Harvest season

This is payoff time for the vegetable garden.  Cucumbers have been plentiful, and finally the weather has come down out of the 90s to some remarkably beautiful days in the low 80s with nights in the 60s.  The tomatoes, therefore, are finally ripening.

'Missouri Pink Love Apple'

There are onions ready to be pulled.

All those things together make a very tasty salad when drizzled with Persian lime infused olive oil and cooconut infused white balsamic vinegar from a beautiful store in Columbia, Missouri.  Boone Olive Oil Company has an amazing array of olive oils and infused vinegars - all of which you can taste for free.  What more could you ask?  Unless it's some of each, please.

There are carrots that can be harvested.  I think I've said before this variety is 'Short 'n Sweet' and is short, for certain, but not particularly sweet.  I don't eat a lot of raw carrots (an understatement), but I do freeze them for winter soups and one of my favorite things - carrot cake.  Frozen carrots make the cake extra moist, compared to fresh carrots.

I'm excited for future years of blackberries and raspberries.  This is the first year I'm able to harvest anything since they were only planted last fall, so there aren't many berries.  But there's not much that can surpass berries picked right off the vine, and I'm thrilled with each one.

The 'Navaho' variety thornless blackberries start ripening with a shiny cherry red color.

From the photo above to the one below of ready to harvest berries was about five days. 

A little breakfast treat sprinkled with processed and raw sugars:

I don't know what I'm going to do about the Japanese beetle issue on the raspberries.  So far, I've broken down and sprayed them with Sevin, but that's not going to work when they have ripening berries, because I don't want to eat insecticide.  

I guess I'm going to have to cover them like I do the rose buds, but the canes are long and sprawling with flower clusters all along the length, so it's going to take a lot of cover.  Darned beetles.  There has been a major reduction in numbers this year than the previous two, which I'm attributing to the length of time the ground was frozen this past winter, but those that are here are concentrating on my raspberries.  That's totally unacceptable.

The French Charentais canteloupes are all producing fruit - some more prolifically than others.  So far, there haven't been any pest problems with them.  There's a small amount of powdery mildew on the shady side of one of the plants at ground level, but it's not enough to worry about.  I'll just keep an eye on it.

Otherwise, the plants have grown to the tops of their cages, and these below I've let sprawl a little on the ground where I had nothing planted anyway.

'Petite Gris de Rennes' French charentais canteloupe

The 'Petite Gris de Rennes'  are outperforming the 'Savor' that I liked so much last year.  Already one of the 'Petite Gris' melons ripened.  I try to keep the forming fruit pulled to the outside of the cages, but one had gotten trapped in the cage wire. I didn't see it there, so it got so ripe it split open.  The flesh was still firm, not at all mushy, which was one of the things I was impressed with last year.

I also have some plants growing on my compost hill, and one very large, lopsided melon tempted me to pick it.  I don't think it's really ripe yet, judging by the color, but I'm letting it finish indoors to see how much difference it makes to pick them early.   

'Petit Gris de Rennes' melon and "Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian' tomato

As for that tomato, so far, I'm still favoring the flavor of my standby 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' over the 'Mrs. Maxwell's' variety that I'm testing this year.  They're both potato-leaf pink varieties.

The 'Henderson's Bush' lima beans are starting to form pods, but are mostly still in the flowering stage. 

And, of course, I've been harvesting flowers for a while now.  I love the color of these 'Queen Lime' orange zinnias.  They'll be making an appearance in future years without question.

The Stargazer lilies are finished blooming, but the last of them made some gorgeous bouquets.  These doubles that I have for the first time this year are perfectly set off by the carmine and lilac colors of the gomphrena (globe amaranth).

Double Stargazers, gomphrena, yarrow and celery

The doubles are a mutant form that have no anthers and stamens, only petals.

Too bad daylily blooms only last a day.  These fabulous orange  blooms go great with purple.

Daylilies, Lisianthus, Liatris, Yarrow, Mexican sunflower (Tithonia)

Blue and green Lisianthus (prairie gentian)

'Green Twister' Echinacea  with yarrow in the background

Potpourri

Craspedia, aka Billy Buttons, Sun Balls

I'm at another spot where I have loads of pictures but not a theme.  So, here's another download:

There are plenty of insects out and about.  Not all are so destructive as the Japanese beetle.  In fact, here are some helpful little critters, still sleeping on an early, dewy morning, sharing a bed:

Honeybees and wasps

Bumble bee on Echinacea

This guy, on the other hand, is very unwelcome.  It's a shield bug (or stink bug) nymph (juvenile).  It's very tiny.  I found several of them munching on my raspberry fruits.  That is unacceptable.

The June beetles aren't particularly helpful, but they're not in swarms either, so I just take their picture when I see them and move on.

Green June beetle on Monarda (Bee balm)

There's an abundance of tiny green tree frogs this year.  At least I think they're tree frogs.  And some bigger guys hopping around the garden and in the grass.

The tomato plants have several large, but green, fruits that have been in a holding pattern for a long time, and are never going to ripen if the temperature doesn't go down.  Tomatoes, I've read, ripen between 50 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's barely getting below 70 at night.  

'Missouri Pink Love Apple'

I picked one each from both tomato varieties ('Missouri Pink Love Apple' and 'Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian') to bring indoors to see if they'll ripen any faster.  They're not going to get any bigger.

The melons, on the other hand, are managing quite well.

After bunny feeding, the beets are so sparse that I haven't even yet bothered to see what they're producing.  The tops look good.

Onions are coming along great.  I sowed these from seeds, and I think I'll do that every time from now on.  It's quicker than planting sets, and easier.  Perhaps cheaper.  I didn't think to compare.

I've harvested about a dozen cucumbers so far, and the plants seem to be doing just fine on that old wagon wheel.  

This year, I'm experimenting with a volunteer redbud to see if I can clip it into a shrub.

The Stargazers are absolutely fabulous right now.  They're four years old and have never looked better or produced more blooms.

I also have 'Casablanca' Oriental lily this year.  They're still small plants, but the flowers are surprisingly large - even bigger than the Stargazers.  And gorgeous.  Pure white.   I'll have to get some more.

Like the 'Casablanca' lilies, the double Stargazers (aka rose lily) I planted last fall at the same time are small plants.  The flowers are smaller than my Stargazers, but they're more in line with the size I expected from the new bulbs.

I'm anticipating them, and the 'Casablanca' matching the height of the Stargazers in a year or two.

A couple other flowers beginning to bloom:

 

'Green Twister' Echinacea

Lisianthus

Apart from the first flush of roses in May, the rose blossoms have been rather puny.  And the entire 'Winter Sun' bush that had such plentiful, gorgeous blooms last year is looking very poorly.  The canes are small and spindly, the leaves keep yellowing and dropping, and the buds are miniature.  I don't know what happened to it other than perhaps it's intolerant of wet soil.  I thought it might pull out of it when the rains stopped, but not so far.

I've resorted to putting organza bags over the rose buds so I'll have something that hasn't been eaten by Japanese beetles to put in a vase.  It makes for a silly rose bed.

'Queen Lime' series orange and red zinnias, 'Snowdrift' marigolds, daylilies,

Stargazers, Gomphrena (globe amaranth), yarrow, and roses

Stargazer lily, Yarrow, 'Queen Lime' red zinnia,  'Carmine' globe amaranth

'South Africa' rose and 'Strawberry Fields' globe amaranth (Gomphrena)

Air layering experiment update

In the previous post, I showed the results of my air-layering experiment on the 'Shazam!' rose bush in an attempt to get a clone.  Here was the picture:

I might have rinsed the little blob of roots for a better view, but it appeared to be a very delicate attachment, and I didn't want to chance knocking them off.   The leaves look pretty haggard, so I hope it's going to make it.  That was the wrong stem to use in the first place, as it had been damaged at the base by twig pruners.  Unfortunately, so had half or more of the other stems, and I didn't want to risk one of the few good ones left.  So far, this has not been a good year for the roses.  Too cold and wet for too long early on.

Anyway, the next day, I clipped off the two stems of the pink-flowered bush (whose name I don't know) where I made my second attempt to air layer, and this time I had much better success.

On one sample, there appeared to be only one root (which might actually have been a long fiber), along a white mass of callus - generalized cells that haven't determined what they're going to be.  They could develop into roots or scar tissue, which is what woody plants do to heal wounds, either one.

Again, apologies for not rinsing it for a better view.  I only thought of that on the second sample.  But you can see that the callus is forming at the edges of the stripped off area where the plant would be laying down scar tissue to seal off the living tissue.

This is the prepared stem after  being pruned from the mother plant:

Under the foil layer (which was there to protect the rooting area from being sun scorched), there was the plastic bag holding the rooting medium snug against the stem, and I could see roots had formed.

Once I carefully removed the medium, this is what I had:

I feel certain that's enough roots to support the little plant.  You can see that they formed at the top edge of the stripped off area, which is also where the callus is forming on the other sample.

I then clipped off the stem beneath the roots and potted it up, along with the other one that was still mostly callus.  

The one with all the roots was an "old" wood stem, and the one with the callus was this year's green growth.  I wonder if that has anything to do with the difference.

If I'd been serious about the experiments, I would have pulled off the foil to see if I could see roots before cutting them off the mother plant, but as it was experimental, I didn't really care if it were successful.  When I try to get clones of my favorite tea roses, that's what I'll do.  

Anyway, it was an encouraging experiment.

And I encourage you to experiment with your own plants in any way you think of.

Til next time.