Garlic top beginning to flower.
The wax beans are ready!
Tonight's harvest.
One of the better looking cabbages. Most of the others have holes eaten out of the outer leaves. It's those darn cabbage worms. Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts are more forgiving. The worms can eat some of the leaves, but not enough damage is done to harm the harvest. It's hard to keep up with the Bt spraying when we keep getting these short-lived yet intense rain showers every few days or so, washing off the spray.
Some color from the scarlet runner beans.
A black swallowtail butterfly-to-be, munching on dill.
The first cantaloupe! How do I know when it's ready to pick??
Pea plants and pods drying on the fence.
The deck garden is doing very well. This evening I harvested some parsley, peppermint, thyme and rosemary for drying. Tomorrow I'll pick basil, chamomile and sage.
I hung a few apple maggot fly traps on my apple trees. So far I haven't seen any maggot flies, but I suspect we will get some.
I took two of our stray outdoor kittens to the humane society on Tuesday. We still have four wild kittens outside, and I doubt I will be able to catch them. It's probably too late to socialize them anyway. I caught these two a couple of weeks ago and have been working with them as time permits, trying to get them used to (and liking) people. They should get adopted pretty quickly. As you can see, they are verily cute.
5 comments:
Everything looks great! I just harvested my first canteloupe too. Everyone said to wait until you could "smell canteloupe" when you sniff it - it took longer than I thought, but one day I smelled it! Check out my blog entries, there's a couple in the past week or so devoted to the canteloupe! I'm jealous of those scarlet runner beans, mine just won't germinate in this heat. Love those wax beans, I'm still waiting on my 2nd sowing to flower...
You've got a lot going on in the garden! The deck garden looks gorgeous, too. Great pics. Don't know how you keep up with it all considering your responsibilities. I guess all of us gardeners just need to remember that this harvesting/preserving time is intense . . . but short!
Gorgeous garden! I'm so jealous. We're resigned to the fact that most of our veggies will be late this year, and the tomatoes will be nonexistent. Boo. :)
Wow Jo, everything looks fantastic! Interesting how the difference in latitude can totally change the face of gardening.
Smelling the cantaloupe does work. At the stem end it will smell like cantaloupe. This is assuming you can get in close enough to smell it. I'm finding that mine are so sprawled out that they pluck easily off the vine before I can even get my nose in that close.
Hello Erin -- It's mighty hard on these old overburdened bones to kneel on steel siding and hunker down to smell a cantaloupe hidden by prickly leaves at ground level! But I manage it. I haven't smelled anything yet, but yesterday we picked the first one anyway. It tasted good but the flesh was a tad hard. Still edible though. Thanks!
Hey Mama Pea -- I don't know either! The thing is I don't keep up with it. :) Yes, summer is intense but altogether too short. I can't believe it's August already!
Hello Amy -- Thanks for the complement, but it is undeserved! My garden is anything but gorgeous, and getting less so by the day. Your shaggy cattle are much prettier than my garden. I'd be tempted to cuddle them whenever I went outside!
Hey Leigh -- Thanks! Like I said to Erin, smelling it is easier said than done!
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