This month, I have bought some more seeds and a couple of other bits for my garden. It’s mostly flowers this time. I shouldn’t need to get any more seeds, and didn’t really need these ones either, I wanted to have a bit more colour in my garden this year and hopefully have some cut flowers inside. I’m trying to make up for last years lack of gardening due to the building work we had going on!

I chose Salvia ‘Pink Sundae’, an annual sage that has lovely pink flowers. The plant has been grown in gardens since 1569 apparently-if the flowers turn out as pretty as in the photo below, then I can understand why!

Rudbeckia ‘Prairie Sun’ is the next plant that I have chosen, mainly for the flower colour. As well as flowering prolifically, bees and insects love the flowers and the stems are up to 45cm tall so are good for cut flowers.

I also chose three dahlias for my little garden. I chose ‘Salmon Joy’ which is a salmon colour with gold tips on the petals. The next choice is ‘Homicide’ that has purple-red flower buds that open up to peach flowers with red spots on them. I think this one is my favourite. My third and final dahlia choice is ‘Sheila’, which has burnt orange flowers. The flowers of ‘Sheila’ have a good vase life and produces many blooms over the summer.

I have also bout two different types of corn seeds. The first is ‘Glass Gem’ which has a range of colours on the cob, including purple, blue, pink and orange-each cob looks different, which I think sounds good. ‘Glass Gem’ is apparently better for popping or for grinding into cornmeal. The other type of corn I have bought is ‘Golden Bantam’, an early corn variety with plenty of taste that doesn’t get too big. In Sydney, I will get success with ‘Golden Bantam’ if I sow seed between August and February-late winter to the end of summer. That sounds great as home-grown corn is so much tastier than shop bought corn in my opinion.

Peas are another vegetable that I love to eat. The taste of home-grown peas remind me of summers at my grandparents as we always had the job of picking and shelling the peas. How many peas the five or six of us kids ate on such pea-picking days is anybody’s guess, but probably far too many! That is why I have chosen the pea ‘Franks’ Pea’, an heirloom from 1853. The young pods can be used as snap peas, while the mature peas are good as shelling peas. As well as tasty food, the flowers are lovely and you get a yield of 250g per plant.

That is my seed (and bulb) shopping for September. Plenty of colour, different flower forms and some food-all good additions to my garden for the summer ahead.

Finally, I got some free seed potatoes with my order. I could choose from a couple of varieties, deciding on ‘Bintji’ which is a Dutch variety. These potatoes are waxy and suitable for mash, roasting and chips-which is how we eat them most. I’ve never grown potatoes before so this is a good new thing for me to try.

All photos are from http://www.diggers.com.au.