We grew up with a mom who loved plants, who had green fingers as well as thumbs, who made us weed and water and who could landscape her yard beautifully. To this day, and she's in her 70's, she still has fantastic flowers. Having said all that, I thought I knew pretty much about flowers...it's hereditary, isn't it?? But I started working in Lowe's garden center and, much to my delight, I made lots of new flower friends. Among them is this Mexican heather. Oh my, I love it! It even resembles Scottish heather. I first noticed it in the hanging baskets outside the store. By the first of July the rest of the hanging baskets looked pathetic. They were over-exposed, over-watered and root bound. I wanted to throw them all away. One benefit for me, however, was that they discounted all the hanging baskets. Like down to 2.50! So I bought two of them. When I got home, I found out that there were FIVE plants in that one little basket. I transplanted them into these pots on the pool deck. They love lots of sun and to be semi-moist. Not too hard. They are THRIVING on the pool deck. Too bad they are annuals. I may be tempted to try to bring the pots in and see if I can keep them alive all winter. But my living room is getting rather full of over-wintering plants!!
7 comments:
your flowers look beautiful!! Mine are starting to look tired. I had a yummy BLT for lunch with T from the plant outside. Nothing like fresh tomatoes...Do you have a good pesto recipe?
I usually just go online and look for a recipe. I should make that for dinner. I have tons, well not literally, of basil. Don't have pine nuts, though. I need to find out how Celeste dries and keeps her basil.
Melinda dries it too.
Can it possibly be better than your basil? Oh, NO! Surely not! But I just love all of your flowers! And you are the best bloom in the whole garden! See you soon!
I got snagged by Mexican heather this spring,too, but got too busy between buying and planting and lost them. Another favorite of ours that is "underdone" is melampodium. I had a few of those I had to water, water, water, and I said "forget it" Three out of the six made it and are nice, large, loaded= with=blooms plants now.I have a dehumidifier in my basement and I put screen on boxes or whatever and put the basil plants on it , with out stripping the leaves. Then when they were good and dry, I held the leave over a 'retired' pretzel container, gallon size, and drop them in. Not very sophisticated. By not breaking the leaves they stay pretty potent for a long time. I did two gallons one year and I think it might be even be three years ago this fall and I still have a half gallon left. I have been using freah basil a lot this summer, instead of the dried, because I can. I keep picking off the seedheads so they get good and bushy.
What's a pretzel container and what is comparable to it? Can I just dry them in a room w/o a dehumidifier? Do you cut the whole stalk and lay it out? Do you turn it over? Do you drop the whole stalk in the pretzel container? I have tons here, well, not literally!
A pretzel container is just a gallon size plastic container. You can probably dry it in any room that's dry, but a basement is usually damp, so we have dehumidifier down there and it is sure enough dry. Yep, I just cut the whole stalk. Why fiddle with little stuff. But to get it into the container you have to take the leaves off, which is pretty fast when they are dry. I have just hung the whole stalk over a pipe and then crumbled it off as I needed it, but I figured that is kind of dusty, so the next time I did it right and got it put away.
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