Views Around the Estate

Here are the latest views from the gardens.

Bush beans and potatoes. I only had three beds left for potatoes and beans, but I had more potatoes than I thought, so I had to tuck them in anywhere there was room. Combine this with all the volunteer potatoes from 2008 and even 2007, and I will be over run with spuds this year! I really must work out a better storage system for them, because they sprout before I get to eat them all!

Cukes and sunflowers. At least I think those are cukes. Not too many squash family seeds sprouted this year, so I kept adding miscellaneous seeds to the beds to the point where I'm not sure what is sprouting where!

Garlic. The garlic is growing very well. I snapped off the scapes this last week - they were lovely with their curlicue shapes. Bagged several up to give to friends, but no one seemed to want them. I think one needs to be in an up-scale urbanesque area to find a market for scapes. (Yes, those are potatoes with the garlic...leftovers from 2008.)

Carrots. I have six or seven carrot patches squeezed between the onion patches. This last weekend I divvied up several of the carrot clumps, moving them into areas where carrot seeds didn't sprout. Looks like I may need to move some more. The sunshine and rain from the last couple of days made many of the carrot tops just shoot up. My goal is long carrots this year, not hundreds of midget carrots. Hopefully the transplanting will help with that.

Pumpkins. I had to dig into the remains of the manure pile to get enough in one spot to plant the pumpkins this year, but there seems to be enough "juice" left for them to do well (so far). All we need now is some sunshine!

Broccoli and cauliflower. Yes, they are there under that row cover by the crabapple tree. I haven't peeked under since I planted them...don't want to be discouraged. This year I'm thinking of leaving the row cover in place as a foil for the cabbage whites and their larvae.

Peas. Lots of peas and they've started to flower. None are terribly tall, though. Maybe some are just short varieties, but I suspect the lack of sunshine has also stunted their growth.

Moving onto the flowerbeds, we find several plants in bloom. The lupines are pretty much finsihed, but now we have toadflax,

foxgloves,

verbascum,

garlic chives,

valerian,

mountain bluets,

and Maltese cross.

The splashes of color brighten things up, even on overcast days.

The Harvest Exapnds & Other Observations

First it was lettuce (I've actually stopped picking lettuce for a while - one can have too much of a good thing), and now it is peas. I've been filling bowls with peas from the vines every day for over a week now (even in the rain). While the pods fill the bowl to overflowing, the actual peas, once shelled, are fewer, but it has still been enough to put ten containers in the freezer so far! Another three or so may go in tonight after I get home and go over the vines again.

Yesterday also yielded the first real broccoli harvest. I picked one head about three weeks ago, but last night I harvested four. The variety I planted doesn't get massive heads, but it was enough to fill two bags for the freezer.

And let's just discuss for a moment here the whole "soak your broccoli in cold salt water for 30 minutes to remove the little green worms" strategy. It doesn't work. I filled the kettle with cold water, dumped in a fair quantity of salt, and added the broccoli. About an hour later I found about three LGWs floating in the water. I plucked out a head and started to look it over...LGWs were still clinging to it. I can't vouch for the amount of life they had left in them, but I don't think they were all deceased. So, I cut apart each head and looked over each floret carefully (removing LGWs) before putting it in a bowl for blanching afterwards. Make you wonder how the "big companies" remove the LGWs from their broccoli. HM.

The squash, pumpkins and cukes are growing well, thanks to all the rain. They are all starting to put out blossoms!

The runner beans are also blooming. I have found them disappointing. For some reason in my mind the flowers were much larger. Still, the colors are nice, and if the hummers can find them, they should be happy.

Purple flowers are appearing on the pole beans, although I'm not sure if the bush beans are blooming yet.

As I came up through Warrensburg this afternoon I saw corn already with tassels. Hmmm...my corn is barely reaching knee high. I'm thinking I should've risked cool soil and planted it sooner. Too late now, of course, but something to consider for next year.

Also, note to self: don't mix up all the herb and beneficials seeds together and then plant with the buckwheat. Buckwheat grows faster and gets rather tall and dense - the other don't stand a chance. Might not want to plant the crimson clover with the buckwheat next year, either.

Sunflowers are doing great - some heads are already starting to form! I love it when they all burst into bloom! I was lucky last year and the bears were not a problem. The sunflowers are closer to the fence this year, though, so it should be interesting to see if the bears become a problem when the seedheads ripen.

The nasturtiums started blooming this last week. No cosmos yet, though, or marigolds. This is the difference between planting the seeds outside "after last frost" and staring the plants inside a month or more earlier. These flowers are planted as companions to the veggies, ostensibly as encouragement to pollinators, so I'm thinking next year we start them inside again; I should have plenty of room since I am giving up on starting onions and leeks from seeds.

Had the first monarch caterpillar of the season just before this last week of rain - it was munching on some butterflyweed (which does VERY well up here). It was pretty good-sized; I'd guess it was at least a week and a half old. It's the only one I've seen so far this year, though. Few monarchs overall this summer. And not a single red admiral butterfly! Hm. I wonder where they are.