Sunshine, labels and organizing

 Weather app says there is a good chance of rain tomorrow and Thursday. Right now it's clear and only slightly breezy so another perfect day for gardening, walking or something else outdoors.

Hard to see due to the lighting and angle but it's another grey/blue small butterfly on the zinnias. I see no reason to cut them down at this point since they are still gorgeous and drawing in butterflies. Not as many as before due to the colder weather (which is good because Dolores' kale has no chewing on it that I could see yesterday).

A few rusty red leaves are popping through in the lettuce seedlings so there is some different varieties going on. A lot of them are curling type but it's all good honestly as most of it survives. As soon as those get planted out I'll seed some more and have a constant supply going on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took a closer look at the roses to see what's going on with that one with no growth. The one next to it has nothing up top but a sprout coming up at the base from bellow the soil level. This is okay. Miniatures are grown from cuttings to anything coming up from the soil is going to be the same color and variety. I tried to get a better picture of the bottom of the totally naked one to show there is a sprout coming out from the base there. So there is life, it's just behind the others on growth. I also took that tag out of the pot, it's a generic 'this is a miniature rose' thing with no specific color or identity on it so it's not needed. 

Me, who has been around plants for most of my life and have been curious about what they are and how they grow and all that, find it occasionally mind boggling that a rose, when in bloom still needs a tag telling customers that's what it is. Is it like a package of bacon that says 'contains pork'? Are there people out in the world that have never seen a rose or even a picture of one that they would need a tag that says what it is? I would think there would be a caution tag that says 'caution, has thorns and may cause injury' with all the other things that have tags for the less than insightful consumers out there.

I can understand having pictures on seed packets for non literate or non-english speaking people because that will show what the seed is for. But that can even backfire on some other products, in a famous anecdote a family came to America and saw a can of Crisco shortening that had a picture of fried chicken on it. They thought 'wow! America is so great! Chicken in a can!'  Because they couldn't read English well at that point, needless to say they got home and were greatly disappointed.

Now, over this past summer there were many accounts, a few here and there in the garden group then more and finally it made the news. Pepper seeds did not grow into what it was labeled as and we were calling it 'pepper-gate'. It's kind of quizzical that a seed company that has been in business for decades would somehow mix up what batch they were harvesting. It seems to have stemmed (haha) from one or two major suppliers of larger distributed seeds. Not sure which companies but Burpee, NK or some other one. Obviously, locally grown seeds were not affected if they didn't source from those companies. It seemed to be primarily Jalapeño seeds that turned out to be not. Some were multi colored 'Candy Stripe' sweet peppers' or some other sweet variety.

My guess is a batch or seeds got dumped or shifted into another batch and rather than tossing out the whole production batch someone made the executive decision to just keep things rolling and not worry about it. Could have been seeds that were stuck in a part of the machines that did packaging and when it was cleaned out or jiggled, the wrong seeds were mixed in. Whatever the reason it had the gardening community across the country all in a dither. So when that was going on I made sure to collect seeds from the peppers I bought from the store and hope that they are viable for next year. 

Just wish I had more room to plant all the peppers and tomatoes and the zucchini and cucumber and and.... everything. Even if I pack that raised bed full, I'll still only be able to have maybe four or five different things in there.

Just organized all the seeds into clipped bundles: 3 hot peppers: Poblano, Jalapeño and seeds collected from 'Hatch' chilies that we got from food table. 5 different bell peppers; yellow, red and green (California Wonder) and some mini pepper seeds, four collected from store bought fruit. 4 tomatoes: Roma, Aroma, Spoon and Terra Cotta. 3 flowers: Echinacea, Zinnia and some sunflower seeds from Addi's plant. 2 Cucumbers: Marketmore 76 and Spacemaster. The remaining seeds are Cantaloupe (collected from fruit), Purple Tomatillo, Yellow Straightneck and Blue Lake 274 Bush Beans.

I would need two more beds the next size up from the one I have right now in order to plant everything. Will have to narrow it down to things different than what I planted this year with a few exceptions.