Swallowtail Garden Seeds Blog - page 2

As a floral designer who tries to use seasonal and locally-grown flowers whenever possible, I love summer and fall for the brightly-colored and interestingly-textured options available. I’m especially enamored of dahlias, particularly just how much variety there is in terms of flower form, shape, color, and size. It’s sometimes hard to believe that a flower the size of a half dollar resembling a ball and a flower the size of my entire head with a plethora of gracefully pointed petals are from the same...

Left to Right: Similar views of the garden in June, July, and August. Since transplanting the first little seedlings in May, my northern California vegetable garden has undergone quite a transformation. The growing season started late because of plentiful spring rain, and was followed by a series of heatwaves through July. Most of August has been socked in practically every morning and evening with coastal fog, which has significantly slowed the growth rate of all of the veggies. These past few days...

This past Monday the shadow of the moon moved swiftly West to East across the North American continent. In our home just North of San Francisco, we experienced a partial solar eclipse, with 78% of the sun's central disk blocked by the moon at 10:15am local time. Cloud cover blocked our view, still the light generated by the solar eclipse was interesting in itself. The quality of the light was soft and warm, and shadows cast were unusually sharp. In the Swallowtail Garden Seeds test garden, flowers seemed...

My earliest memory of eating a lemon cucumber is from when I was about 6 or 7 years old. It must have been August, because our family vegetable garden was at its peak, and the early evening was warm. My parents were away, and our neighbor Dori was babysitting. She took us out to the garden for dinner with a bowl of ranch salad dressing. Dori is a chef, so it was homemade and especially tasty. We just grazed around the garden, picking whatever vegetables we felt like eating, and dipping it in the...

Are gophers a problem in your area? I grew up in an area without any gophers. It didn’t know how lucky I was to have my first garden in such a place. Moles were a problem in my first garden but they never killed any of my plants. After I moved to Sonoma County, California, I quickly learned how much of a pest gophers can be. My first garden in Sonoma County was a small 12-foot by 12-foot plot that I surrounded with fencing in hopes of keeping out hungry deer and chickens. Even though the fencing wasn’t...

One of the aspects of the history of gardening and cultivated plants I find most fascinating is the period of time during which there was a commonly known and accepted culture around giving plants and bouquets of flowers to friends, lovers, and enemies with hidden (or not-so-hidden) messages. If propriety meant one could not express one’s true feelings out loud or even in written form, one could send a message in a coded language that one hoped would be decoded by the recipient. The only meaning for a...

From seed to harvest, tomatoes are included in my top ten favorite plants to grow. The seeds are easy to handle, and seedlings grow quickly with a high germination rate. All they ask of you is warm, fertile soil, the right amount of water, plenty of sun, and some sort of support structure to hold them relatively upright. There are so many different techniques for staking tomatoes; I have good success with the following method. Materials needed: 5 sturdy stakes per tomato, at least 5 feet tall...

Poppies for Early Season Color Poppies are easy to grow and can add an amazing variety of early season color to your garden. Poppies can grow in most areas and are particularly well-suited for cooler northern climates. California Poppies can thrive in heat better than most types of poppies. We sell more than 30 varieties, including five types of annual poppies and three types of perennial poppies. Poppy flowers come in a wide range of colors including red, white, blue, pink, pewter, lilac, purple, black...

Columbines have long been one of my favorite flowers, but I didn't realize how much I truly enjoyed them until I lived in Colorado and hiked in the mountains fairly frequently when weather permitted, taking photos of wildflowers I saw while adventuring with my now-husband. I began to feel as though a hike wasn't complete if I didn't spot a columbine, nodding its head under the weight of a bee, situated amongst a field of other flowers. The pale purple-blue of the outer petals, or sepals, the soft white of...

While on vacation last week, I had the pleasure to visit the Chicago Botanic Garden. Coming from California where the summers are long, hot and dry, I especially loved seeing the plants that thrive with regular summer rainfall. Vast plantings of hosta, impatiens, begonias, and ferns, to name a few. A mass planting of hybrid hostas in bloom under white birch trees. Gryphon begonias planted with Divine New Guinea impatiens. I found the extensive vegetable garden and fruit orchard inspiring and full of...