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.

Early summer garden

Perennials and roses are abloom, and the vegetable garden is providing harvests.  This may be peak time for gardeners in mid-Missouri.  Peas are finished, but I'm now harvesting green beans.

'Calima' green beans

Stray volunteer lettuce plants are growing in various places, including the bean row, and I'm just letting them go so I can collect seeds.

The cabbages I (trans)planted June 10 don't seem to be growing very fast.  Maybe it's too hot.  The 'Primo Vantage' green variety is doing better than the 'Omero' red ones.

'Omero' cabbage

Okra seed germination was poor this year even though it wasn't old seed.  I started with 2 rows, and had to move some to end up with just one row.  

'Carmine Splendor' okra

There are a couple of fruits on the long sweet pepper plants.  I grew them from seeds I collected from a pepper I got at the grocery store, so I don't know what variety they are.  I just hope they're as good as the store peppers.  I've been spraying them with an epsom salt solution to try to enhance growth.   Probably need to water them more.

I tried the method of growing potatoes in straw, but I've not been pleased.  I did get three medium-sized potatoes off one plant today, but the rest aren't producing.  Maybe it's been too dry?  Maybe 'Yukon Gold' potatoes don't do well by that method?  Maybe I don't know what I'm doing?

The garlic was finally ready to be harvested.  I'm going to braid and hang them.

The French Charentais melons ('Savor') are starting to climb their cages and flower.

One 'German Johnson' plant has a small green fruit on it.

Cucumbers have finally gotten going.  The seeds were two or three years old, and even being held in the freezeer, they're losing viability.  I'll have to buy new seed for the next planting.  Before I started freezing leftover seeds, I found that even in the second year, seed viability was greatly reduced.

'Marketmore' cucumber

I pulled up a couple wasabi radishes and found that while the plants are grown and setting seed, the taproots were no bigger than my little finger.  

They were planted last fall.

Wasabi seed heads

I finally decided to read up on how you're supposed to harvest these things and found out they aren't ready for harvesting until the second year.  I guess I'll just leave them in the ground and see what happens.

The onions are at the stage for harvesting as green onions, and since I planted them waaaay to densely, it's working out that I get the perfect size green onions by thinning the crop.

Of course there's no way I was going to get a year without raccoon damage.  The kids are out before dawn and wreaking havoc wherever they can.

I thought I'd discourage this darling little guy by turning the hose on him before letting him go.  At first he tried to get away from the stream, and then he just started playing with it.  What can you do?

'Hens and chicks' poppy

Vegetables in May

'Premium' peas are setting fruit.

Tomatoes are in and looking sad.  I still expect them to take hold and look good in a couple of weeks.

'German Johnson'

'Missouri Pink Love Apple'

'Supersweet 100' cherry tomato

I'm so tempted to pull up a garlic plant and see what it looks like.  But I'll resist.

garlic and wasabi radish

 I did pull up a wasabi radish, as they've bolted, so I figured they'd be ready to harvest.  This is what I got:

Not knowing what it was supposed to look like, I checked the internet and found this picture:

source

How pretty.  Maybe they'd do better as a fall crop.

orange 'Penny Lane' and purple 'Victoria Falls' iris

Picking up speed

 

The last of the tulips have bloomed and dropped, while summer-blooming plants in the tulip beds are coming on.

Mountain lily (Ixiolirion tataricum ssp. pallasii;)

Spanish (Hyacinthoides hispanica) and 

English (H. non-scripta) bluebells 

Direct-sown vegetables are starting to take off.

Recently, I transplanted tomatoes and peppers I had started from seed in the winter.  The tomatoes look like hell from being put into the cold frame too early, and I hope they pull out of it.

The wasabi radish and Napa cabbage that were being eaten by what I thought by the look of the damage (dozens of tiny holes in the leaves) might be flea beetles are looking much better.  It may well have been something other than flea beetles, because I'm attributing the improvement to several neem oil sprays, and the literature says that won't protect against flea beetles.  That makes sense to me because oil is usually considered helpful where insects have sucking instead of chewing mouthparts.  Beetles are chewers.  At any rate, the plants look much better, so I'll stick to neem treatments.

Wasabi radish

(Rhaphanus sativus)

Napa cabbage (aka Chinese cabbage)

(Brassica rapa subsp. chinensis 'Hilton')

Somebody is eating the green beans, and I don't think it's flea beetles, because the holes are rather large.  I haven't seen the culprit, so I'm not trying to treat it yet, even though it's bound to slow down plant growth.  

'Calima' green beans (Phaseolus vulgaris)

Beside the vegetable plots, flowers are budding and blooming.

The oriental poppies I feared were killed in last year's flooding are doing great and popping their caps. (Is that why they're called poppies?)  

German (aka bearded) iris are in full swing.  I've been fooled more than once by advertisements showing color-altered pictures of flowers they call blue.  More often than not, if you're surprised to see it, it's probably actually purple, and I swear not to be fooled again.

In this picture, the iris do in fact look blue (depending on your device's screen).  I didn't shop it, but if they look blue to you, I assure you, they're purple.  The glossy Breck's paper catalog in which I found them showed them very blue, disappointing me on color, but the quality is quite good.

orange 'Penny Lane' and purple 'Victoria Falls'

'English Charm'

'Penny Lane'

'Earth Mother'

I don't know the name of this next fellow.  It was on the premises when I came here.

Until next installment, here's a little gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor) to encourage you to go out and look around your neighborhood.  His red oak tree is a little small, but perhaps he's encouraging it to grow.