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Saturday, June 1, 2013

June Garden-- Yellow Crook Neck Squash is the Star

On the left is a picture from a week ago.  The picture of the right was from yesterday.  They are really grown.  Scroll down the pictures a few and you can see that I picked several small squash for a stir fry. They put so many on that they needed thinned out or they would have just fallen off.  I didn't want to let them go to waste.  This is a very old French variety that is so good.

It's hard to tell, but the leaves on these guys are about a third larger than a dinner plate.  They are huge. When you go out in the morning they have all the blooms wide open.  It is a very intense orange and very showy.


Here are those beautiful blooms.  You can see them small squash attached.  For perspective, that squash is about the size of a small pickle.


 Below are the string beans.  Look below and you can see I picked a double handful for the stir fry.  







A little onion and mushroom added to the squash and string beans and it was really good.


This is a picture from a couple of weeks ago of the suckers from the heirloom tomatoes.  They are anywhere from 8 to 12 inches long and have just been soaking in water since they were clipped.  They sprouted roots and so yesterday I planted them in big cups.

Here they are in the cups.  I will leave them here to further root out for another week or two and then give them away to people for their gardens or containers gardens or whatever.


This is the side garden that doesn't get all the sun the main garden gets, but it is enough that tomatoes still grow.  These in this area are all the volunteers that came up from last year.  I transplanted them here.


This is the main garden and the tomatoes here, that get full sun, grew almost three feet in the last two weeks.  These plants are a little over four feet tall now.  They were started from seed in the house in February.  They got a late start this year because of the cool spring, but they are coming along nicely and have lots of tomatoes set now.

You can see how big the tomatoes are below, but can also see how nice the French Marigolds are doing.  About every other one has a bloom now and everyone has many buds.  In about a week they will be in full bloom.


There are plenty of tomatoes set.  This particular type was one of my favorite last year.  It produces tons of plumb shaped fruit that are about the size of a golf ball.  They have a very firm, think flesh.

In the foreground you can see that I finally got around to replanting some cucumbers.  These are regular cucumbers, and I'm not very happy about it.  They last several years I have been planting a white pickling type that I really like.  They were killed in a cold snap this spring though so I bought these.  My wife likes this type better so I decided to indulge her-- for one season only.






Here is a better picture of the new cucumber plants.  We'll see how they do and how I like them. 

Love the smell of the French Marigolds.  When I weed the garden, I pinch their leaves and the fragrance is great.  When they are in full bloom, they don't need any help; you can smell them around the block.

This is the lemon Thyme that I planted about three years ago.  It comes back every year and I really like it.  It is perfect for soups and stew, on chicken, etc.  Above the Thyme you can see the thick mulch where the garlic was planted.  I actually over mulched and hurt their growth.  I should have taken most of it off in the spring.  Live and learn.

This is peppermint.  I just planted it.  This stuff will take over your garden, so be careful.  What I did, that is supposed to work, is cut the bottom out of a plastic container and plant the mint in it.  This restricts the roots so it can't spread and take over.  We'll see.

This is the onion patch.  I learned recently that if I want them to get big bulbs like I buy, I need to plant the starts 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost.  I planted these much later.  So, I harvested a bunch of pearl onions.  Still good.

This is the neighbor's Lantana poking through to the garlic patch.  Lantana is about the only thing I know I'm allergic to.  When I was a landscaper I planted hundreds of these and the oil off the leaves always gave me a rash.  I avoid them now. 


Here is the pearl onion haul and some garlic I picked yesterday.

I haven't posted anything on the espaliers for a long time, so here are some new pictures.  My other neighbor put up and new fence, so I had to take down the wires, etc. I originally set them up with.  I improvised set them back up again.  The bottom branches are set now and have no support.  The upper branches are still braced.  Eventually I will train all the little branches off of each of the main branches so that they are about eight inches long.  It will kind of look like a weird pin cushion, but will be very productive that way.









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