Flowers on everything!

Each day I notice more and more flowers in our yard! You see, I’ve always had a thing for flowers.  When David and I moved into our house and began maintaining (and adding to) the gardens, we consciously decided to remove many ornamentals, like the Canna lilies who engulfed our sprinklers and hid snails armies.  I joke with David about how he wouldn’t let me plant flowers; he felt stronger about it than I did.  I understand and agree with the reasoning that we have such little space and want to grow as much food as possible.  When we began discussing what we’d do with the property, with no debate, the rose garden stayed.  We put a few annuals in our herb bed and after building our raised tomato bed, we dug a bed dedicated to flowers and perrenials.

The dedicated flower bed doesn’t hold much and I’ve been thinking about what to do with it.  We planted bulbs too late, and most of them haven’t bloomed.  Three of the five sagos look great and I just decided it’s time to take the other two out.  The asparagus fern was given to me by my sister, and it was half dead when we got it.  It’s now probably our healthiest looking plant in the bed.  There are other plants, not pictured, which were all experiments and the plan is to move the perennials in here around a bit later this year.

For now, I transplanted a few cosmos in here and they seem to like their new spot.

In our yard, the succulents do really well!  Most of them are cuttings from friends or neighbors, and a few of them are from David’s aunt.

This is the succulent on our porch that we’ve been waiting for.  Many of them have been flowering recently and it’s been so interesting to see all the shapes and colors.

I’ve been more enthralled with watching our vegetables blossom, bringing with them the promise of food.

These flowers bring David the promise of food, and are ones that I avoid like the plague.  It’s cilantro, or will be coriander.  The flowers seem to always be covered in flies and just rubbing on the plant makes the slightest breeze reek of cilantro.

Off to the backyard gardens, where flowers are everywhere!

The potted flower that I cut back this spring is getting buds!  I can’t wait to see it covered in pink flowers again, and am so glad that the chance I took on it has paid off so far.

In the backyard we have many types of squashes and melons, and many of them are flowering!  In the squash bed, the only one flowering right now is the Kazakh melon, but the others are getting close!

I love looking into these flowers.  I haven’t noticed a female one yet, and I’m wondering how different the female melons are.  I’m keeping watch!

This week the sugar baby and buttercup have been taking off. The first female pattypan flowered today.  We currently have three baby yellow crookneck squash on the way!

There are about five zucchinis growing!  I had originally planning on growing Sunburst yellow zucchini alongside of the Safari, but they were backordered.  I have the seeds now, and David and I were just talking about planting some if/when we do a second planting of zucchini this summer.

I’m already in love with the Safari zucchini.  I can’t wait to see them pickled and in jars.  Or grilled with fresh basil and tomato.  Or in zucchini bread.

We haven’t had space to grow squash before. I haven’t grown it myself in about 15 years and I’m excited about the harvest from our one plant. I’m hoping we have the perfect amount to keep up with.  In fact, that’s how we’ve planned our plants- enough to can and eat but not be over inundated at once.

Our acorn squash plants already have about five or six fruits coming.

We have it crawling up and over a tomato cage.  I love how it’s strong tendrils are gripping the wire.  David and I were talking this evening about pruning back the plants a little, so they don’t take over the garden. I think I made him nervous by suggesting that I did not water the plant to grow as large as possible and wanted to… gasp.. cut it.

Our cucumbers are starting to take off.  There are lots of male and female flowers and they are crawling through their beds.  We haven’t set up climbing structures for them.  We just talked about it and will hopefully find time in the next couple of weeks to do that.  The end of the school year is always tough to find time, but I think we have a rather speedy solution.

We’ve been planning our pickles and we’re keeping a close watch.

The beans have started to grow but are still tiny.  I planted the ones in our school garden a bit sooner, and I’ve been munching on fresh green beans throughout the day. 

The Dragon’s Tounge beans are flowering and growing.  We’ll be eating some within the next couple of weeks!

I really thought that the variety we had was pole beans, but here’s how they look:

Apparently they are bush beans!

The dill was just planted here, and has already begun to flower.  We pinched it back and are hoping it will bush out a little.  We need the dill for our cucumbers.  The two cukes here are both a little leaf pickling variety. These are the ones that should get another pole and a trellis to climb soon.

Both David and I will be busy this weekend, but hope to find some time to get plant supports in, and transplant the Malali watermelon.  This should be our last weekend in a while before we have a larger harvest.  Right now we have radishes and lettuce ready to harvest.  We just pickled more nasturtium capers tonight. And tried them for the first time- they are like capers with a kick!

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Not ripe yet, but growing quickly

We’ve been busy this week. I’ve been documenting our garden’s growth, but haven’t had a chance to post pictures, so I have a lot to share!

We pulled out the last of the side yard chard to make space for a Black Krim tomato that’s been lingering in the nursery. Many of the chard leaves were full of powdery mildew, and I added to the compost as I harvested. The chard that survived my cut is in a vase in the kitchen. We’ve never preserved chard before, but I recently learned about blanching and freezing it, and that’s our plan for this bunch.

The chard was larger than our neighboring tomato plants! Upon pulling it out, I added composted manure.  I wish that we had some of our compost to add to it, but we have been pretty lazy about turning our compost bins.  It’s about time that we get back to turning the compost regularly.  We plan to make compost tea for the first time this summer, and will need it to be further broken down.

See our tiny Black Krim.  Hopefully it won’t be tiny for long!  I can’t help but notice the peeling paint, or is it stucco, on the house.  If you didn’t know, we live in a rental property and have minimal contact with the property owners. There are definitely parts of the outside of the house and fence that need repair, but they don’t put money into anything. We’ve opted not to put our own money into anything that will remain on the property after we one day move out.  We’ve been doing pretty great with that so far and made major improvements to the grounds (as well as removed a lot of the grass).

The Jaune Flamme tomato plant has large clusters forming quickly. Last night I was reading the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, and came across a handful of yellow tomato recipes.  This plant should be perfect for some of those!

The Indigo Rose are getting prettier and prettier each day.  I haven’t heard rave reviews about their taste, so I have low expectations. I’m hoping that they look pretty, and taste good, in our salads.

Our embarrassingly sad Reisentraub tomato is finally starting to grow! There’s new growth in a couple of places and we’re cheering this little one on each day.

This picture shows the mystery garden, pots of eggplant, peppers and a tomato and the succulent area that I have yet to clean up. We just figured out what the main plant in the mystery garden is, but more on that once it’s flowering. The pots have been planted for a couple of weeks now and the plants are still tiny. Perhaps I’ll give them a dose of fish emulsion later this week.

The left cluster has a pot with a serrano pepper, another small pot with an anaheim and a large pot with two purple tomatillos and a dwarf Hansel eggplant. The right cluster has a Purple Prudens tomato in the center pot, an Abe Lincoln tomato in the closest pot and two poblano peppers in the last one. We have one other large pot planted, and it has three dwarf eggplants: Hansel, Gretel and Fairytale. I’m excited about these hybrids, although we’re growing mostly heirloom plants. I’m not excited that I keep seeing the cats walking in the pots.

The peppers that were planted a while back in the front yard are growing quickly. We’re going to be eating peppers soon, and soon after we’ll be trying to figure out what to do with the rest. While we’re watching our food mature, we decided it was time to stock up on canning supplies. We canned tomato sauce and jam within the past year, and decided that if we’re going to go all out this summer, it was time to invest in a canning kit and tools. We’re still contemplating a food mill, and think we have a gift card from our wedding that will help us get one!

I haven’t mentioned the avocados in a while, as one tree is finishing up and the other is just getting started.  Here’s a check on our Bacon avocado tree.  They’re almost to the stage where we start finding them all over our cars and the driveway.

Our okra is getting bigger and bigger, although it still has a long way to go before it produces fruit.  Hopefully it will be hot enough, and stay alive long enough to give us lots of pickles!  We started with two plants, and then then planted three more seeds.  As one didn’t do well, I just replanted it, with 4 more plants!  We have bulbs planted in this back area and they still haven’t flowered, so I’m taking over their space with okra!  I hope my plan works.

Hiding under the chard in the back yard is arugula.  We’ve always had an overabundance of arugula, so I figured just a few plants this time would be enough.  We’ve also been trying to be better about keeping our lettuce and radishes planted every few weeks, so we always have them.  We haven’t quite figured out the intervals to plant yet, because we often have too much or not enough.

When I saw this scarlet runner bean climbing up the fence, I gained hope that we won’t always see through the chain link. We haven’t had very good germination with the runner beans (they were free seeds and the friend who saved them said they were a little old).  I’m going to try planting more soon, although the first couple plants that germinated took almost a month to come up.  I wonder if I should have soaked them first.

We’re still finding babies!  This one was sitting on the Malali watermelon in the nursery.

Aside from this watermelon, all of the squashes and melons have been planted! The nursery is smaller, and now contains mostly perennials that will probably get transplanted to larger pots later this summer.

And I wish I had remembered to take a picture after I planted the squash, melons and Thai basil.

We have enough leaves now to surround the remaining plants.  We’re hoping the leaves will break down and act as a nice mulch. It was either compost the leaves in the bin, or add them to the garden directly, and we opted for the garden.  We always choose the garden.

They hatched!

Today when I came home from work, as with every day for the past month, I check my praying mantis ootheca to see if it hatched.

And it did!

(This picture is actually of the one on the rose bushes that David checked after we found the first one.)

My ritual of checking each morning and night was rewarded by the joy of feeling little critters all over my hands.  And we got to gently place them in their new homes and bid them happy hunting.

A couple of weeks ago, I cracked the lid open on their cage. Whoops.

About 5 of them were crawling on the screen.

They hatched some time between 7 pm and 4:30 pm today.  When I saw them, I ran inside to beckon David to join me, and grabbed the camera. He ran. We then tried to determine where we wanted to spread them, as our aphid infestation is at a low point right now, and our ant infestation is at a high point.

There’s been bark at the bottom of the enclosure since I got it.  I only today realized it probably wasn’t the best idea, as it was tough to scoop these critters out.

How many can you spot in this picture?  I see two, but there could be more. As they were spread on the outside, the walls and over the inner mulch, my scientific brain had to be quieted, and we didn’t try to count the babies.

This shy newbie turned away from the camera.

As I picked them each up (or handfuls of mulch with one on it), each one made it’s way to the plant in a different way.  Some would bounce onto a leaf, others the ground. Some would be placed on a leaf and then crawl around for a bit.  Others would stay very still, until I blew on them or poked them.

Here’s a little one that we put on the side yard tomatoes.

They were spread in both the backyard and side yard. The one in the roses spread all over the side yard roses.

David and I are optimistic that the praying mantises will survive; last year we released lady bugs and we see quite a few of those around. We’ll keep our eyes open for them and fingers crossed.

Siamese twin flowers, using the Roo and first pesto!

When I went back outside to try to determine if the melons growing are male or female, I found out that one of the flowers I had photographed in the melons post is a mutant!

You see that flower on the right?  It has two flowers growing out of the same caylx!I tried my best to get a picture of the base of it, and you can hopefully see through the blurriness that the calyx is a fused one.  I’m not sure if this is common.  I’m not sure it will make a difference, as I’m pretty sure it’s a male flower.  My understanding is that plants from the family Cucurbitaceae often produce male flowers before female flowers. I wonder what this melon would look like if it grew from a double flower like this… I wonder if it could.

This weekend had a lot of garden excitement.  David finished weeding the flower beds and spread the rest of the mulch yesterday. We finally tied up our rambling oregano, replanted parsley and thyme and planted the last of the tomatoes, tomatillos eggplant and peppers.  Yes, I’ll probably write about those soon, but my biggest thing that I am excited about (and even sent picture texts to my gardening friends) is that I got to use my new Roo!!

I first read about the Roo on Garden Betty, and knew that I wanted one but wasn’t sure that I needed one.  This spring, as we expanded our gardens, I decided that I needed one (and it came in purple).  You see, I used to wear long skirts quite often, and I would fill them with the harvest.  The Roo is much more practical. Here’s some pictures of me demonstrating it’s use after harvesting our first batch of basil.

I’ve already used to Roo to hide Rosie’s ball.  She hasn’t figured out how it works yet.  You can see the basil peaking out of the giant pocket. When I went inside, I enlisted David’s help to photograph how the Roo works.

The ropes are easy to unhook.

After unhooking the ropes, I opened up the pocket.

The harvested basil was hiding inside!

With a gentle shake, the mass of basil fell onto the towel. 

A little more shaking for this action shot. 

And soon it was out!  I have a feeling this will be much easier than the paper bags I used to fill. 

I checked to make sure all the basil was out. (It was.)

And here is our first crop of basil!  We have basil growing in both the side yard and back yard. Some of it was beginning to flower, but it was perfect timing as I only found two opened flowers in the whole harvest. I took pretty big cuts off the basil, shaping it for growth throughout the summer.  Typically David and I harvest basil about 4 times during the summer, and I think we have twice as many plants.  This shouldn’t mean twice as many harvests, it just means twice as much pesto (we hope!).

When we make pesto, the first step is cleaning the plants. I enjoy doing this in the morning and love the smell and feel of it. It sometimes reminds me of when I worked on a farm in Vermont, and we would gather around the table to begin our workday by prepping basil for pesto.

David then takes the basil leaves and makes pesto! I prep, he cooks. We’re both happy with that deal. The cleaning part is still undecided.

We freeze it in ice cube trays, pop them out and keep them in bags that last the year.  We are now cleaning out the leftover ones from last year, and will be having pesto with as many things as we can during the next couple of weeks.

Melons!

My heart beats faster when I see flowers on our squashes and melons. Today our first melons in the melon and squash bed began to flower!

These were the first melons that we planted in the bed, and are still the only ones on their side of the row.  They are from seeds given to me by my friend Sheila, and are Kazakh Melons.  We’re excited to see them grow and are cheering for them!

In the eggplant lasagna bed next to it, the crookneck squash is flowering and the zucchini has a few flowers open.  We finally have a female flower coming!

Notice on the right you can see a little zucchini under the bud.  Today when David and I went to the farmers market, we eyed the Safari zucchini’s  as that is what we have coming!  Having a cage over the zucchini seems to be helping keep the leaves from taking up so much space.  We’re optimistic that it will work and we’re hoping that we don’t have hungry bugs lurking in the yard.

We also have a tomato cage over the two acorn squash, and it’s been impressive to watch them climb.

It’s been a long time since either of us has had space to grow winter squashes in our gardens. While looking at the acorn squash, David and I observed that in the crook of each leaf axis there are flowers.  Hopefully that will translate to lots of acorn squash.  We could research more, and are curious about the male to female ration for these, but it’s more fun to watch them grow each day than to read about them online.

Practically underneath the acorn squash, is the fenugreek.  This week I noticed a flower and a seed pod thingy sticking straight out (9 o’clock position).

We have two other tiny fenugreek plants that were direct seeded next to this transplant. I know it doesn’t like to be transplanted, and it’s supposed to get about two feet tall.  This little flowering specimen is about six inches tall!  I’ve read that this legume can be harvested for their leaves as a microgreen, but my plan was to see how it grows and try to get seeds for the maple like flavor.  Time will tell.

Our garden has ants.  They are everywhere. They existed in the soil before we planted, and are common problems in California.  They don’t really bite, and they don’t seem to be doing much other than looking for water.  Hopefully we can co-exist.  Our lemon tree has ants and aphids working together as a team.  It’s not that great for the lemon tree, but it’s cool to watch and we still get fruit.

You will notice ants in many of our pictures.  They walk over everything.  I followed their path back to the fence, and they seem to going into the neighbor’s yard. David and I are conscious of them when we water, or walk around barefoot.  And again, hopefully they won’t be a problem.

We’ve been paying close attention to holes in leaves and bugs that we see.

I spotted this little guy on a marigold.  Also notice that someone’s been eating the leaf below it and leaving it’s maze-like trail.  I must read up on bugs in the garden this summer and would love advice and suggestions.

We have a few more tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos to plant. We need to buy a couple bags of soil and figure out where the pots can live for the summer.  I’d like to get it done this weekend, but it will probably be next week. The plants are still small, so there’s no hurry.

The tomatoes in the backyard are flowering now!  The plants are strong and we’re pulling suckers.  The side yard tomatoes are growing bigger, with the largest one being purple and half dollar size (for those of you who know how big that is).  We have one more tomato to plant in the side yard, but we must pull out our remaining chard plant to put in the tomato.  David and I aren’t sure we want to eat that much chard this week, so we’ve been stalling.

And lastly, our peppers are flowering furiously. It’s time to start buying canning jars, and I hope David likes pickled peppers!

Speaking of pickling, today David and I stopped at Penzys Spices and bought some pickling spice.  We’d never been to the store and were quite excited to see (and smell) the selection. He’s already planning how he can use some of the exotic spices with the food that we’re growing.

Time to get back out into the garden!

 

We’re growing food!

Today our seeds we’ve been anxiously waiting for have arrived!!  We ordered seeds from Baker Creek nearly a month ago, and they had to resend them because the first ones never arrived.  David went to the post office to sign for them and opened them before I got home.  As he knew I’d be as excited as he was, he sent me this text:

While we’ve been waiting for the seeds, the spot for the cucumbers has changed a few times.  Today, I planted 5 of them along the fence in the front yard, in the back of our mystery compost/ flower garden.  Hopefully the tiny little cucumbers and dainty vines won’t get lost amongst the cosmos.  (Although I couldn’t think of a prettier place to be lost.)

We’ll plant the white radishes after we finish the ones we have in.  These are a different heirloom variety (the others were a hybrid from Johnny’s) so we’re hoping we like them better.

The black radishes (which we’ll pickle) and the french breakfast went in, as well as some circus circus carrots that we had laying around.  I’ve tried the carrots in a few places and haven’t had much luck.  This time they all went in right in front of the sprinkler (see right hand side of the picture below).  *fingers crossed*

The tomatoes are growing well.  We’ve been pinching the suckers to help shape them.  They are getting full of flowers and each of them have little green tomatoes on them.  Which reminds me, I found a great recipe for radish and green tomato salsa the other day, but we don’t have the heart to use green tomatoes this time of year unless they fall off on their own. Perhaps you have some?

Watching the San Marzanos grow is great fun because they’re in giant clusters. This one is shaping up nicely so far!

In the back yard, we are just getting flowers on the tomatoes.  They need support still, and that’ll be coming soon.  Here’s a look at one of the beds in the back:

Everything from the beans to the arugula is growing.  They’ll get more fish emulsion this weekend and hopefully these beautiful sunny days are helping them out.

The cucumbers are starting to flower!  This is the same plant that I posted previously, and it’s had two flowers so far.  I love how the first flowers are so precious, and later in the summer we begin to groan at the sight of new flowers because the fridge is full.

The zuchinni’s first flower is giving us reason to celebrate!  We are ready!

This year I really think we have the right amount of food for the two of us, plus our friends and canning/drying. In fact, I’m hoping we have enough.

We have two okra plants, and David just planted three more seeds because we want more.  We’ve recently tried pickled okra (loved it) and roasted okra (sold dried like chips) and want to make both!  In the past we’ve grown okra, and not been sure what to do with it or when to pick it.  This year, we’re armed with recipes and want the plant to grow!

Our winter squashes are taking off.  I wasn’t sure how we were going to support our two acorn squash plants, so the other day I stuck a cage over them.  I did this to expose the fenugreek that was hiding under it, but it could work.  We’ve been impressed watching the tendrils climb away!

Our Dragon’s Tounge shell beans on the side yard haven’t started climbing their ladder yet, but they have the most beautiful flowers about to open.

The days are getting busier and busier at school, with so little free time during the day.  It’s wonderful to come home, and check in on the progress!

Flower buds

I love the wind!

Taking pictures on a windy day like today is quite a challenge. I wanted to take more pics of all the buds, but this will suffice. (I also wanted to stop before I got frustrated at the wind moving the plants.)

This little succulent isn’t ready to bud yet- it just makes me happy! Many of them are though.

This winter, this succulent really took off.  Looks like we’ll have yellow flowers soon!

The oregano is budding.  We tried to stop it from flowering, but it’s clearly time for our perennial oregano to flower. Our pineapple sage, in a pot by the front gate, is starting to flower.  The leaves at the base are yellowing, and we’re not sure what’s going on.  This plant smells so delicious, and we hope it survives!

And now, I must admit, that I posted these pictures because I’m becoming a big blog dork.  Recently I have found a couple pages where I could link the blog, and hopefully find more people who want to read about our humble garden.  I quickly posted links, and then read the rules who was allowed to post, and realized I hadn’t done those things.  For example, I linked the Harvest Monday blog, and didn’t have a harvest blog (or a harvest) this past Monday.  Yes, I felt blog guilt.

So today, I proudly am putting up a link, and joining the Garden Appreciation Society.

*Pause for applause and cheers*

Thank you!

Checking on the baby plants

It’s hot in the garden. Okay, well it feels hot.

Spring in Los Angeles ranges from highs of 60 to 80 and lows of 50 to 65.  Today, it’s sunny, 75 and feels hot.

When I went outside to inspect the flowers, with Rosie, I found a tail under the fire pit.

The tail moved a little as Rosie’s ball ran into it, and I saw Mardi roll over on his back.  I decided to go in for further inspection.

Clearly he approves of the firepit.  We know he enjoys the garden, as we’ve spotted him looking for a spot to call his litterbox.

As I continued to walk around, I was happy to see that the nasturtium seeds I planted ages ago have popped up.

These little ones are so beautiful, with the red edges along the leaves.  I believe these are the ones with creamy yellowish flowers, and they’re more clumps rather than trailers.  We’ve been trying to plant flowers amongst the food, to help attract pollinators and good bugs.

I love looking at close ups of our dirt!  (Just like the background picture of the blog.)

One row of squash and melons is finally planted!  David will build the trellis within the next month, as these babies have a while to grow. I gave them a dose of fish emulsion this morning, to help them get going. From front to back these are: Pinnacle spaghetti squash(2), buttercup (3), sweet dumpling (2), and sugar baby watermelon (1).  I think they’re fairly close together, but I’ve never trellised squash before.  We had so many varieties of seeds, and haven’t had space to grown winter squash and melons before. I’m so excited for these!

We finally planted our first eggplants in the eggplant section. At the top of the picture are two Japanese eggplant.  The Rosa Bianca should be ready to go in this week!  This picture also has borage (left), marigold (center), fenugreek (3 on right), and acorn squash. Everything is planted pretty close together, which we’re hoping will allow us to maximize our food production space.

In the front yard, our pot of calendula seeds are coming along nicely!  We have more plants to put in pots, but right now all of our pots of full of mulch that still needs to be spread.  I spread some in the backyard yesterday, and then decided that making beer and hanging out with my friend was more fun!

In the raised bed garden, when I showed the picture of the white radishes that were ready to harvest, I didn’t point out all of the cosmos that have popped up behind it and are ready to transplant.  I have a few place where they may be able to go, and should do it before they get too big. Perhaps this evening, we can walk around the yard and pick a place.

I noticed today that our dragonfruit cactus has a new shoot.  This guy really needs support and a new place, so it can grow big and droopy.  We got the cutting from a friend a couple years ago and it’s fun to watch grow, but I don’t know if we’ll ever get fruit off of it.

A few years ago, David got some corms (like bulbs) of a plant that attracts hummingbirds to the front yard.  We believe they are Chasmanthe. It flowered in February and during full bloom we had a hummingbird come by about every five minutes!  The plants have multiplied in our herb bed, and we plan to dig them out and move them as soon as they die back.

Currently the little red seeds are dropping all over the place.  Between the fan palm seeds from above, and these guys, we have lots going on below. This is why it’s almost time to mulch!

And lastly, I recently reorganized the plants on the front porch, and found a new place for Jethro Troll. The succulents are looking great this time of year!

Fruits, flowers and bugs, oh my!

The plants are growing! Each day, David and I walk around our little backyard garden, inspecting for intruders, new flowers and growth.  We were happy that we had a few days off from watering, but are back to watering each evening and dreaming about soaker hoses and drip irrigation for during the summer.  That, and building bamboo supports for the plants, are high up on David’s project list for this summer.

Here’s a look at the back yard garden, formerly known as the morning glory jungle, now:

The aisles and edges need more mulch (as well as the front yard flower beds), which David picked up yesterday and I’ll be spreading today. We’ve used the firepit once, and plan to use it again soon!  The squash and melons are slowly getting planted in the front right bed.  I may end up directly seeding the Malali watermelon, as the two seeds that I planted in the nursery have yet to germinate.

Here’s the temporary nursery at the end of our driveway.  The cage on the right has our praying mantis cocoon, which we check daily. The warm driveway and full sun has been working well for the plants. We have been anxiously checking the perennial flowers that we started from seed.  This week the Munstead Lavender, Chamomile, and Verbena have finally started to get bigger!  The purple tomatillos, eggplants and tomatoes are nearly ready for planting- we’d like them to get a little bigger before they go into the beds.  The squash on the front right, buttercup, was planted right after I took this picture!

I hacked backed this flower and posted a picture of it in my first tour blog. It’s great to see the plant recovering nicely and shooting out lots of new leaves.

The plants all around the garden are growing bigger and bigger, and slowly climbing the fence.

The sweet peas are climbing quickly, but have yet to produce flowers. I’ve been training the strays to go up the fence as well, and to fill in the back corner.

On the other side of the fence, the asparagus beans and scarlet runner beans are slowly getting closer to being climbers. I know that once they get a little bit bigger, they’re going to take off! We’re already drooling thinking about our fresh green beans and canned dilly beans.

The bush beans are growing rapidly and starting to look like flowers are coming!  I planted tricolor beans, and am excited to see the purple stem on this purple bean plant.

The Safari zucchini, pattypan and crookneck squashes are all full of buds!  David and I love eating squash blossoms and are hoping to start having male flowers that we can pick and stuff with goat cheese.  Well, I want to pick and stuff them with goat cheese and he wants to let the plants keep their flowers and buy the blossoms at the farmer’s market. Either way, we’re keeping an eye on these buds and hoping to see them blossoming soon!

The tomatillos are getting taller and taller and are now full of flowers!  We haven’t put cages, or any sort of support on these guys yet, and it’s probably time soon.  This year we planted two tomatillo plants (and have two more purple ones in the nursery).  In the past, we have both had just one tomatillo plant and very little success with fruit.  I recently read that the plants need to be in pairs, as cross pollination is necessary.  We’re hoping that we get plenty of tomatillos this year, and have enough to make jars of salsa verde for the year.

Our four cucumbers are all growing well.  I as a little worried they’d be eaten by slugs, like last year, but they seem to have cleared that hurdle. This one, in the back yard, looks like it’s waiting for something to climb up.  We were planning on having them trail on the ground, but it may be worth trellising it.  Check out that tendril!

In the front yard, the peppers are full of flowers!  We ended up with an extra pepper plant that we didn’t mean to buy, so we will be finding creative ways to use cayenne peppers.  The thing is, I don’t like spicy food.  I’ve always loved growing hot peppers because the plants are so beautiful when they are full of colorful peppers.  I’ve never really enjoyed eating them.  Perhaps our friends like hot peppers and will take some off our hands once these little suckers get going.

Speaking of suckers… I’ve been pulling suckers from the tomato plants and shaping them as they fill their cages. And this week I discovered…

BABY TOMATOES!!

The Indigo Rose is already showing her purple. And she’s tall, lanky and has a glorious purple trunk! She also has lots more flowers coming.

We also have baby San Marzano’s!  David and I have been finding ways to use up the last of the sauce we stored in our freezer this past year.  After we use the last bag, we still have about 5 jars.  I have a feeling we’ll easily replenish our stock.  We also plan to dry, and roast them, and I’ve been looking into canning whole tomatoes also. Can’t wait until they come in and I’m on summer vacation (without graduate school or a wedding to plan like last summer).

The tomato plants are healthy, and host to many insects.

This crane fly (I think) was found resting on a tomato leaf.

I spotted a few of these little bugs on our flowers.  Anyone know what they are?  I grabbed my bug book, and know that they are true bugs. I hope that they are minute pirate bugs, as those are beneficial but I’m not sure about that being a correct ID. I really do need a better Insect ID book, as Peterson’s and my college textbook aren’t helping too much.  Suggestions for what these critters are, and for books, are welcome!

All of the tomatoes are doing really well, except for this one:

The Riesentraube has been battling insects and possibly disease.  I am a little embarrassed for the plant to show it to you, looking like this, but I feel that I must be honest about how the plants are doing. We’re keeping an eye on it and hope that it recovers, but we’re not sure what we can do to help.

It has neighbors that are getting munched also.

Most of the basil is looking great, and a few are even preparing to flower.  Our first batch of pesto will likely be prepared next weekend. This plant is the one that has made the most “friends” and hopefully having it next to the tomato is helping protect the tomato.

On the other side of the raised bed, the radish tops are also getting eaten. We have three different types of radish growing, and I’ve also been bringing some home from school.  I’m learning to like radishes, which David thinly slices into my salad.  He’s happy to eat the rest of them.

These fast growing white icicle radishes are a hybrid from Johnny’s.  I just ordered more white radishes from Baker Creek and can’t wait to plant them!

Hope you enjoy your harvest!

Succulent time!

Yesterday I came home to find this dainty pink flower towering about two feet above the succulent it came from. I believe I got a cutting of the plant from a friend last year. Anyone know what it is?