I’m having an off year for vegetable gardening, well, perhaps I should qualify that…my early plantings, lettuce and other cold weather crops, have utterly failed this year. I didn’t use my tried and true method for starting lettuce by winter sowing in milk cartons. By far though, the biggest problem, was our cold and wet Spring weather. It’s June now, getting warm, and the lettuce is only three inches tall, while most of the other cold weather plants have gone to seed.

I had a bit of luck with radishes sown in a container, but they never grew large, and are rather rock-like when I try to cut them for salads. They are also going to seed.

I found a blessing amid the failure of my crops, the blossoms from the gone-to-seed veggies are terrific pressed flowers. The radish blossoms are especially intriguing. They are softly pastel and I can’t wait to see if they retain their delicate colors through the pressing process. So my failure in cold weather vegetable gardening has been a boost to my flower pressing. I could plant another crop of hot weather plants now, but I’m going to wait and see how many delicate blossoms for pressing these plants will yield. If they keep their beautiful colors I might just plant more radish seeds for the flowers alone.