chili peppers are ripening!

Looking good! These are the hot chili peppers I grew from seed this spring. The package included a mix of five different varieties. I raised nearly 100 seedlings, gave most away and kept about 30 myself. They are in a patch next to my tomatoes and some are tucked in between my perennials. Looks like I can get my chili recipe out and start warming up the frying pan soon. Poppers... pickled martini peppers... salsa... yummy.

Capsicum

pole bean problem

My pole beans have been suffering this year. The vines are very stunted and leaves are mottled and crinkled. I thought they weren't getting enough water and then I thought it was the black aphids that killed the nearby fava beans. But I think it is probably a mosaic virus (maybe bean common mosaic virus or cucumber mosaic virus?). These viruses are spread by aphids and the only solution seems to be planting resistant varieties. I noticed that most of the pole beans at our local community garden also looked heavily affected. It must be a bad year for this virus. The problem is affecting both varieties of pole beans that I planted in my garden back in May (Italian Pole Beans and Blue Lake) and the Scarlet Runner beans I recently bought and have in pots on my porch. Fortunately my bush beans (Royal Burgundy, Provider and Haricots Verts) and soybeans are fine so far.

Fabaceae

after vacation

Scenes from the garden after our return from a brief vacation: (from top left) there are a couple good sized heads of broccoli, endive Natasha is heading up, garlic scapes are ready for picking, soybeans have lots of tiny buds, MANY baby zucchinis, purple podded beans have purple flowers, baby cucumbers are forming, purple pods of the Capucijner peas are drying, a June planting of romaine lettuce looks good. Also looking good are my great big potato plants, green beans hanging on the plants, pumpkin vines are several feet long, super looking orange and purple carrots, and snap peas that continue to produce pods. Crops that are past are the black seeded simpson lettuce, curly endive (bolted), green peas, arugula and cilantro. These I have pulled and will use the space for more lettuce, beans, and a fall planting of broccoli.

morning glory

Morning glory President Tyler with a pumpkin flower in the background.

tall tomatoes

Wow! We're back from vacation and the tomato plants are enormous! Already they are 6 feet tall. Lots of pretty green tomatoes all over them. Skippy is almost lost in the tall plants.

I was hoping they'd be ripe by now :( Oh well...

Solanum lycopersicum

vacation

We're on vacation this week. I wonder what my garden will look like when I return. Out of control zucchinis? Ripe tomatoes? Overgrown weeds?

my parents' garden

These are some scenes from my parents' garden. Its mid July and the perennials are at their of color and the yard is full of flowers and bees and sunshine.

honeybee on borage flower

Another good use for borage - it attracts honeybees! This is the first honeybee I've seen in my garden this year.

garden chores

This week's garden work included: thin the carrots, beets, kale and chard; tie up the tomato vines and the big dahlia; hill potatoes; wrap squash and cucumber stems with cheesecloth; remove fava plants and plant sunflower seeds in their place; remove the last of the arugula and radishes and plant bush beans in their place; fertilize with GardenTone.

thinned beets and carrots

I thinned my carrots and beets again. The beet greens are yummy mixed with lettuce greens. A few of the carrots were big enough to eat.

Daucus carota beets (Beta vulgaris)

fava crop failure

My favas are gone. I pulled them up today. Though the lady bugs have arrived, the fava beans were just too stunted from black aphid damage to leave growing. (I almost pulled the adjacent pole beans too. These also have aphid damage, but seem to be recovering. I left them for now.) In place of the favas, I planted a mix of sunflower seeds.

I am glad to see the lady bugs, even though they are the big Asian type. They will help to control the green aphids on many of the plants in my garden.


Vicia faba

pumpkin flowers

Lots of big orange pumpkin flowers have begun to bloom this week. They open early in the morning. All male flowers so far.

Last year I planted pumpkins in a big pot and they shriveled and died in the heat of mid July. I told myself, no more potted pumpkins. But here it is - pumpkins in a pot. (Where did I read about the folly and eternal optimism of gardeners?) This year they are in a bigger pot, nice potting soil (instead of last year's garden soil) and they are in semi shade. I have planted them with sunflowers, which they are climbing up. So far, so good. I actually have two big pots with pumpkins and sunflowers. One pot has vines I think are pumpkins (they sprouted in my compost bin), the other has a variety called Howden that I purchased as seedlings.


Pumpkin -- Cucurbitaceae spp.

garlic scapes!

I guess I was wrong about my garlic. A couple weeks ago I concluded they weren't going to make scapes. But look! Scapes. Better late than never.

(Boundary Garlic Farm has good garlic growing info.)

Allium sativum

lettuce

I haven't bought lettuce for a month! (since June 2nd) I am regularly harvesting black-seeded simpson (my favorite), escarole, endive, oak-leaf, and baby romaine. Also, I've started pulling baby beet greens this past weekend. I add garden herbs to our salad: usually dill, cilantro or parsley. I will try some borage soon. (I ran out of arugula and am waiting for a recently seeded crop to grow). We are big salad eaters and its great to have fresh tender greens available daily.

Lactuca sativa

a birthday dinner

I was lucky to have a big harvest and plenty of veggies for making a nice birthday dinner. In the morning I picked a large number of snap peas, some baby beets greens (that badly need thinning) and broccoli, lots of lettuce (I haven't bought lettuce in at least a month now), and some parsley, cilantro, thyme, dill and arugula.

The menu was appetizer: grilled shrimp, dinner: tortellini salad with snap peas, broccoli and greens, rotisseried chicken, and grilled corn-on-the-cob. Of course dessert was birthday cake.