Squash, Potato, and Sweet CornZucchini Plants. 6.21.19

Potato Plants.  6.21.19

Most of the kitchen garden is looking pretty good.   I dug a couple of potato plants today, ones that had dried up looking leaves.  The vast majority are not ready yet. The summer squashes and zucchinis have early flower buds.  The sweet corn is irregular, with some large and some small plants, but the large ones are looking robust.

Zucchini Plants.  6.21.19

Sweet Corn Plants.  6.21.19

Tomato Plants. 6.21.19

Tomato Plants for Slicing Tomatoes.  6.21.19

All of the tomato plants are blooming, and have stout, green, robust vines and leaves.  Most of the slicing tomatoes are tied up as single cordons.

Tomato Plants for Sauce Tomatoes.  6.21.19

Chestnut Tree in Bloom. 6.21.19

This one is Maraval.  Last year, this tree was the first to bear, having two chestnut clusters last year.  This year, there are about 10 female flowers.  Hard to say because they are so small and so high on the tree.

Precose Migoule also has a couple of female flowers, and lots of male flowers.

The very small Marigoule is vinally growing nicely, and has a few catkins of male flowers.

The Marissard seedling has no flowers.  Nice looking tree, but no flowers.  It's probably a mistake to buy a seedling, even if it's named.

The plan was to have them close enough together to pollinate each other.  But with the small size of the trees, and the small numbers of male flowers on the trees that just started making them, I have tried to hand pollinate using catkins of the other tree.  Unfortunately, doing so I broke off one of the two potentially bearing branches of the Precose Migoule.  That was going to need pruning anyway, but a few curse words were said.

Cowlitz Peaches. Progress Report. 6.21.19

Cowlitz Peaches.  6.21.19

The big test will be in the ripening, but so far the Cowlitz Peach Tree is looking great.   There are about 20 peaches, maybe 25.  A few have been mauled by critters or birds.  It's not in an ideal spot, probably too much shade.

However, this might be one of my best peach yields in a long time. 

I'm guessing they'll ripen some time in July, maybe August.

Cowlitz Peach Tree.  6.21.19

Pawpaw Seedlings. 6.20.19

Pawpaw Seedlings.  6.20.19

Pawpaw seedlings are starting to emerge.  I think it's about 3 months after I planted the stratified seeds in these containers.  At first they were in the warm sunroom.   In May I moved them out to a shady area.

Pawpaw seedlings require shade.  They die in full sun, according to what i have read.

Each of these four pots has about 6 planted seeds.  I stratified them in wet paper towel, in ziplock bags, in the fridge, from September to April.

Growing pawpaws from seeds is a long term proposition.  Most likely, if they do survive and bear fruit, and if I survive that long, it will be around 6 to 8 years before we see anything.

Meanwhile, with the recent heat spell, only one of my four pawpaw trees is looking good.  The others have smaller, paler leaves.  I don't know if they will survive.  All of the tiny fruits fell off.

Yamamoto Dendrobiums. 6.7.19

 These are a few of the Yamamoto Dendrobiums that I bought last year.  They don't get a lot of attention.  I thought they might bloom in winter, but now is good too.  If I remember, I'll check the tags and add the names later.

Sweetcorn Progress Report. 6.1.19

 The first batches of sweet corn look  OK.  I gave them a watering with fish emulsion.

I'm not sue the second batch will germinate.  It's only bern a week, so there is still a chance.  I thought I saw a couple of seedlings but those might be weeds.

Today I planted the third batch and thinned the first batch to a foot apart.  I planted this year's order of "Delectable" from Territorial Seeds.

They should do well here.

Tomato Progress Report. 6.1.19

Tomato Bed 6.1.19

I wondered if I would have the fenced area ready for tomatoes on time.  It was close, but I think they are doing great.

Closest to camera are slicing tomatoes, including Better Boy, Brandy Boy, Cherokee Purple, Sunny Boy, and an early and a late type.  Then there are 12 sauce tomatoes, Ranger.

I think I will do Missouri pruning this year.  Last year I over-did the garden and couldn't keep up.  This year I'm growing a bit less, so I think I can do it.

The paths are boards from the sides of my old raised beds.  They were not wasted.