The Flowers I Started From Last Year's Collected Seeds

I just wanted to share photos of how my flowers from collected seeds turned out. 

Last year, I had Patriot Mix petunias, a mix of red, white, and dark purple blossoms. They looked something like this photo.

We had such beautiful sunny and warm weather in May and June of 2021. The blossoms looked great for the 4th of July. This year, not so much. It was cold and wet for all of May and most of June. Petunias don't like cold and wet. The leaves yellowed and the plants looked like they were on their last legs before warmer weather finally set in, here. There were hardly any blooms at all by the 4th. In addition, the colors were not what I had hoped they would be.

So, with the petunias, I saved a bunch of the seeds and planted some of them this spring. This is what I got from some of the seeds, white, light purple with white spots, dark purple, and very dark purple. 

and

The medium purple with white spots is interesting. It has had several blossoms and each blossom has its spots in a different place, but white spots nonetheless. On this bloom, there's just a single white spot on the corner of one petal.

and

The marigolds were more like what I expected, an assortment of gold, orange, and burnt red blossoms, some double and some single in layers of petals. This is very close to what I remember from last year's flowers. I planted these last year with the idea that they would be our late summer through early fall flowers. This year, I've got them in pots and am hoping for the same gorgeous autumnal display that I can move around to decorate porches and other areas. I have a small pot of the marigolds in the pumpkin and sunflower patch, perched on a stump. The color from those marigolds adds just the right cheer as I await the formation of pumpkins.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share how the saved seeds turned out for me.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for Mid-July

Wednesday's supper -- my daughter and I collaborated. I harvested, she cooked.

I didn't take very many photos of dinners this week, which of course made it very hard to remember what we had. I think I may have forgotten a couple of items. Oh well, this is the gist of what we ate this week.

Friday
garden green frittata, hash brown potatoes, sausage links, watermelon chunks, green salad, homemade pickles

Saturday
scratch refried beans, cheese, salsa and homemade flour tortillas, garden salad, garden strawberries

Sunday
sautéed turnip greens and ham, rhubarb sauce, biscuits, ice cream (a variety of leftover ice cream from the past 2 years discovered when cleaning the freezers)

Monday
barbecued chicken leg quarters, French bread, watermelon chunks, garden salad

Tuesday
rice/cheese/chicken skillet dinner, broccoli/cranberry/almond salad

Wednesday
greens and sausage frittata, French bread, garden salad, garden strawberries, rhubarb and blackberry crisp

Dolmathes soup is something I invented last summer --
it's most of the ingredients for stuffed grape leaves in soup form,
with grape leaves shredded as the leafy green and ground beef added for protein.

Thursday
Dolmathes soup, scratch scones, garden salad, watermelon chunks 

We've been chasing a family of raccoons out of the cherry tree on a daily basis. So on Thursday I decided to just pick as many pink to red cherries as I could get to with a ladder, then pit and dehydrate those cherries. If I tried to wait until the cherries ripened, there wouldn't be any cherries. The raccoons, blackbirds and squirrels would have eaten them all. Dehydrating the cherries intensifies the sweetness (which isn't fully developed in underripe cherries). So I'm good with that. With the dehydrator on, I also put in 2 trays of sage leaves and 3 trays of oregano to dry.

As you can see by our menus, we're using a lot of garden produce now. One day at lunch, I was cutting back the basil to promote bushier plants and made a batch of pesto with the cuttings, along with some radish leaves. Delicious on French bread!

I used the crockpot several times this week, making rosemary polenta, a couple of batches of overnight steel cut oats, and chicken stock. We're low on bread, so the crockpot has been a helper in making starches for the family.

I spent more time organizing a freezer this past week, the 3rd of 4 freezers. I found a bunch of almost empty containers of ice cream. Many of these were homemade ice cream, so they were in repurposed plastic containers -- easy to not know what was in them. I found chocolate-fudge brownie (homemade), funfetti vanilla (homemade), French vanilla (commercial), peppermint (homemade), blackberry cheesecake (homemade), vanilla (commercial), and 2 slices of ice cream cake, Not bad, huh? We had ice cream for dessert on Sunday, everyone choosing what they wanted. Hopefully we'll finish it all off this coming weekend so I can have my freezer shelf available again. I also gathered together all of the containers of homemade soup stock. I found ham, beef, and chicken stock in containers. I put them all together on the same shelf, hoping we'll begin to use it up. I have one more freezer to organize. I've kept this one fairly organized all along, so it shouldn't be too time-consuming. Mostly, I'd like to take note of exactly what's in this one. I still have some produce from last summer that we should use before stocking this season's fruits and vegetables and I may have more frozen eggs in this freezer, which would be good to know about now. 

I started some more seeds this past week. I started radish seeds for the greens under lights indoors in milk jug "pots". And I potted spinach seeds, which I pre-sprouted in a baggie inside a damp paper towel set in a warm place. I have a spot in the garden that will be harvested in about 2-3 weeks and I wanted to have spinach ready to go in that spot. Pre-sprouting the seeds and getting started in pots will give me a jump start on fresh spinach to harvest in late August through early September. In addition to both of these greens, I picked up a packet of seeds for something I tried, unsuccessfully, 30 years ago -- lamb's lettuce also known as corn salad. It's a cool weather green that supposedly does well in my area in the cooler months of fall and into winter. I'll be digging the garlic early next month and will plant the lamb's lettuce in that spot to use throughout fall, if I can get it to grow.

In addition to the rhubarb-blackberry crisp I mentioned in the menu, I also baked a double batch of cranberry-orange scones. These were enjoyed by all. I found 1 container of orange zest in the freezer and 2 containers of candied orange peel. As you can imagine, I'll be thinking of ways to use these orange flavorings in baking.

That's about it for my meals this past week. What was on your menu? Are you using a crockpot or instapot this summer? My crockpot has been invaluable this past week.

Have a great weekend, friends!