Weed-free again

After 15+ hours of weeding (!) the garden is looking good again.  (Two weeks away at the end of May is not the best plan.)

This is what the whole thing looked like when I returned...

I came back to loads of fruiting blackberries.  My hope now is that I get to eat some before the raccoons eat them all.

'Navajo' blackberries

Bunnies apparently favor green beans.

'Calima' bush beans

'Calima' bush beans

The 'New Red Fire' lettuce looked bleached out, with very little red on it, but the new growth is coloring them up again.

Last year, my wasabi radishes had no bulb on them at all.  I thought I'd give them another try this year, and they did produce radishes.  They don't taste any different from a regular radish to me, but I think they're pretty.

Some 'Tender Sweet' carrots on the compost hill are big enough to harvest.  they're neither tender nor sweet.  They're  carrots.  I keep looking for a sweet variety.  I have some 'SugarSnax' just getting started.  I'm hoping they will be sweet, but I'm not holding my breath.

'Tender Sweet' carrots and 'All Blue' potatoes

The potatoes are tall and lush, but when I dug one up, the spuds were still quite small.  'All Blue' is not a particularly large potato when mature, but they surely will get larger than these are now.  They're a little hard to spot in the dark soil.

 'All Blue' potatoes

The little potatoes taste and have a texture much like a red or yellow potato.

After I got some weed control over on the compost hill, I found the small Persian melons and the one 'Sugar Baby' watermelon plants were coming along just fine, despite the dry heat.

Small Persian cantaloupe

'Sugar Baby' watermelon

The melons are at the top of the hill, which originally when I started the garden in 2014, consisted of sod lifted from the lawn area where I made my garden and was about 5-1/2 feet tall.  I now have a compost crate and use the much reduced hill for planting.

On the left this year I planted some Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia), and running along the south half of the hill's edge are 'All Blue' and 'Yukon Gold' potatoes.  Cilantro grows voluntarily now on the south side, and I sowed carrots on the east.

The pet cemetery grew up considerably in the two weeks I was away.

My vision of Dorothy's skip to Oz through poppies when I planted field poppies has been disappointed.  They're scraggly and kind of sad looking.

The roses were very happy in the dry heat.

'Razzle Dazzle'

'Shazam!'

I was able to put together some bouquets for a craft shop in Arrow Rock at the request of a friend.  I think they're lovely.

 Until next time, enjoy the early summer days.

A little rain goes a long way

We're not getting as much rain as we need, but we're getting enough that I can stop watering for a bit.  Things are really taking off.  

The 'Calima' bush beans are up.

Wasabi radishes are filling out.  I hope they decide to make an actual radish this year.  Otherwise, they won't be planted again.  Well, they may not even then, depending on whether I like them.

This is the first year I've planted roma style tomatoes.  'Speckled Roman' looked beautiful last summer in my sister's Wisconsin garden, so I thought I'd give them a shot.  The plants all look like they were hit by herbicide.  They weren't.  Maybe they just don't like it here.

'Tender Sweet' carrots are up and very weedy.  They get lawnmower clipping trash sprayed on them by a careless lawn mower, and I have a heck of a time pulling out little grass seedlings.  After my first year of carrots that did beautifully, I haven't had much luck.  Thinning carrots is a difficult job, so this year I tried very hard to sow the seed sparsely.  It looks like I managed it ok.  Maybe too sparsely. Hopefully the carrots will grow nicely and be both tender and sweet.  I recently planted another patch of 'SugarSnax' carrots, but they have yet to germinate.

Newly emerged potato plants were hit by a freeze, but they've come out of it just fine.  I planted 'Yukon Gold' and 'All Blue' this year.  This is 'All Blue':

I'm looking forward to finding out how the blue ones compare in texture and taste.

I have several varieties of lettuce, most of which got off to a poor start due to the unexpected cold weather early on.  The 'Green Ice' and 'New Red Fire' varieties were sown at the same time, and they've certainly responded differently.

'New Red Fire'

'Early purple Vienna' kohlrabi plants are getting established, but they're not nearly as big as the ones I still have in pots to give away.

My favorite cantaloupe - 'Savor' - seeds germinated and grew poorly.  I transplanted three anyway, but I'm not expecting much.  It was last year's seed, so maybe it doesn't store well, even in the freezer.  Or maybe I should have direct seeded like I usually do. I'll order more for next year.

In the meantime, I ordered some small Persian melons to try.  The catalog promised very sweet fruit, so I'm hoping they'll be at least nearly as good as 'Savor'.  I set them out a little earlier than I might otherwise do, but I need to get things established well before I leave later this month for two weeks out of state.  

Small Persian melon

Tomatoes are caged, peppers are planted, oregano is starting to get out of control, and chives are blooming.

I have never met so many mole tunnels in my life.  The whole garden seems undermined.  I've been trying to drill holes with the water hose and flood them, and put mole bait in the tunnels they reuse.  I planted a row of basil along my tomatoes, about 20 plants, and I hit a tunnel setting in all but 2! 

My poor zinnia patch looks like it was bombed from my attempts to rid it of moles.

I planted some 'Giant Rattle' annual poppies for the first time this year, and the foliage is looking like the giant part isn't a lie.

I still don't know what variety this iris is, but I love it.  The blooms are huge, and so lovely.  

And now I have another iris whose name I don't know.  I know the plants I ordered for this bed did not include a rich purple one, so I can only assume the seller got one mixed in of another name, but I'm not complaining.

I would like to know its name, though.  I suppose I can just give it one.  Or find a dark purple iris that looks like it and call it that.  It looks like one from the company I ordered from called 'Titan's Glory', so that's probably what I'll call it.

'Victoria Falls' (pale purple), 'English Charm' (two tone orange), 'Penny Lane' (brilliant orange), pink Gladiolus bizantinus, and oriental lilies yet to bloom

This year there's only one stem of 'Penny Lane'.  I hope that doesn't mean it's giving up.

'English Charm'

'Jade Eyes' white allium, 'Tangerine Gem' Spanish poppy, 

and orange-scarlet oriental poppies

honeybees buzzing an oriental poppy

'Tangerine Gem' Spanish poppies

purple blooming 'Orange Balsam' creeping thyme 

covering the ground in the rose garden

Mostly vegetables

'Green Twister' echinacea (cone flower)

The vegetable garden is starting to produce harvestable things.

Peas and green beans are coming on.  The 'Premium' peas I planted along a fence have been producing edible peas for almost three weeks. 'Lillian's Caseload' have been producing this week, and 'Lincoln' hasn't had a chance, because the rabbits keep eating the plants.  I probably won't plant 'Lillian's Caseload' again, because 'Premium' produces much larger pods with more and juicier peas.  As I recall 'Lincoln' from last year, they were smaller, but had lots of peas per pod and were as tasty as 'Premium'.

'Premium' peas

The 'Calima' beans, while still small and somewhat bug-eaten, are starting to flower.  

'Merlot', 'Marvel of 4 Seasons', and some romaine lettuce have been producing for three or four weeks already, as well as three kale varieties: 'Red Russian', 'Nero de Toscana' and scarlet.  The scarlet plants are prettiest and still quite small, while the 'Red Russian' is getting quite large.

Left to right: 'Nero de Toscana', scarlet, and 'Red Russian' kale

'Red Russian'

scarlet kale

'Nero de Toscana'

'Marvel of 4 Seasons' lettuce

or in the original French, 'Merveille de Quatre Saisons'

'Merlot' lettuce

I'll have to try planting the chinese (Napa) cabbage again in the fall.  It didn't produce any heads from the spring planting; just went straight to bolting.

'Hilton' Chinese cabbage

I let volunteer lettuce come up wherever it wanted to this year.  This one that found its way into the tulip bed got enourmous.

First carrots: 'Red Kyoto', 'Uzbek Golden' and 'Little Fingers'.  The 'Kyoto Red' produced a lot of carrots that were all top and a thin, woody tap root.  

I caged 8 tomato plants today, so even if they sprout legs, they won't be able to escape the garden.

The pink celery is slow growing, like all the other celery I've grown over the years.  I did put some 'D'Elene' celery in a pot, and it's grown faster and larger.  I was going to try to grow it by increasingly piling up soil so it would bleach like store-bought celery, but I got lazy.

Pink stemmed celery

I got curious again and pulled up another garlic.  Still not ready yet.

Even though I was going to let my crowded onions grow on for a while and use them as green onions, I've had to thin them even for that.

Overcrowded onions

The miner's lettuce and corn salad (maché) didn't grow large enough to be of any culinary use.

Left: maché, Right: miner's lettuce

And that "melon" I was so shocked about overwintering: it's a hollyhock!  That explains it!  What I don't know is how it got there.  My hollyhocks are across the vegetable garden and then beyond the rose bed.

I'm not sure what I'm growing in the picture below.  There were pretty pink angelonias there last year that I let go to seed, so I'm hoping that's what these are.  They could just be some weeds.

Lots and lots of honeybees in the butterfly milkweed!

Until next time...