Category: Edible

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30s next few nights

I put towels, newspapers in pots, glass jars, and plastic jars over the tender plants (peppers, tomatillos, tomatos, ground cherries). The unplanted ones will go in the garage or house.
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Surprise friend

This excellent female Northern Flicker came by the herb bed and investigated all the nooks and crannies while I was eating breakfast this morning! I told her the front yard had a lot of earwigs if that interested her.
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Cilantro: 359 g

I’ve been meaning for several weeks to harvest, blanch, and freeze some cilantro.

After blanching, I balled it up to squeeze out water, though I left a few flat with stems too. Last year I only froze it, no blanching, and it was only good to mix in stuff. When it thawed out it was gross looking. Maybe this will help a little. Plus, now that I’ve cut all the plants back, hopefully that will delay bolting a little longer. Plants in the backyard are starting to flower so I’m just letting them go to seed.
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Backyard baby plant update

The purple lady bok choy grows quite nicely when earwigs are not swarming it.

It grows bigger, too!

The wildflower seeds are doing better than I had hoped!

The green milkweeds are starting to have adult leaves.
There are actually pale coneflowers (Echinacea pallida) growing!
A single adult leaf is emerging on the Liatris mucronata. I have a second one in a smaller pot too.
I mistook the leaf of this seedling for a clover and pulled it yesterday, but quickly realized my mistake. I put it back in the dirt and watered it and it seems okay so far?? I hope so as it’s the only columbine seedling I’ve found so far in the sprouting trays or on the ground where I put seeds in the fall. The package said best sown outdoors in the fall.
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Big tomatoes

There were four plants getting too big for their containers, so we put them in the raised beds.

I also planted seeds of rouge vif d’etampes squash, cushaw squash (supposed to be resistant to squash vine borer), country gentleman corn, bush zucchini, and marketmore 76 cucumbers.

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Another night, another earwig

I put petroleum jelly around the bases of the four test plants. I took pictures of two. I also covered the Brunswick cabbage again with a jar since it got eaten a lot last night when uncovered.

You can see the messy petroleum jelly right near dirt, at base of ground cherry stem. I took care to make sure no other parts of the plant were touching the ground.
Here’s the poblano. Its seed leaves (cotelydons) were touching the ground so I put the petroleum jelly above them.
While I was finishing up the other two plants in the earwig battle zone (raised bed 7), I noticed the newly planted William’s pride apple has flower buds. Wow! It might even get pollinated as the neighbors have a crabapple tree in bloom…
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Quick checkup before work

I need to put a cover back on the Brunswick cabbage.
Briar very interested in oil traps. 🤦‍♀️ Can’t see in them well but there were earwigs last night.
Salvia greggii started blooming yesterday.
One leaf got chewed up a lot on tomatillo.
Likewise on tomato. I’ll try petroleum jelly on stems tonight.
Pepper seems ok.
Peruvian ground cherry also seems about like yesterday.