting to fatten up. I transplanted some of the Basil from one spot to another, and am going to set some new planters in place today.

A neighbor down the road that I gave some Cilantro to, gave me one of his cucumbers and a whole bunch of seeds for "Malabar" spinach which is supposed to be a hot temperature and humidity loving plant. It also grows as a vine, running right up a trellis - so I'm very intrigued by that.


*Mac - I'm going to send you some of these seeds!!!

The stuff has bright red stems and thick green leaves. When it produces seed they are berries similar to peppercorns. It should re-seed itself, so I need to be thinking about that when I plant it.

I need to burn up as many trash branches as I can before rain hits later on today, we should have a good soaking through to thursday or friday with any luck.

 

Sounds like your gardens are coming along well, Wolf.

I got my first summer squash and chili pepper this weekend. I also trimmed my basil, oregano, spearmint, peppermint and rosemary. I am drying some and using the rest for cooking this week.

 

Roger - you now have at least a dozen seeds for the above on their way to ya!

I had to call it a short day because I got slashed by my weedeater.
.105" Oregon Magnum Gatorline, no less. I've been waiting all day for the dang thing to quit bleeding.