I can’t imagine anything more fun than seeing these lovely “crops” come in! WOW! I just took some photos to show off – my goodness! Everything is so happy! I was a bit worried that our unusually blustery rain late in the year would take its toll, and some things have suffered (some of the tomato plants in particular), but those that remain are HARDY!!!!
Below is a close-up of some of today’s harvest of strawberries, sugar snaps and one enormous blueberry – look at the size of that BLUEBERRY!!!! Ooooooooooh!
Here are some baby apples on our young apple tree – planted as a bare root – very inexpensive from Home Depot. What makes it interesting is that MANY varieties of apples are grafted on this one tree. YUM!
-And here is year 2 of our artichoke plant, purchased small from Green Thumb Nursery in Ventura, CA – we already harvested one of the artichokes this season (quite good!) and soon these two will also be harvested – last year this plant yielded two. I’m wondering if if this plant will contibue for a third year and how common that is…
This is a zuccini plant – which I planted from seed using the Park Seed Biodome and true Italian seeds from Seeds of Italy. The plant is ginormous – I didn’t leave enough space between it and its many neighbors, so it is beginning to crowd out the corn behind it, the tomatoes beside it, and the pepper (oh darn!!!) in front of it. The pepper plants are suffering most, not enough light. The leaves of the zuccini are very healthy and prickly and tooopooo big!
This is another Home Depot bare root – purchased very small, so I didn’t expect anything, as this is also year one and it is a VERY SMALL tree….but it is already fruit bearing (yes yes yes) Elberta Peaches!!!! Can’t wait! Home grown peaches are THE BEST!
I planted from seed SERVERAL varieties of corn (red, white, multicolor, super sweet – so many!!!) from many different seed companies so I could compare and contrast for next year, and I am so pleased – many are already bearing ears of corn, some as many as THREE ears! WOW! Last year, before I planted the corn in boxes as I did this year, the gopher beat me to each one – this year, I’m hoping Sir Gopher’s family stays faaaar away and that the boxes, which have wire bottoms, do their work!
Since I am so new at this, I am undoubtedly making error after error, and one of them I think was to let the celery planted last year in my veggie boxes grow into celery TREES! They are HUGE and the stalks are rounded like regular tree trunks, and so coarse that the outer edges need to be trimmed to be edible, but the centers are quite sweet and juicy. I’ve been using them for flavoring, need to attack this forest. How much celery can we eat?
There is a sweet large apricot tree many years old – here are some of the apricots. Last year the birds beat me to almost of all them, this year I will be quicker!
At Green Thumb Nursery in Ventura, last year, I bought a small vine that had little purple flowers on it and grew slightly-smaller-than-a-tennis-ball sized, oval striped fruits that seem a cross between a cucumber and a melon. Delicious, refreshing, and this year, after a year of abundant growth, it looks much better established with many small cucumber-melons ripening. We already harvested on this year and it was perfect. Our one dog who loves to play with anything round, sees other possiblities for these fruits!
Our asparagus is doing quite well! I purchased roots (rhyzomes?) from Park Seed, and while about half of them arrived in awful shape, the other half is thriving… and the asparagus are SO SWEET and JUICY!
ANother possible mistake is this bravehearted mango, which is too tucked away between larger bushy plants to get enough sun, but it is in year 2!!!! I will give it more light this week.
From seed from several companies I planted sugar snaps and Chinese peas – and the harvest is already beginning! So sweet, crunchy, healthy – they really don’t make it back to the house, I eat them as I’m gardening!
Last year I planted several small bareroot trees, which our Leonberger dog decided to use as chewtoys – some he gnawed down to the stump (and one he pulled out totally!) – but I kept watering the remaining stumps anyway. Happily this one is trying to make a comeback! Who knows if it will ever fruit, but as long as it wants to try to live I’ll help it along. The others are still, well, pretty stumpy…
This is NOT a planted plant – it is a gutsy matillija poppy that has decided to wrangle with the lovely morning glory for space. Matillija poppies sometimes grow alongside the roads (if you’re lucky). The flowers can get as large as a person’t head, with huge yellow centers. Some people call it the fried egg plant, but I think it’s far too pretty for that name…
More soon! This is GROWING SEASON, and I LOVE IT!
