what's happening

our garden features several unusual varieties of vegetable such as vining okra and loofah.  we also have an artichoke, various colors of eggplants and tomatoes and two of my favorites are the lemon cucumber (on the left) and cardoon (on the right).  the lemon cucumbers are small and about the size of a lemon with a pale yellow rind, hence the name.  they also have the best cucumber flavor of any we have ever grown.  the cardoon was chosen specifically for it's display, large artichoke-like flowers that are surprisingly fragrant, and it's height.

along the front walk of the house, we added two lasagna beds as you may recall from earlier posts.  in between the beds was a scraggly collection of hostas.  we have decided to officially turn this space into a hosta garden.  we moved around some existing hostas and added some chocolate chip ajuga, also called bugleweed, and in the future we will add more so keep checking back for more updates.

some of the most successful plants in the garden are the cannas.  last year was the first year we had them in the garden.  we were given some rhizomes by chris, one of the cousins in Kentucky, when we visited them during the holiday season of 2006.  darry placed the cannas in the ground in the spring of 2007 and we watched them take off last summer  in spite of the drought.  last fall, darry cut the amount in this bed by removing half of them and placing them in an empty space by the end of the driveway and in another bed out front.  they have once again doubled in this bed, if not tripled and are well over 6 feet tall.  we will be removing almost all of them in this bed come the first frost, they are simply too big and invasive for all of the other plants here.  as a result, we will have rhizomes to share!

more info on cannas