First Zucchinis. 6.30.2021

Actually these are the second and third zucchinis. The first was two days ago. This is Burpee hybrid, "Sure Thing" which might be parthenocarpic (not require pollination to produce squashes). I pollinate it anyway. The heat didn't seem to hurt it.

These are very, very delicious sliced into french fries, sprinkled with garlic powder, pepper, and seasoned salt and air fried for 10 min at 375F. Very very good. The heirloom Fordham Zucchini and Golden Summer Squash are about a week behind. I hand pollinated those as well.

My Own Daylily Hybrids. 6.30.2021

I created these daylily hybrids a number of years ago, by pollinating my favorite varieties with other some other favorite varieties. Some had names and some did not. One was an almost brown no-name, richly colored. Some others were Strawberry Shortcake, Chicago Apache, and Lemon Ice (I think). I collected the seeds and grew plants from those. Now most are planted around in my garden. Here are some of the flowers. The heat wave fried the flowers from that day, but today's flowers mostly look very nice.

More Heatwave. 6.29.2021

During the past few days, it got even hotter. Yesterday was not as bad. The max was 115 for 2 days in a row, in the shade. The deck was hotter. I think at least half of the apples are sunburnt, maybe more. Those will not be usable. The first of the blackberries are destroyed. Some of the young growth on apples is dead but I think they will recover. Lots of other damage.

Heatwave. 6.26.2021

Current reading is 103F. I've been diligent about watering, but one can only do so much. So far, most ornamentals and food crops seem to be tolerating the heat. Fortunately, the squashes are mulched, most with black plastic. Roma and some other tomatoes have brown paper mulch. The hose splitter broje, so Inordered a four-way manifold from Amizon, to install when it is cooler tonight. tonatoes, peppers, onions and some others are on drip irrigation. Sweetcorn gets early am sprinkler irrigation.

Rufus sticks his nose out the doggie door, checks the heat, then returns to the house.

Thornless Raspberry Crop and Jam. 6.26.2021

The thornless raspberries that I moved here early 2020, settles in and made a nice crop this year. I don't know the name. They are red, floricane bearing, thornless, good productibity and delicious. I was able to get 5 1/2 cups of mashed raspberries, enough for a full batch of low added sugar pectin jam. There was a 1/4 pint extra, so the recipe was about right.

I love raspberry jam. These berries were not too much work, and were free of diseases. Definitely worth growing and worth making some jam for future months.