Urban Wonder at Penn State

It’s raining sheets of water in NT today – respite from the last few weeks of heat, humidity and drought.

It’s also a good moment to enjoy some photos from a recent road trip where we stopped in State College.  A visit to Penn State’s Aboretum is rated #2 in the list of things to do and I’m so grateful that DH decided to surprise me with a pit-stop.  The gardens are full of inspiration, and I loved the children’s garden which was full of edibles planted artfully.  Tons of rainbow swiss chard was planted for colour with scarlet runner beans, cucamelons, pattipan squash, herbs, and flowers to attract pollinators.

Welcome to the Children’s Garden at Penn State

 

Penn State is a big campus – the Arboretum is across from the big football stadium and is not to be missed.  Here are a few beautiful memories.

Lemon cukes grow inside a teepee

Teepees for squash and beans

Visions of purple ruffles basil

Costoluto genovese – yum!

Enjoy the beauty!

And let’s not forget the flowers.  Lovely tropical garden and water gardens too!

What’s your garden ROI?

Picking plants for the garden can be lots of fun.  How do you pick what you grow, especially when you don’t have a lot of space?  Do you go for tried and true, minimal upkeep, colour, organic, or edibles that you can’t find in the supermarket?

The $1.99 rule has prevailed in our garden.  DH’s measure is ROI – he doesn’t like to see us grow things he can find in the supermarket at this price or less.  I’ve relented a bit over time.  There are some plants that I love to have in the garden for convenience such herbs and green onion.  Every pasta dish is more special when it’s sprinkled with fresh basil and parsley.

Colour and the I-can’t-buy-that-in-the-supermarket come next.  So our bush and pole beans are purple.  The tomatoes are blue, brown, white and striped.  The lettuces are red and speckled.  The marigolds are key lime yellow.   The radishes are easter eggs.  The swiss chard is rainbow coloured.  Best of all , everything we grow is something that we eat regularly.  The only drawback (and it’s a small one) is that most of what we grow is the same beautiful produce at the farmer’s market.  I do way more looking than buying.

garden roi is a 20-pace dinner

Growing marigolds from seed rocks!

There’s never enough space in my urban garden for flowers.  Tomato and cucumbers reign supreme.  But this year I really wanted to grow cream-coloured marigolds.  I had dreams of white flowers and sprays of red impatiens or nasturtiums – something to evoke how patriotic the garden would look on Canada Day.

It was not to be when aphids attached the seedlings.  When I restarted, key lime seeds were all that remained.  They looked weak and diseased when they came out of the grow-op as if bacterial wilt had taken hold.  I almost gave them away.  So glad I didn’t because they are beautiful and enormous.  Wow.  Red and white – I’ll try again next year.

Marigolds in the garden

This year’s 99 cent refugees

I love 99 cent refugees – these are the plants that are discounted to 99 cents as July approaches.  There’s always some room for them in my garden because I don’t like the thought of seedlings not having homes.  Here are the refugees we took in this year.

Two white cherry tomatoes

Little rosemary

 

The wonder of nasturtiums

I love the look of happy nasturtium plants – bright-coloured flowers with round leaves that look terrific tumbling over borders.  It took a long time to figure why they wouldn’t grow in our garden and then I stumbled on it after a few google searches – there’s too much nitrogen in our soil.  When gardening articles advise that they thrive in poor soil what they mean is that nasturtiums don’t like nitrogen.

A different approach was needed in hopes of helping nasturtiums thrive in our garden.  We planted them in the worst soil in our garden and they’re going great.

edible nasturtiums

Nasturtiums also rock because they are edible.  We tried them at a local farmer’s market – $3 for a dozen so that’s basically 25 cents each.  And they taste great, reminiscent of mustard greens.  Now that I’ve figured it out, I’ll grow more of them.

whirly bird nasturtiums

more whirly birds