Thursday, June 14, 2012

Garden Picture Spam!

I have been quite negligent about posting anything related to food or the garden. I'm short on time but thought I'd do a picture post by way of catching you up on where things are. Most of these photos are a few days old and already it looks completely different out there.

I need to do a seperate "insects/pests" post because we've been inundated this year. So in this post I'm only including the beneficial or non-harmful bugs.

Horsehair worm on hydrangea. Horsehair worms are parasitic
to other bugs and cause no damage to plants themselves. Here,
it parasatises the hydrangea leftier and helps us out a bit.


The theme this year seems to be "suckers."  The tomato suckers are out of control - normally I only pinch the very early ones and then leave the plant alone. Last year I went completely au-natural and regretted it as I had tomato plants that extended horizontally from one side of the 10' bed to the other. Yeild was great but harvesting was difficult and, in a less forgiving year, the lack of air circulation could have encouraged fungal or other problems.

The strangest thing. Even the peppers have suckers! I've honestly never seen them produce such huge suckers. By the time I realized it, many were too thick to remove. And they're flowering like crazy. I guess we'll see what transpires. At least the peppers don't vine out like the tomatoes!

Pepper sucker with bud.

Ok, these next ones are supposed to be a sheppard pepper ("Carmen"). The visual distinguishing feature between them and my Crimson Red peppers is that the blossom end of the Carmen are rounded, whereas the Crimson are very pointy and the overall pepper is narrow and pointy. Hmmm. Either we messed up or we are inadvertently cross breeding a lot more readily than last year. While this cross seems a match made in heaven, I would like to have some peppers with no heat. You know, for guests. ;-)

This kind of fruit set in June?? 
They are now about 6" long!
They are already much larger than this and could be harvested soon. I don't think the temps will be warm enough for the next few weeks to ripen them but I'm hoping to at least get a blush before I pull them. They are tasty even when green, but you know...

Near bed: Beets (red neareast, yellow far), garlic down centre line, 
cucumbers at far right, to be trained up trellis. 
Far bed is "normal" peppers, Crimson and Carmen.

 Red beet "Merlin".

Raised bed: Carrots and some tomatoes. 
In behind are two first-year grape vines.

Little lovely, destined for my salad. I can almost taste it.

 Itty bitty grape clusters.

Zucchini have started up. Mostly female flowers to start, 
the males are now waking up. Not sure yet if this lovely has
been fertilized or not - we should know within the next day. 

 Bartlett Pears.

 Mystery Stuff! These were on our apple tree. 
They look like a cluster or seeds or eggs. 
Weird little fringe around them, any ideas?

 Close-up. Resolution isn't great but does 
anyone have any ideas of what these could be?


2 comments:

Laura said...

Yeah! Looking good - well except for the bugs, which you have spared us looking at (for now...)

:-)

I think I'll try a small garden next year. I'm encouraged to see that you have a pear tree - is it new, or do you get decent pears from it? I'd love some fruit trees - we had lots growing up, but I lived much further SW of here!

RuckusButt said...

Oh, I definitely have creepier bug pictures coming. I will place a warning ;)

I definitely encourage you to start a small garden next year. I will help in exchange for swims! Or cocktails.

The pear tree was put in last year and we got a few small pears from it. This year the fruit set is good but, like many fruit trees, was somewhat damaged by the frost we got after the trees bloomed (can't really call it late frost, since it was actually early warm weather!). That said, my neighbours have pears, plums, apples, apricot, cherries etc. They do quite well, just do some research on varieties that are hardy to this area. That's mostly what the nurseries will sell, anyway but it pays to be aware.