The Bush Beans Are Germinating. And I Planted Some More. 7.23.22

 These were planted 16 Jul.  I raised the anti-bird screen to give them room to grow.  Every seed germinated within about four days - pretty good I think.  They will need to be thinned next week.

I planted a row of beans where I dug potatoes the past couple of days.  It's a little exposed but also a little protected, from deer and rabbits.  I will try to protect them with more fencing once they grow bigger.  This finished off the packet of fast growing "Contender" beans.

There was a little more space, so I also planted some seeds from an old packet of "Roma" beans.  I actually like those a lot.

Tomorrow is expected to be very hot.  I don't want them to dry out, so after watering them, I covered the row with cardboard to keep them moist.

It's late for planting bush beans, but climate is changing and the extra warmth might speed them up enough for a good harvest.

Flowers. 7.23.22

 Mixture - sweetpea, lavender, coreopsis ready to bloom.

More tigridia among the squashes.

More Crocosmia.

Bees love shallot flowers.

I brought a few indoors.

Harvesting More Garlic. Lorz and Music. 7.23.22

 Today I harvested the rest of the garlic.  I also cut off the tops of the garlic I dug up a week ago and have been letting dry out.  These are the hardneck Music Garlic that I have been growing for a decade.  This time, I grew ten rows of eight plants per row.  There were also some volunteers, which were much smaller because they were in clumps instead of individual plants.

Music has jumbo size cloves, much easier to peel than grocery garlic.  It has a strong garlic flavor.  The bulbs keep nearly a year in a cool dry place.

I also harvested the Lorz garlic.  Like Music, Lorz is Italian.  I had these in half wine barrels.  They were on the drip system, but I made a mistake.  I should have stopped the irrigation for these a couple of weeks ago.  The ground was too moist, and the papery husks tear too easily when wet.  We'll see how they dry.  

The Lorz garlic also has jumbo bulbs and jumbo cloves.  I'm interested to see how they dry lut, and how they taste.  They are described as strongly flavored too.

Softneck garlics can be braided.  I read they keep longer than hardneck.  That's why I decided to try them. I'm very impressed with the size of the bulb and the beautiful purple blush.  From the two bulbs that I bought mail order last fall, there are eighteen now.  I will set aside three or four to plant this fall, in addition to continuing the Music garlic.

Squash Flower and Honeybee. 7.22.22

 I think the squash flowers are among the nicest.  It's nice to see some honeybees now.

The Buttercups and Dakota Dessert squashes have a lot of developing fruits now.  Especially the Buttercups.  The Costata Romanesco  is making countless, rapidly growing fruits, and the Saffron yellow summer squash provides a new one each day.  Galeux and Fordhook are all male flowers so far.

Sweetpeas Blooming. 7.22.22

 The sweetpeas are actually pretty nice.  I think about 1/3 survived starting from seeds and transplanting, if that many.  Then they were slow to take off.  But now they look very nice.  Across the yard, the red ones also look nice.