Spring Garden Notes, May 22, 2015

The buckwheat has started to go to seed!  I'm still impressed with this plant -- now we're going to wait for it to start drying a bit more and we'll try our hand at hand-threshing the seeds.  They are still covered with bees.  I can see the benefit of adding some of these around the edges of a vegetable garden to draw those pollinators.

Bed #4 is starting to look great, well...all except for the bare spot there in the front on the left.  That was where the Swiss Chard was, until the rabbits wiped me out...I caught one in there one morning.  Pretty cheeky of him -- right in front of me! The nerve!  Oh well, I still have the chard in the pots and they both are doing fine.

At the back of this row are the winter squashes -- this one is a butternut squash.

And some zucchini -- the Fordhook Zucchini ...

 ...and the round zucchini.

The squash haus is looking pitiful all along the bottom.  I did spray the leaves with a mixture of baking soda and water that was recommended by a member of one of the garden groups I belong to on Google+, but we still continue to get rain and I'm sure its too much for these plants.

Although --- the squashes are still growing!  This is the Kikuzi that I found last week -- it's grown...

and I've found another one coming along!

The first two Tromboncino squash I found last week dried up and withered away...but there are more.  I hope these make it!

I can't recommend these Table Dainty squash enough ... they are so prolific.  More and more keep showing up!

Here's the ancho peppers -- looking good!

I picked a few more beans yesterday morning.  Here's each of the types I grew this year, top to bottom: Harvester, Empress, Jade and Calima.  I'm probably going to stick with Calima from now on.

My first Red Star tomatoes -- a small heirloom cherry.  

The Sleeping Lady tomatoes are so prolific, too.  These start to ripen from the bottom up!

 The Great White has ripened.  We'll be trying this during the weekend sometime.

We also harvested three of the Spaghetti Squash yesterday.  They are turning yellow.  I wish I knew more about this plant -- I hope we picked these at the right time. I'm going to have to google them and try to learn more.

We've been getting plenty of cucumbers -- the Ashley cucumber has gone over the top of the 8 foot support and has gone under the wood cross bar and is coming out the other side!

The dill plant is about 4 foot tall and has seed heads already. 

Our first peach --- it was delicious, by the way!

Yesterday we picked about half of them and they are sitting out to ripen.  We'll probably pick the other half early next week.  This Rio Grande peach tree is a real producer.

We had to cover the second blackberry patch with netting -- the berries were starting to disappear. This is the Chester thornless blackberry.

Here's one of the sunflowers opening up, at least half way...I think this is a Velvet Queen.

 Not much gardening happening this morning, though...it's raining again.  Sigh....