A Pink Surprise

A volunteer Morning Glory growing up a cornstalk.

12 hours later

A new little dahlia

Love these!    :-)

Kenearly Yellow Eye beans starting to dry

Near the end of pea season

The Sweet Meat squash is coming along!

Herb Clippings

Last September, I brought in small rosemary and sage plants to see if they would overwinter indoors.  They did, and have thrived outside this summer.  I will bring them back in next month, and have also started clippings to pot and give as little gifts this Christmas.

Left to right:  chocolate mint, rosemary, and sage.

Bean Blight and My First Ripe Tomato

Yesterday, R spotted the first ripe medium-sized tomato of the season.  This is a Moskvich, and is one of several early varieties I'm growing this year.  "Early" to me means that these varieties should be half-way ripe by now.  With the exception of five cherry tomatoes, however, this is the only tomato that appears anything other than green.  I'm trying not to feel anxious about it, despite the change in the air, the quality of light, and the sense that the season is winding down and shifting into Fall.  We still have 2/3 of August left and, with any luck, several weeks of warm weather in September.

One of the dry bean varieties I was most looking forward to growing out was Molasses Face.  For the first time since I began gardening, something (blight?) has damaged one of my bean crops.  I hoped for weeks that it would only effect the leaves and that some the beans would develop normally.  Unfortunately, whatever has wrecked the leaves is now affecting the beans as well.  I am not ready to pull them out and compost them, though I fear that's where this is heading.  Such a shame.  It was a brand new package of seeds!

It looks like we'll have 4 good-sized cabbages and one tiny one.  A few of the cabbage transplants didn't make it.  I didn't buy red cabbage transplants this year, as I am always left with way more of it than I can use (and R doesn't eat it).  I will grow a few again next summer, though, as I really missed its colour in the garden! 

Turnips!  This is my first time growing turnips.  There are a few things I'll do differently if I grow them again.  They take up a lot of space, so I will plant them in a single row (instead of the double row I did this year), along the back edge of a container or the garden, and I will force myself to thin them once they've sprouted.  (One of my weaknesses - I hate doing away with healthy seedlings, even though I know the result will be larger, healthier plants if I thin what comes up!) 

Lemon yellow dahlias

Summer Savoury.  Though I don't use it often in my cooking, I love the smell of Summer Savoury.  It looks pretty in the garden, especially once it starts putting out tiny flowers.  Thyme and majorum can smell musty to me, but Summer Savoury always smells green and fresh.

Yet another picture of a leek going to see.  I just think it's so pretty.  :-)

Though I planted this variety of tomato as an afterthought and was not emotionally invested in how well it did, the Yellow Taxis have pleasantly surprised me!  They are not ripe yet, but they have produced an abundance of firm, perfect little spheres on the two plants I have.  If they ripen well and are flavourful, I will definitely save seeds from the Yellow Taxis.

The Eva Purple Balls, another early variety, also seem to be doing well.  They are similar to the Yellow Taxis in shape and size, though not as tightly clustered on the plant.   I admit to being more invested in how they turn out, for whatever reason! 

Yellow Taxi tomatoes - not ripe quite yet!

Plentiful Purple

I discovered another eggplant this morning!  I'm not sure what type, though I think it's a Vittoria eggplant (a hybrid variety).

Lots of flowers and this plant looks healthy.  Bring on more eggplant!  

Three of my other eggplants have been hit with what I think are spider bites.  Wrecks the leaves, leaving them speckled, yellow, and covered with a very fine web.  One I composted, and the other two I sprayed with copious amounts of store-bought insecticial spray, though I think the plants are too far gone to recover. 

Two casualties:

Royal Burgundy beans

Karl resting near the zucchini.

A small, cream coloured dahlia beside the south garden.

Along the side of the house, three lemon yellow dahlias are opening.  They are opening between several of the stems, so are a bit squashed.

Finally, one of my peppermint zinnias bloomed.  The flower is much smaller than they are supposed to be, and the plants are much shorter (about 6 inches) than they should be.  The seeds were sown in a shady part of the garden and in dreadfully hard dirt.  Less than ideal growing conditions.

Another of the Sweet Meat squash starting to grow.  This one is hanging from the apple tree, and another one is on a vine wrapped around the truck of the apple tree!

Karl snoozing by - or rather, on - a few tender sprigs on catnip.  This seems to be a popular spot for the cats to relax.

Hark! Is That Purple I See?

I have an eggplant!  The first one of the season, and the biggest one I have managed to grow yet.  *L*  It is a Ping Tung eggplant, an heirloom variety.  They can grow as long as 18 inches.  Lots of flowers on this plant, so hopefully there will be several more eggplants by the end of the summer.

It is hard to tell from this picture, but we found a large tomato plant, complete with yellow blooms and tiny, plum-shaped tomatoes, in the potato patch.  I put a cage around it and am crossing my fingers that we get some ripe tomatoes from this one.  They look like Martino Romas, which I grew two or three summers ago.

These loooong things that resemble witches' noses are Italian Sweet peppers (also called Jimmy Nardello peppers, I think, and they are heirlooms). They can be eaten green, or allowed to turn red.  I'm going to leave them on the plant as long as possible.  I love red peppers.

Lacinato ("dinosaur") kale and red Swiss Chard.

We likely won't harvest as many carrots this summer as we did last year, but here is the first little batch of the season.  It looks like mostly Cosmic Purple and Jaune Obtus de Doubs germinated.  The most common kind, and the kind that usually grows easily (Scarlet Nantes) showed up in only two tiny "thinning" sized carrots.  Looking forward to scrubbing these babies tonight and having them for supper!

End of July 2014

Pictures taken over the last few days...

My first batch of beans!  Royal Burgundy and Beurre de Rocquencourt.

Volunteer Swiss Giant Pansy in the pea patch.

One of our cauliflowers.

Small chilli peppers called "Hot Apache".