I had a couple of surprised while going my rounds this morning. The first were these…
Two more volunteer potatoes have popped up!
The one in the straw would be from the All Blue potatoes we planted there last year. The one by the log would be from the Bridget we planted last year.
I also found some ladies!
Plant ladies, that is.
I don’t know why Instagram doesn’t sort the pictures in the order I upload them. I also don’t know why some of the files end up corrupted. They look fine when I upload them, but after I hit publish, I’ll find one with issues. Ah, well.
In the above slideshow are:
Caveman’s Club gourd: There have been male flowers for a while, so if these female flower buds survive long enough to bloom, there should be male flowers around to pollinate them.
Montana Morado corn silk: Finally! The tassels have been up and many already dropping pollen, but this is the first – and, so far, only – corn silk that has shown up. I was really starting to wonder. The Tom Thumb popcorn has tassels, too, but also had silk show up not long after. With the purple corn, there’s a much larger gap in time between them!
Goldy Zucchini: This one little yellow zucchini has been here for a few days now. It doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger, but the other flower buds seem to be at the same stage. This is the only surviving yellow zucchini plant, and the slugs are just all over it, so it’s not thriving. There had been a second one that germinated in the same hill and was starting to develop its true leaves, but there’s very little left of it anymore. I don’t know why the slugs like this one plant so much!
Honeyboat Delicata: Finding a female flower in full bloom was a very nice surprise! Unfortunately, there are zero male flowers on any of the other Honeyboat Delicata. I ended up taking a male flower from another squash to pollinate it by hand. That should be good enough for the fruit to actually develop, but we won’t be able to save seeds from it, as they would be a hybrid. Mind you, maybe we want a Delicata/hulless pumpkin hybrid. 😄
It looks like we may actually get winter squash this year. Because they are all planted near each other, any squash we get will be cross pollinated. I’m hoping we will at least be able to have mature squash to taste, and see which ones we like the most. After that, we can focus on just growing one or two varieties we like, in such a way that we can save seed.
And finally, one more nice little surprise.
Our first beans are starting to form.
These are volunteers in the compost heap!
I have no idea what kind they are. There are no beans that we planted last year that could have ended up with viable seeds in the compost pile. Also, no beans that we planted last year had green beans with pink flowers.
I am very curious about what we will get out of these, and will probably leave at least one plant unharvested, so we can see what the dry seed looks like.
Oh, and one last little update. We had the Irish Cobbler and Red Thumb baby potatoes with supper last night, and both were delicious. I just love how the Red Thumb potatoes are pink, all the way through! We’ll be leaving the rest to harvest in the fall, but at least we know they are good, and worth growing again.
We’re past the middle of July and not having the sort of harvests we expected, had we been able to plant everything we intended to, but we will have something, at least. Looking back at garden pictures for this time last year, I can at least say we’re not “behind”. It just feels like we’re behind, because I’m seeing so many people in my Zone 3 gardening groups, posting pictures of their harvests and gardens. There are very few people in those groups that are as far north as we are, it seems.
We are definitely having good progress, though. It’s been a good growing year so far, with plenty of heat, sunshine and rain – but not too much of any of those! It’s been juuuust right.
For now! 😄
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 