There's a Sunflower in the Soup Garden

Season 5, Episode 33, June 28, 2023

and

Jun 27, 2023

See the color echo between the coneflowers and the daylily in Dee’s garden?

On this week’s episode, Dee and I talked about native echinaceas, transitioning the vegetable garden from spring to summer, a new book on grasses, plus mulch and Jalapeño-gate.

This is one of those episodes where we bounce around a little bit, covering topics ranging from squash bug mitigation strategies to the author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Along the way, Dee provided the perfect title for this episode. She explained for the benefit of my sister, and perhaps other listeners who didn’t know, what a potager is. It’s a word used to describe a kitchen garden and derives from the same word we get porridge from, which means…

It’s a soup garden.

And Dee has a giant sunflower in hers!

Giant sunflower in Dee’s potager - soup garden

As she points out in this episode, her sunflower is too magnificent to cut down before it has a chance to flower. But once it flowers… sunflower soup for everyone! I even found a recipe for her to try.

While you think about how delicious sunflower soup might be, I’ll forge ahead with some links to our topics.

In our new playing favorites segment, Dee talked about her 'Phenomenal' Lavender, and I talked about Sweet Talk Deep Pink Cuphea. In fact, I also wrote a blog post about it.

For our flower topic, we rounded up some native coneflower information from the Missouri Botanical Garden: Echinacea pallida, E. tennesseensis, and E. purpurea. Dee mentioned our friend Gail E., whose blog is Clay and Limestone, grows E. tennesseensis.

While discussing our vegetable subject, we once again mentioned a great book, Plant Partners, by Jessica Walliser (Amazon Link), and Dee mentioned Gardenaryco on Instagram. She’s a good gardener to follow for great ideas.

On the bookshelf, we both got review copies of Grasses for Gardens and Landscapes: Design, Selection, Cultivation, by Neil Lucas (Amazon Link). We both liked it and discussed how looking up information in a well-written book is often better than searching the internet. The other book Dee mentioned was The American Meadow: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn by John Greenlee (2009) (Amazon link).

For our dirt, we had two topics. We talked about Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott’s research on arborist wood chips as mulch, and then Dee gave a report on Jalapeño-gate. (How are your jalapeño peppers doing this year?)

One last thing… there’s a zinnia thief out there somewhere. I’ll provide an update if I figure out who/what/when/how, and most importantly, why!

There's a Sunflower in the Soup Garden

Season 5, Episode 33, June 28, 2023

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