Onions, Garlic in Containers. Allium harvest.

It's July in the Maritime Pacific Northwest, so onions, garlic, and other alliums are ripening off. The garlic and elephant garlic are not quit there, so I've left them in their containers. They won't get further water, however. Same for the container of Egyptian Walking Onions.

This was my first experiment growing White Potato Onions (heritage multiplier onion) in containers. I didn't get all of the weeds pulled in late Spring, but they did well anyway. Pleased at the size and number of onions. Two weeks ago, I moved the containers out of the rain and sun, to the north side of the house, to dry off without baking. That's a good part about the containers.  I was concerned about these last fall for 2 reasons.  First, I planted them late, so I didn't know if they would get off to a good start.  Second, I was concerned the plastic containers would either heat up too much, or freeze too much.  They did fine.

Here are the White Potato Onions,  pulled up. This is one container of onions. I don't think you could have so many in an equivalent 2 foot diameter disk in the soil. I will leave them here to dry out. It's in the 80s today so they should dry in a week.

One of the garlic containers. This one is hardneck garlic.  Hardneck garlic forms a scape - the flower head that creates tiny bulbils if allowed to mature.  In early June, we removed the scapes and stir fried them - yummy flavor.  Early removal of scapes is thought to increase the size and yield of the final garlic bulbs.    The plants are starting to dry out. I hope it doesn't rain. These wooden containers are too heavy to move to a sheltered spot.  Since this is the hardneck, it's the  German White Porcelain garlic that I bought and planted last fall.  I forgot to label them, but that's how I can tell the difference.  Glad I sorted that out.  Also it makes sense, because I planted the extra cloves of German White in with strawberries and peppers, and those also sent up scapes.

This one is the softneck garlic.  Softneck garlic does not have a scape.  Inchelium Red garlic, which is what I started with a few years ago, is softneck.  So now I have identified the varieties.

These Allium gigantium were in an inconvenient location. The flower stalks were completely brown, dry, and crispy, so OK to dig up. These started as one bulb about 2 years ago, so pretty good yield here, 5 bulbs. They'll get stored in the garage in paper bags, when dried off, and be replanted in the fall. They are the size of a medium onion.  I don't know if they are edible, and not all that interested in finding out.  However, they area an onion and garlic relative, and are ripening at the same time as the onions, so I included them here.

This Egyptian Walking Onion was mixed in with the White Potato Onions. I could tell because of the "head" of onions that it produced. It's not quite ready to harvest, but I did anyway. I want to see if it will dry off like the other onions, for storage.

Plums. Backyard Orchard Culture

Not ripe yet, but getting closer. This is the best crop so far from Hollywood and Shiro.

Shiro. Hard to see in the picture, since the plums are green.  They will show better when they change color to yellow. I love these plums

Hollywood. Ditto - the most I've had from this tree. I like that the leaves are purple, which makes the purple plums less visible to birds and bypassers.I love these plums, too.

These are a yellow wild plum, the size of a sweet cherry. They have a sweet, sprightly flavor. The tree is down the street, and it doesn't look like anyone is eating them. I picked up the plums from the street, cleaned the seeds, and will plant some now in flower pots, to stay moist and germinate over winter or next spring; plant some in the fall in containers an place outside or in the fridge, and give some away. Even though they are small, they ripen with cherries, much earlier than the other plums. They are as big as sweet cherries, so they can be thought of as a "different cherry" to make the small size more acceptable - but they really are plums. Very juicy and sweet.

Here are the cleaned seeds. The seeds on the plaid washcloth are wild cherry seeds. Two years ago I saved some, planted them, then neglected to water the little trees in the hot summer, and they died. I want to try again, using backyard orchard culture methods of dwarfing by summer pruning.

Creating Hybrid Iris

While the irises were blooming, I diligently transferred pollen among varieties. I may have pollinated 30 flowers - lost count. Of those, only 3 flowers "took".  That's all I need - no room for zillions of iris seedlings.

This was Spiced Custard pollinated by Immortality.   I did not bag the flowers, so it's possible there is cross pollinaton with a different variety.  The pods remind me a bit of poppy seed pods.  

This was an un-named purple/blue iris rescue, pollinated by Liaison.  In general, I pollinated blues with blues, and yellows or oranges with yellows or oranges, and anything with white.

Lilies

I've been going around the yard cross pollinating various lilies.  Anything that happens to be in bloom, crossed with anything else that happens to be in bloom. I am sticking with pollinating Asiatics with Asiatics. and Orientals with Orientals. I don't know the names of any of these. They happen to be blooming today.

Backyard Orchard Culture: Stimulate fig crop

This is how you stimulate fig trees to initiate fall crop. It's very easy. If I don't do this, I barely get any fall figs. If I do, the trees are stimulated to make lots of figs - then it's a matter of weather permitting. I think the growing tip produces hormones that prevent figs from growing at the leaf nodes. By snapping off the growing tip, the hormonal inhibition is stopped, and soon a fig will start to form at each leaf node. I do this when the new branches are at 4 or 5 leaves. I try to do it early, so I get figs before the weather is too cool and days too short in the fall to sweeten the figs. I used to use a scissors for this, but they snap so easily, scissors are not necessary. Some references refer to this as pinching", but I don't pinch, I bend the tip and it easily snaps off.

This tree is Hardy Chicago. Almost all of the breba figs fell off. That doesn't bother me too much, because several other fig trees promise a big breba crop this year. Since it's not making figs now, the branches are growing fast, and it's time to plan for the fall crop.

Find the branch growing tips.

The place to snap off the growth is just below the little leaf forming at the end. Just bend over the tip, and it snaps off. No cutting or pinching is needed - just snap.

The tip will ooze white latex sap for a few hours. I don't think that hurts anything. Some people have allergic reactions to the latex, so I wouldn't get carried away until after snapping one or two and waiting a day to see if there is a reaction. I don't worry about it, and have never had a problem, so I snap all of the tips that I see, that have 3 or 4 or 5 leaves. This technique limits tree size, and stimulates compact branching, as well as stimulating a crop. It works for the fall crop (main crop) if snapping is done in early summer. I don't do it for the spring (breba) crop because I don't want figs to form before winter rains and frost.