Harvest and pruning

Surprise! A loofah gourd I didn’t plant has already reached the top of the trellis.
Chard, mini bell peppers, and Chimayó peppers.
The Chef found a cutworm in the chard.
I found a big beautiful banana spider (Argiope) in the tomatoes while I harvested! I made sure not to bother her more.
I finally determined the zucchini plant was a total loss to squash vine borers. I also made an executive decision to not let the very thriving white currant tomato plant shade out the moon and stars watermelon or the salvia or the rosemary. There’s only one plant and it’s a monster! I got over 900 g this evening alone.
All tidy now. I hope the watermelon will do better now.
I came inside to find this beautiful meal prepared by the Chef. Greens are chard from the garden and the bell pepper topping is mini bell peppers sliced. Yum. Nice and cool after working in the heat and humidity.

The tomatoening

UF ‘W’ hybrid tomato
Purple Cherokee tomato
The ever fruitful black vernissage tomato
Not tomatoes: Peruvian ground cherry!!!
Chimayó pepper ripening, thanks for the seeds Judy!

How can things grow this much in a week?? Sprouting trays edition

The Chef took very good care of the garden while I was on vacation and we got very, very, very, very lucky to get rain and no hail in our part of town.  I’m poking at my potted plants right now.  I’ll do another post later with the ground plants and raised beds and permanent planters.

Echineacea pallida left out all winter sprouted well (seeds from prairie moon nursery) a while back. I put some of the seedlings in the ground when I left and I’ll plant these last ones soon.
The Chimayó peppers from Judy grew almost all these adult leaves.  When I left each had one small adult leaf.
Hungarian heart tomatoes to replace the one that got killed by the late frost.  The seedlings emerged in the plant window so I put them outside yesterday when I got back.
I repotted this eggplant right before I left. It has grown a lot.  The other one I repotted hasn’t grown as much.
Finally the culinary sage is starting to sprout!  The only one that was up before now has an adult leaf.
These passionvines are the ones where I just smooshed the fruit into a pot and left them out all winter.
Liatris mucronata has a hilarious long leaf. I had another one in a bigger pot but it seems to be dying.
This yucca now has three leaves!  I also planted one in the ground when I left, because it was in the relatively shallow sprouting tray, and it is still alive in the ground.
Planted the other tray of green milkweed (Asclepias virida) before I left and will plant these ones soon.
Volunteer redbud dug from front raised beds. Eventually I’ll put it in the ground here in backyard. I don’t think it grew any taller, so hopefully it’s working on roots.
I now have at least three baby columbines in the sprouting tray and one out in the yard. The package said direct seeding in fall was best, even over stratifying manually, so that’s what I did even for the trays. These babies look a lot like clover, especially when smaller, so I’ve had to be careful.

The big freeze: an outdoor stratification event?

Supposed to be really cold (with highs not above freezing) later this week, so I figured I should get my lately acquired native and wildflower seeds in the ground. These included desert globemallow, blue flax, Liatris mucronata, and mystery Aster sp. (the latter two from Mom, thanks Mom!!). The first three I also put some seeds in the fridge for manual stratification and the first two I saved a bit to try planting in the fall if the spring planting doesn’t take.

I also had a few indoor seedings to catch up on. Judy kindly sent me some Chimayo chile pepper seeds, my Jimmy Nardello peppers never sprouted, my ground cherries only had two sprouts, and the poor Tommy Toe tomatoes died of cat and damping off.

Seeds before I put their 1/4″ dirt on them.