Swallowtail Garden Seeds Blog - page 4

"I wanna touch the earth, I wanna break it in my hands, I wanna grow something wild and unruly..." ~Martie Seidel and Marcus Hummon Wild and unruly plants are welcome in my garden. Plants that spill over the edge, reseed themselves freely, and pop up in unexpected places dominate my back yard. Nasturtiums feel at home. They drop seeds and each generation is different from the year before. I have only planted them once, some Tall Single Mix seeds, and every year a new flower color or two surprises...

The ‘days to maturity’ number tells you how many days until a plant will be mature enough to begin producing vegetables, fruits or flowers. For seeds that are best started in containers for later transplanting (e.g. tomatoes and peppers), the number of days to maturity starts after the seedlings are transplanted into the garden. For example, we list Juliet tomato as taking 60 days to mature. This means that, on average, a Juliet tomato plant will produce its first ripe tomato about 60 days after the...

When the weather starts to settle and the soil is warm and crumbly, I start to dream about picking and eating juicy, sweet tomatoes and crunchy, spicy peppers, straight from the garden. I know I will need to wait a couple more months, but at least I can start planning what to do with them when they ripen, right? My favorite fresh salsa recipe goes like this: 2 to 3 tomatoes ( sauce tomatoes are preferable, but any tomato will do) 1/2 to 1 sweet onion 1 or 2 jalapeños or other fresh hot peppers...

Mary started these seedlings of Gaura The Bride in wet paper towels on the top of a refrigerator in our office on April 6 as a germ test, and they'd already sprouted enough to transplant into cell packs on April 14, just eight days later. We kept the seedlings in a sunny, southwest-facing window where they have been very happy. Here are a few progress photos: Gaura seedlings on May 1 Gaura seedlings on May 24 Today, the gaura seedlings look like this: Over the next week, two of our employees will be...

Last Saturday I was sitting on the back patio reading. Next to me were six Riviera Mix lobelia plants that I had started indoors, blooming nicely. While flipping through the pages of my book, I heard a distinct hummingbird-like sound, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bumble bee-shaped insect hovering. Upon getting a closer look, the insect was a good distance from the flowers and was feeding by way of a long proboscis. The insect’s wings were beating fast, moving similarly to the manner of a...

Swallowtail Garden Seeds is excited to announce that we have a new feature on our website - a blog! We plan to update this page regularly and as often as time allows. You will likely see contributions from many of us here on the SGS team, including Emily, Mary, Ben, and maybe even Don. This will be a place where we can talk about topics that interest us, what's new in our gardens, and also a place where readers will be welcome to interact with us and our posts, so feel free to chime in if you have...