Moving along - wild petunias, dyer's coreopsis, and wild tobacco

Today I spent some time getting more plants in. I got all the wild white petunias (Petunia axillaris) into large pots.  I grew these two years ago and thought I had plenty of seed to last, but it sold out the first year. Last year I forgot to start it and grew Petunia integrifolia, the other wild parent of hybrid petunias. P. integrifolia, which I will probably call wild purple petunia. They grew very well, but I was disappointed by them because the flowers were smallish, fuchsia, and had no smell. That’s why I didn’t save any seed. Wouldn’t you know that people have since asked me for the seed for that plant! Well, in the fall I should have some of both. I love the white one, though, because of its sweet scent. Petunias are in the nightshade family, but you would never know it from the appearance of the hybrids, but the wild white petunia, oh yeah, definitely a nightshade. It gives off a lot more maturity than its often silly hybrid relatives. Depth and complexity. Here’s a pic from two years ago. I came across a cache of the white petunia seeds in my collection and so made it available again on the site, but before I could even package them up, they disappeared. I have not been able to find them since. So they are out of stock until fall. These seeds are simply not available wholesale, so I have to grow them myself if I want to sell them. But I enjoy doing that with beauties like this.

I also seeded a bunch of echinacea and Coreopsis tinctoria, a wonderful plant that I grew en masse years ago, when I first began seriously gardening and growing dye plants. It was because of coreopsis that learned that bees are not out to get me. As you can see, this plant is very airy, but when it is planted in groups, it leans against its siblings and makes a wonderful drift of these yellow and blood-red ray flowers that nod in the slightest breeze and that bees love. It’s the flowers that are used for dyeing. I will be adding this seed to Alchemy Works. It is very easy to grow. It makes a nice gold color on wool. Whenever you see the species name “tinctoria,” you know that the plant has a history of being used for natural dyeing. I’ve already got Genista tinctoria, Anthemis tinctoria (which is probably going to take over my entire neighborhood) and some other dye plants in Alchemy Works, but I will be adding more slowly. I just got a nice book on natural dye plants.

I had very little success growing, of all things, marigolds–I can’t remember if they were Harlequin or Jelly Jester. These are the striped marigolds that go back to the time of Jefferson. Perhaps the seed was that old. All I know is that out of 16 pellets, only 4 turned up seedlings, and one of those was very weak. For a marigold, that is pretty bad. This is the kind of seed that many newbie gardeners start with precisely because it is so easy to grow. To have seeds that don’t grow, well, that’s almost unique. I did get three to take, so if they grow, I will have plenty of seeds from those.

The tobaccos look wonderful, very hale and hearty despite the very dry, warm weather we’ve been having (or maybe that’s just what they like, but I thought they’d crave more water–soaker hose is on them right now). We’ve been running just a bit above average in terms of temps and below average in terms of rain. The ground is as dry as a bone, although the drought map doesn’t show any problems for our area. One of the blood-drop emlets is actually in bud, so I should have pics of that soon. I hope to collect seeds from those plants. They just seem tailor-made for magic. And they should go very well with the coreopsis in terms of color.