Plums With No Puns

The last entry probably had too much wordplay for some. (Not for me.)  I'll have some straightforward information here (though the branches in the photo may be crooked).  These are wild plums, and they're almost ripe.  I took the photo because once they are ripe, they fall off the branch easily, and wildlife usually wins the race to see who gets the most plums. Someone surmised that wild fruit must be sweeter, but to be honest it seems that cultivated fruit wins that award. But wild fruit is an interesting taste adventure. These plums are tiny with a thick, tart skin and a juicy, sweet interior. Honestly, there's more pit than fruit, and the appearance won't be featured on a magazine cover.  But I'm proud to say that we have wild plums growing a few steps from our garden.  That's pretty amazing.

Delicious Puns

No, this is not a plum.  It's an Indigo Rose tomato. It could be a plum tomato. Not really.  Plum, or paste tomatoes, are oval and more meaty. This is smaller than a slicer but bigger than a cherry. The color is so amazing.  The almost black color is immediate and the bottom begins green and ripens to a pinkish red.  I guess you could say it's plum delicious. 

Bonus Potatoes

You know how sometimes you forget about those last few potatoes in a bag?  Once they sprout and shrivel, they're inedible. This spring I was heading to the "hot" compost pile and was ready to dump a handful of sprouted potatoes into it, but I changed my mind.  I buried them in a mostly finished compost heap (no room in the garden). I have no idea what variety they are because the package said "yellow potatoes."  Also good to note, they're organic potatoes.  Conventional potatoes are sometimes treated with a chemical the prevents sprouting (which means they won't grow if you plant them). This is a delicious bonus!

Second Crop Planted

Last week I planted some lettuce seeds after harvesting the garlic. I could show you a picture of the dirt, but instead here are a Persian carpet zinnias.  With the nice bit of rain we had, the lettuce seeds have sprouted, so we should have a nice fall crop of lettuce (depending on the weather and critters and ...). Below is one single blossom from a delphinium.  The rain that was so good for the lettuce seeds was not so good for the delphiniums.  Thankfully I got a photo first. August can be an excellent month with clear days and cooler nights.  And beautiful flowers.

The Culprit!

For the monarch butterflies, I decided to plant two varieties of Asclepias or milkweed.  I had two packets of seeds that I cold-treated.  I planted them when they were ready, and eight seedlings emerged.  Those eight turned to six small but healthy plants. Here's what they looked like.  There's a hint in this picture of what is about to happen.

After a few days, I noted that my milkweed plants had disappeared. I took the picture below when the mosquitoes were out in full force, so I didn't stick around to work on the outwitting the auto-focus of my camera.  That blur is a stem.

All that work refrigerating the seeds and weeding and babying the plants--gone to waste!  Well, actually not to waste.  Here's the culprit in the photo below.

Those plants fed a very healthy monarch caterpillar.  I don't know if the plants will recover, but I'm glad I did it.  

The Curl of the Scape

The title sounds like a Gothic novel, but the garlic scapes--that tall, curly stem containing a potential garlic flower--are ready to be trimmed.  The scapes can be used to add garlic flavor to recipes.  In fact, Martha Stewart cans them. However, they are a valuable source of strong-smelling deterent.  I place them around my tomatoes and other plants I want to rescue from the appetites of critters. Sometimes the flowers still bloom and self-seed, which means that I get a patch of mini-garlic that I can use like chives next spring. Who knew garlic could be so amazing?

July Update

Ah, basil.  The leaves are small (this is a close-up), but summer has truly arrived with the first taste of fresh basil.  Everything is slower than usual due to our wet weather, but the beans should be ready soon. (See below--Can mini vegetables be cute?!?). I've had excellent luck with lettuce this year (due to the weather,of course), and the pak choi has been so kind as to not bolt yet. It's so amazing when it's straight from the garden, but I suppose you can say that about any vegetable. This is the first of two posts to make up for my lack of recent posts.