What's up in the Kitchen Garden?

I'm so excited! The peaches are getting bigger and more colorful. This is Honey Babe. It fully recovered from the peach leaf curl of 2008, and the preventive measure last winter was completely successful. How cool is that!

We ate several Lemon Boy and a big bowl of Supersweet 100 this week. I added some high nitrogen organic liquid feed last week, based on advice from the Davis Calif garden show. I neglected to feed them in May, so most of the plants are smaller now, compared to last year. Even so, it looks like there will be a good crop of tomatoes and peppers this year.

The zucchinis are also starting to make up for lost time. These are the easiest crop of the garden.

Grapes are not even close to ripe yet. This is Price grape, trained over a gate. The vine is about 6 years old. It will be the best crop ever for this vine. I watered deeply, twice this summer. Otherwise it's getting its water from deep in the ground. I read that grapevines can send roots incredibly deep, so they shouldn't need much water from above.

I like the tower method of training cucumbers. We're getting about 1 cuke daily now. These are chinese cucumbers. By the end of summer, these cukes will reach the top of the tower, 7 feet. Training vertically reduces risk for mildew, and the cukes are easy to find and pick. Plus, it's a very small location, and the tower makes the best use of this garden niche.

Fall Begins

Ginkgo fall photo. Leaves remain green so far.

Front ginkgo. Now it's taller than I am. Leaves starting to change color now.

Lots of grapes now. It's dark when I go to work and come home, so I forget to pick them.

Also-
still getting a few tomatoes, beans, cucumbers.

I ate ONE fresh fig yesterday - a small one from Hardy Chicago.

I moved the Magnolia seiboldei to a more sheltered location, north of a fence and east of the house. There is will be less likely to develop sunburn, and need less water in the summer. It's bushy, about 6 feet tall. The roots were actually quite limited, about 2 foot diameter root ball, about 1 foot deep. I did remove one tall stem that leaned the wrong direction, but left the remainder unpruned.

I moved a mature oriental lily as well, near the magnolia. Also a few minor perennials.

Kitchen Garden Progress Notes

Other than watering, most of the yard and garden has been neglected. This is due to work demands. The past 4 days have been 100 degrees. Watering eveything takes about 30 minutes. Most of the watering is limited to vulnerable plants / trees and the kitchen garden.

The veggies contine to produce. Cherry tomatoes came 'on-line' about one week ago with occasional ripe tomatoes, and now with a bowlful every day. LemonBoy has been producing for a week, but the first 4 had significant blossom end rot. I'll need to check on that - I thought it was an issue of calcium content of the soil, so used lots of crushed eggshell in soil prep this year. I hope that subsequent tomatoes are not so affected.

"Price" is the first grape to start changing color. This is the most it's had so far.

The yellow beans continue to produce a big bowl full weekly. Interestingly, to look at the plants, they dont seem to have any beans on them. The beans are hidden under the leaves. These are growing under the small Lattarula fig tree. The total space is about 9 square feet.

I also planted a new crop of Ning's "ChangChun" climbing beans, adjacent to the current ones that appear to be giving up. We'll see if they produce this fall.

I didn't realize that I liked zucchinis until growing them. It's interesting, the American and Chinese varieties seem to alternate production, so there is always one about to remove.

These beans were planted last month. They are growing quickly. I weeded and mulched with fallen bamboo leaves and dry leaves removed from the deck (cherry and sumac). Last week I fertilized with fish emulsion. An unforseen effect was that the dogs then got into the bean patch and dug them up. They like fish emulsion, a lot. But after replanting and watering in, I dont think that any were lost.

The front row is mesclun, also growing fast.

Peppers are producing now. They are stuck in the garden here and there, since I didnt have room for a separate pepper patch.

Kitchen Garden Progress Notes.

Ning's beans are climbing the string trellis. The volunteer that started itself as a "winter sow" produced a small bowl of beans.

The French Yellow and Roma bush beans have been producing for 2 weeks (not pictured). This is the former garlic bed - dug them up 2 weeks ago (also not pictured). Now it's an experiment - will romas and french yellow bush beans produce if seeds are started now?

Thai pepper. Strange, both are near fig cuttings that I had given up for dead.

Cayenne pepper. One is starting to turn yellow.

The cucumbers are starting to produce. We had one last week.

Kitchen Garden

We have been eating lots of cilantro. This was sown by crushing old flower heads from last year's cilantro, letting the seeds scatter on the mulch. The flower heads were saved by leaving them in the garden shed over the winter, unprotected. The cilantro is flavorful and tender. This method fits into the "cheap+lazy" gardening philosophy. I putter around far too much to be considered lazy, but "virtually no effort" takes up too much room in the labels.

The strawberries hold a lot of promise. The most blooms, ever.

The Inchelium garlic looks like corn plants. No scapes yet.

Several of the tomatoes have flower buds, even though they are only about 9 inches to a foot tall. I've started pinching out the lower branches, to maintain a cordon shape. One grouping had pale leaves - uncelar why, but this area did not get as much chicken compost. I added fish emulsion and added some epson salts for good measure (Mg and sulfur) and the leaves ARE greener today.

I hate to say it, but I planted some 'orphan' tomato plants in an area that is frequented by the cat for her litter box. These ARE larger and greener than the others. I guess this is OK - they are fruits, so the food part is not near the cat's 'products'.

We've been eating lots of scallions, both of the 'potato onion' type (my favorite) and the "Egyptian walking onion' type. And some of the 'I don't know what they are' type, that just happened to be left in the ground from previous years. These are perfect for the "cheap+lazy" gardener, since each onion produces sets for next year, at the top of the plant. These can be planted in the fall for early scallions, at zero cost and little effort. If you ignore them, they'll fall over and plant themselves, which is esentially zero effort for the gardener.

Today I planted another set of Ning's beans. In addition, I planted bush zucchinis. Something ate the prior seedlings. I planted new cucumber seeds, for the same reason.

veggies

At this time I've barely had time to keep them watered. Still, with large amounts of organic matter added to the soil over the past several years, and a compost mulch, they are producing pretty well. Lots of tomatoes now, plus zucchinis, cucumbers, some cayenne and hungarian peppers. Also, I've been eating about 1/2 pound of grapes daily for the past week, and they are just starting to ripen. First was Interlaken, quickly followed by Venus and Price. Price has the largest grapes, with a 'grapey' flavor, and I don't mind the seeds. Interlaken is the sweetest, but being seedless they are smaller than Price. Venus is interesting - I can't decide how much I like them, but they are not fully sweet yet and they are bigger than Interlaken. Canadice hasn't started to ripen yet. Looking forward to them.

Another Lily. Garden log.

Here is another lily. I didn't have a chance yet to photograph the Casa Blanca in the back yard - clearly one of the finest. Huge white flowers, highly fragrant. This one has it's charms. No-name however.

Summer pruned the aprium. Last week I summer pruned Ning's short cherry trees. In each case, I removes all but 6" to 1ft of new growth on all branches. In many cases (especially the cherries) I removed more than 2 feet of new growth. I hope that I didnt remove next year's crop - I dont think so, the flowers seem to come from the first few inches of new stem.

Also pruned the new grown on trunk and lower branches of large flowering cherry. These short branches I have been pruning back to spurs each summer. They nbloom nicely, and look like pompoms stuck onto the sides of the old tree.

First 3 tomatoes today. One tiny tim, 2 sweet 100. The sweet 100s are definitely better tasting.

So far, about 5 cucumbers. Another one today.

Two crops of Ning's beans so far. First crop 2 weeks ago, second last weekend.

Tomorrow or wednesday: BREBA FIGS from petite negri. There are only 3. They are at the hang-mans noose stage, but no tears of the condemn or robes of the penitent. Better enjoy them. A few dozen maion crop, on the trees combined. Something to look forward to this fall.

Hummingbirds have been amazing this year. At least 4 different birds, maybe more. They like the crocosmia the best, the feeder second. They couldn't figure out the brugmansia.

ALl of the prunings have been chopped up for mulch, and are mosly on a side border. It's keeping it nice and clean, in a woodsy way.

Progress notes, mid July

Too much going on to concentrate on my favorite activity - gardening. Fortunately is is semi-self-maintaining. Weeds are growing in the dormant lawn, so it's messy. I have been watering the 'at risk' life almost daily (tomatoes, contanerized plants) due to hot weather. Not watering most shrubs or roses. Without generous mulch, much of it applied over several years; increased humus from bark, compost, and leaves, and some selective pressure (plants not adapted to this situation don't make it), it would have be a disaster this year. As it is, it's messy but not beyond hope.

The plan for tomorrow is to bike to work. In retrospect, I could have today, but sometimes we have to give ourselves a break. Not that I dont love doing it - I do. But the body needs to regenerate a little from time to time. Just as I cant be a "fundamentalist organic gardener" or a "fundamentalist vegetarian" (although people accuse me of both), I can't be a "fundamentalist bike commuter" either. But as in many things, every little bit adds up.

So far we have had 4 zucchinis (yummy, buttery falvor), uncountable raspberries, uncountable strawberries, a few dozen apriums, and tonight I had the first of the Inchelium Red garlic (pasta, crushed raw garlic, olice oil, and parmesan. That's all. Makes me feel all warm inside). Also a few crops of Chinese Chives, made into dumplings; some bunches of cilantro.

Time for bed if I'm going to bike. Early=beats traffic (not that ther is much on my route anyway), cool morning breeze, not hectic.

This agapanthus was grown from seed, plated 5 years ago. It took about 3 years to the first blossom, and others planted at the same time were lost. There is something very cool about growing somethinglike this from seeds.
Cucumbers starting to climb the obelisk (with substantial help).
Is it Xmas yet? This Xmas cactus is blooming.
Despite all of the hybrids, the oriential species lilies are still my favorite - possible my favorite of all flowers (at least in July). This bunch started as one bag (3 bulbs?) about 4 years ago. It's fairly dry tolerant and is spreading a little every year.