We’re set for another hot day today, and I thought I’d be watering the garden this morning. It seems we got more rain during the night, though, and it wasn’t needed.

I did get a decent harvest, instead!

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Check it out! Our very first – and so far, only – Magda squash! I picked a couple of patty pans smaller than before, more to encourage the plants to continue blooming and producing.

I picked a few oddly small corn cobs that turned out to be ripe, but just… oddly small. There are a few green Seychelle beans, a decent amount of the Royal Burgundy bush beans, but it’s the Carminat beans that really surprise me. So few plants, and they are so productive!

There are a few chocolate cherry and Forme de Couer, and in the second photo of the slide show, you’ll see that we are FINALLY having black cherry tomatoes turning colour.

There are still some sugar snap peas being produced, and that bed where I was finally able to identify a volunteer.

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A bit of greenery showed up at the very end of the bed. I thought it might be a weed, but something seemed familiar about it, so I left it. Now that it is bigger and even starting to bloom, I have been able to confirm:

It is an Aunt Molly’s ground cherry.

I am quite surprised to see it. We grew those a couple of years ago, in the spot next to the compost ring, where we now have a new framed bed with Crespo squash and Seychelle beans in it. There is another raised bed between that and the bed this ground cherry showed up in.

One of the things I was testing out with the ground cherries was whether they would easily self sow, as I’d been hearing from some people who have started to view it as a weed because it’s so hard to get rid of. The next year, though, nothing showed up. For one to now show up here is a bit of a mystery. I have no idea how it could have gotten there. It’s not like we had birds eating the ground cherries and potentially pooping the seeds out. The fruit was too thoroughly engulfed in leaves for any birds to get at. No other critters seemed interested in them, either.

I’m not going to complain, though. This is a lovely surprise, and I hope it actually gets a chance to mature and produce fruit, before our season runs out!

The Re-Farmer