I'd like to feature my Fances' Choice marigold. The unexpected feature about it is it's fantastic size! Last year, we had nearly perfect weather with a half inch of rain a week all season, and these got about 5-6 feet wide, and nearly again as tall. This is your opportunity to grow a marigold hedgerow. They look great against a fence, which helps to hold them up. If they get blown down, that will not stop them. And the foliage turns a deep purple in autumn, which really makes their flame-colored blossoms pop.



Next up is the multipurposed Chrysanthemum, Primrose Gem. It's a great flower in its own right, and also serves as a vegetable. You can pick the tip six inches of budding growth for use in ramens and soups, in salads, as a flavorful herb in sushi, cooked as you would spinach, or as a side dish like hot pot or the Korean namul dish. Also a good substitute for folks who do not like the taste of kale, collards, or mustard greens, as this has more of a fresh and cleaner flavor without bitterness. Would be a great addition to a food forest or permaculture system.



And I would be remiss if I did not feature a few showy natives. American Bellflower is a blue spiking campanula very popular with bumblebees and it is perfectly happy in the shade or part shade. It gets about 3 feet high but has a very small footprint, so would be great for adding vertical focal points behind your hosta, ferns and lily of the valley. It has a long bloom period from June to September, and will keep producing a few blossoms till frost.



And for surprisingly showy natives, go for the Missouri Evening Primrose. This is very different from the common evening primrose you see spiking on roadsides. My mom loves this plant so much she sniped its seeds after years of admiring it in in a public garden and figuring out what it was. She now has it as a creeping groundcover in her big native bed while bigger things get established. It only gets a foot high and doesn't get out of control. It has numerous huge 4-5 inch butter yellow blossoms that open after the heat of the day is passed. It produces a lot of pollen for insects. When it matures, it has streaks of hot pink on the stems that contrast nicely with the blossom color. This is a prairie native with a large range, from TX to ND and everywhere east, and does not mind dry conditions or hard winters. The unexpected feature of this plant are its starfruit-shaped pods, which normally would pinwheel across the native landscape in winter winds, but also make cool decorations for fall crafts or wreathmaking. If you like taking moonlit walks in the garden, this one practically glows as a flower of the night.

The Missouri Primrose is so nice, I spent $13 this year at a high end nursery fora 4" pot to get it started. I could have saved the $ if I knew the seeds would show up on this swap.
So y'all dib those seeds, because I don't need them anymore. Mine is well established, and even with daily wilting heat for 2 straight months, it just kept growing. I should have planted one years ago.

Love them all I have the primrose gem on my wish list and just happen to have a ticket so...

The primrose gem looks amazing! As does the tall bellflower. HMMM.

And now, for those who are in short growing season areas: have you always thought that melons were out of reach? The Olympic Express cantaloupe is the melon for you! 75 days to maturity vs 90! I've been growing melons in the mild Pacific Northwest for years now! It helps to have this plastic mulch from Territorial Seed ( https://territorialseed.com/pr... ) but it's doable even without it if you have a fast enough growing plant!

Speed run your cantaloupe! Try the Olympic Express!

Speaking of melon! For a delicious honeydew type, try out Ha'Ogen! It's about 80 days to maturity, and the outer skin turns a bit orange when it's ripe, so there's no "will they won't they" questions. They are nice little personal sized melons, too, and seem to tolerate cooler weather.

Try with salt and a tiny pinch of sweet paprika!

Love these - keep them coming:) here is my Coral fountain amaranth in a pot at the beginning of the season. It is a variety of love lies bleeding but with peachy/coral. Shades. So pretty

I just added ten different vegetable varieties that you all might be interested in. There are 5 packets of each variety and they are all Victory Seed Company packets from 2023.

https://garden.org/apps/swap/s...

Good to have you, Dave. You were in the very first swap I tried (thanks to you advertising it). I recall you offered several crepe Myrtle seed varieties then.

dave said: I just added ten different vegetable varieties that you all might be interested in. There are 5 packets of each variety and they are all Victory Seed Company packets from 2023.

https://garden.org/apps/swap/s...

That's wonderful! And Victory Seed Company really is a great seed company, too. So many nice varieties of seeds and they were great to buy from when I made purchases a number of years ago; I keep meaning to buy from them again.

I didn't realize that the poppies and the beans would be a hit so I took a moment and added some more. I will try to look for more beans that have dried out if anyone wants more.

If you enjoy Okra I can't recommend these any more highly than I do. These are very large but surprisingly aren't too woody to enjoy at that size. Try them!

"The" Dave!! How exciting!! Thanks for all you do!

dave said: I just added ten different vegetable varieties that you all might be interested in. There are 5 packets of each variety and they are all Victory Seed Company packets from 2023.

https://garden.org/apps/swap/s...

@Ladyreneer Those tie dyed limas are so beautiful!

I added more papaw, micro tomato and onion seeds.

Tell me the weirdest plant seed you're offering this year that you still have in stock!

I think mine this year is the spinach strawberry sticks. A strange combo of a plant. The leaves are spinachy, but from what I read, the berries aren't strawberry-y. I wouldn't know personally because the birds are QUICK to snap them up. I guess I'll never have any self collected seeds to offer unless I remember to put a protective bag over them, lol!

I ran out of time and energy to try to fish up or harvest the other fun weirds (like more carnivorous plants or the super rare sinningia helleri, which is itself not weird but its cultivation origin story is).

I love getting the weird stuff though, so lay it on me: what're your weirds this year?

Biznaga prolifera. AKA Texas Nipple Cactus. Although the politically incorrect name has been ditched, it, and the genus name "Mammillaria" describe the plant well.
I got a few pieces from a lady who had it 50 years. I put them in a Styrofoam cup that I then put under the sink to catch a slow drip in the drainage pipes. I forgot about it entirely. A year later, I found it, completely in the dark and the drip had long since dried up. It looked like it might be alive, so I planted it, and it grew like crazy, and makes lots of seeds every year. I gave it to a friend, and now I just visit it to collect seeds.

I found them! 2022 "Dirty Girl" Tomatoes. The story is that a little family farm failed to clear out their patch of "Early Girl" tomatoes at the end of the season. The seedlings that volunteered the next year were selected by the elements, and seemed tougher than their hybrid parents. They continued to let them cross pollinate and regrow until they had a relatively uniform self-seeding, "de-hybridized" and even improved version of early girl that they have dubbed "Dirty Girl".
I ordered a little packet of "15 seeds" for $8 including the shipping. I didn't get to grow them last year due to my husband being in and out of the hospital 4 1/2 months out of 7 months. To my delight, I just found and opened the packet and there are 32 seeds. I'm adding 2 packs of 10 of these seeds to the swap today.

My weirdest listing is the Kiwano. It's like if a cucumber and a mace weapon had a big angry baby. They taste cool though, if you like the gel of cucumbers, they're tart and jelly like inside, and somewhat remind me of passionfruit in that way. Apparently the rind is edible if you're brave enough to eat the spines!

Weirdest thing I have right now is a mycotrophic wildflower which I am pretty sure is pinedrops (Pterospora andomedea). I brought home a stem of seed pods already broken off the plant by something in the woods, in hopes of identifying these. Although the USDA doesn't list Maryland in its native range, we aren't far from it in PA. This place is lousy with these things and it's definitely not any of the other mycotrophic wildflowers the USDA has listed on their page about them. It's tough to find much info about them!

SameOldBrandNew said: My weirdest listing is the Kiwano. It's like if a cucumber and a mace weapon had a big angry baby. They taste cool though, if you like the gel of cucumbers, they're tart and jelly like inside, and somewhat remind me of passionfruit in that way. Apparently the rind is edible if you're brave enough to eat the spines!

Weirdest thing I have right now is a mycotrophic wildflower which I am pretty sure is pinedrops (Pterospora andomedea). I brought home a stem of seed pods already broken off the plant by something in the woods, in hopes of identifying these. Although the USDA doesn't list Maryland in its native range, we aren't far from it in PA. This place is lousy with these things and it's definitely not any of the other mycotrophic wildflowers the USDA has listed on their page about them. It's tough to find much info about them!

I grew them when I lived a growing zone warmer & barely got any fruit. They need a long growing season & a lot of space, but are one of the coolest plants I ever grew

I added two more packs of Otome watermelon if anyone is still interested.