Little Green Beans

These are the beginnings of the bean crop this year.  I call it a crop but really it's a whole 10 or so plants with a few beans each.  Enough to make a side dish from once they are big enough but that's about it.

We will have enough though to save some of the seeds for next year's garden.  Seed saving is the only way to get crops year after year, whether you do it yourself or buy from seed companies that only do seed saving.

Doing it yourself though has one distinct advantage over buying it year after year from a seed company.  You know how the plant is going to react where you live and there will always be small variations to a plant.  What grew is the best plant from the seeds you planted.  The beans, in this case, that grew are a snapshot of those plants.  Anything that made those specific plants grow that maybe made them a fraction better than the plants you thinned out or that didn't grow so well is preserved and passed on to next year's crop.  If you do this for long enough you will start to have a hybrid and something that, although it resembles the original plants, is not the plants you started with.  They will, hopefully,  be better.  They also might get cross pollinated from a nearby garden and come up with a whole different plant.  This happens a lot with commercial crops.  One plant will cross with another and the result isn't always what a farmer wanted.  Thus saving seeds can be a tricky matter.

Several of the seeds we have planted are from produce from the store.  This also can be fairly random since some produce is pollinated by a more fertile plant even though the fruit from that plant may not be as desirable.  Apples for instance are often cross pollinated with crabapples because they put off more pollen and help other apple trees produce better.  The fruit from the desired trees is good but the seeds may well be a cross between say a honeycrisp and crabapple.

Some things you don't want to cross.  Dill and fennel for instance will produce a plant that doesn't taste like either and doesn't smell all that good.

Planting for Spring

Spring has sprung even if the plant store is a little more wary. We've already got plants in the ground and seeds from last year are already popping up and saying hi.

Among the returnnig plants are the dill, which has come up in a carpet in the area it was in last year and is already attracting the black swallow tail butterflies, and the cilantro or chinese parsley, which again doesn't want to grow in the planting beds but likes to stretch out and grow in the rocks.  I think this is partly due to the birds eating most of the seed they can see on the dirt and when they're in the rocks it's harder for the birds to get to them and swallow them up.

From the plants that come back from the root we have the purple cone flower, hollyhock, a wide variety of iris, daylily, ferns, a basil plant that just didn't want to die, lemongrass, fennel, and onion.

The survivors who stayed green and happy all winter were oregano, thyme, lavender, green onion, rosemary, the monster beet, and of course the live oak.

We've planted seeds, starting from north to south, for corn, bush beans, beets, carrots, onion, and radishes.

Plants we've put in as plants are tomato, thyme, and rue (near our rose bush out front).  So far everything seems to be acclimating well.  the tomatoes, which usually droop a little at first, never even tipped a leaf.  We actually planted two thyme plants, a lemon thyme next to the one that's finally acclimating well and a yellow leaf thyme out near the fennel.

Cooking with Fennel

You probably know that fennel is used in lots of italian food. For instance it's the reason my wife doesn't like italian sausage. It's also used in soups, pastas and sauces.  You can braise the bulb of the fennel plant and serve it with a mustard sauce.
What I like to do, which is also considered italian to some degree is put fennel seeds on pizza.  It just seems to add that little bit of kick you don't usually have. Not too much though or you'll be picking the little seeds out of your teeth for a while and the flavor can be overpowering.  So next time you have pizza delivered, sprinkle some fennel seeds on a slice and see for yourself.

Rogue Herbs

Many herbs are self-seeding.  That means that you can plant them in one place, and have them pop up anywhere they please.  This can be outside of your flower beds.  We are getting ready to do a major early spring yard clean-up, ad we've found a couple of rogue herbs -- onne chives plant, and one fennel.  We're trying to let them get big enough to transplant into thier proper beds.

Springing Plants

I don't know who told them to but I have several plants, most notably the lamb's ear and echinacea, sprouting and shooting up like there's no winter left but little do they know it's going to freeze again tonight.
One of the plants I don't think will mind too much is the snow pea plant.  I believe I misidentified it as a edamame.  Well I couldn't remember what I planted in that pot I just knew that I gave up on it when all of the pots baked in what felt like a 400 degree oven that is the metroplex...
The agave plants likewise should have no problem with the cold.  There are lots of them in the area and none of them so far have had any really bad effects from the cold.
The fennel likewise is making a comeback and the wild onion is actually a little late it feels like.  There are a few up front but the back seems a little lacking in that field...

Seedy little plants

I went outside today and looked over the front garden and saw tiny little plants growing in the gravel walkway. I knew there were some weeds creeping in and trying to make it a weed bed but I was a little surprised to find some other plants sprouting up there. Mainly, besides the weeds, there was cilantro. I really like cilantro, as long as there's not too much of it at a time, but now there are dozens of little plants along the edge of the gravel and I'm afraid I will have to uproot them and toss them to the side like the rest of the plants. They have journeyed to the realm of weeds since, as we all know, weeds are merely plants that are growing where you don't want them to.
Another newcomer to the weed family, in my case the plants that are growing in my gravel walkway, is fennel. There are only two fennel plants sprouting where they shouldn't but that's still too many. It's hard enough to keep the grass out.
I wouldn't have this problem if they weren't so reproductive. Both plants produce many seeds every year and have no problem dropping them where they shouldn't. Ok, so it's partly my fault for trying to harvest some of the seeds for cooking but I don't want to complain about myself...

Front Garden Layout

There's more to it, but below are pictutes from the roof again.

This time it's of the front gardens. I've placed them so they are in order. The top edge of the top picture is the street we live on and the right side is our driveway. The tree shown is a 9 year old oak that came with the house. I can only estimate it's age from what our neighbor tells us.

The bottom of the bottom picture is the walkway leading up to the front door. The right side is our rock garden and the left side next to it has our pepper plants, mums, hyacinth and iris.

The planting strip along the upper part of the gravel walk has lamb's ear, parsley, lettuce, cabbage and sage. The lettuce can be seen in both pictures.

The large cloud of yellow is our fennel. I really should figure out something to make with it before it dies off...

On the corner of the drive and street there are two small lavender bushes. Too bad most of the plants aren't recognizable here.

The middle round area in the top picture is where we decided to put the mint, chives, and other assorted herbs.