Tag: fruit

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New stuff

Read this good book Mom had. “A new garden ethic” by Benjamin Vogt. Definitely recommend it! Arguments for planting native plants and considering all our little friends and neighbors both animals and plants.
Paula, we’re borrowing this.
Seeds from home! Mom collected the common persimmon before I arrived.
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Cubist ideal of melon

That’s what some of my coworkers called this moon and stars watermelon.
Dog for scale with the ideal melon and its very cute spotted friend.
I think they didn’t have enough time to ripen before the vine died (not even frost, just sort of browned and died) as they weren’t as sweet as I was expecting or hoping. But definitely not awful. I will try growing again.
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Last ditch tomato efforts

Two of my new tomato varieties (Amish Paste and Hungarian Heart) have either not flowered (Hungarian Heart) or only fruited twice (Amish Paste, literally TWO fruits on what is supposed to be a very productive variety.) Several websites suggested adding phosphorous as a potential solution for not flowering, so the dog helped me go to Ellison’s feed (she waggled at the store people) and I bought some bone meal and watered it into the soil around each of the three plants of the two varieties. We’ll see if it makes a difference in these last few weeks of the warm season!

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Afternoon harvest and repotting

Buckwheat is blooming.
Peruvian ground cherries are having a few potential fruits!
Paula and I repotted all the winter babies.
More babies.
The Missouri Yellow Watermelon weighs almost 12 lbs!
It’s so ripe that when I started to slice, it cracked open more on its own.
It was very tasty and sweet and crisp.
In the evening, I sliced some peppers for freezing. Green ones are jalapeños from our garden and red ones are serranos from a friend.
I made a small batch of salsa verde. Too little to can, so I froze it.
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Surprises

Missouri Yellow Watermelon split open partially, so we split it the rest of the way to eat the unexposed part. Very nice!
Spider lilies started blooming today. Not native, never see anything on them, but they were already here and they’re weird!
Closeup of spotted euphorbia (Euphorbia maculata).
Paula spotted this exciting find: a hornworm with parasitic pupae on it!!
Dolba hyloeus also known as the pawpaw sphinx. One of the host plants is yaupon holly, which is where Paula found it.
Mom said to save it in a jar so we can see what kind of wasps come out. She recently had a parasitized tobacco hornworm from Judy.