It’s just towering above the others! I figure it’s getting close to 7 ft tall. :-)
There are a couple of others that are getting really tall, too. Like this one.
You can really see the huge seed head developing on this one – and it should get much, much bigger!
But… something’s wrong with another tall one. It’s head is gone?
Nope.
Just fallen over.
It looks like some sort of grub got in there.
This is actually above my head, so I am seeing it better now, in the photo, than I could while looking at the sunflower. The head is still alive, so I’m hoping it’ll survive. It’s the only one that has this.
While going through the squash and harvesting some – the sunburst squash is very prolific! – I spotted an odd looking squash and took a closer look.
This green, bulb shaped squash is a sunburst squash! It looks completely different from all the others on the plant.
I left it, and look forward to seeing how big it gets, and if the shape changes. :-)
The girls and I have been talking about what we want to plant next year, and sunburst squash is definitely staying on our list!
When we moved here, the compost pile we’ve been using was already set up in a metal ring, near the old garden. It’s been pretty full for a while, and well past time to start another one.
Today, I decided to dig out the metal ring in preparation for that.
The first thing I did was use a potato fork to lever under it and loosen it from the soil, and clear away some of the mulch around it or things growing out from under it.
The ring is made of two pieces put together, and this is one of the seams that I cleared.
It’s held together with a combination of electrical wire and barbed wire (without any barbs).
Between my dad and my brothers, I think we ended up with a whole lot of scrap electrical wire available, because I’m finding it used for stuff like this, all over the place!
The barbed wire, however, is a new one. :-D Not that I haven’t seen it all over; just that it’s usually limited to jerry rigging barbed wire fences, so it make sense for them to be there.
It took some fighting with it, but I managed to get the wire unwrapped and back through the hole. Yay! I can move the rings now!
Or… not?
Ah. Of course.
Even though I’d lifted the ring out of the soil earlier, it wasn’t enough to reveal the second set of wires, holding it together.
*sigh*
The electrical wire was easy enough to get loose, at least.
Hmmm.
At this point, I got a pair of pliers.
A pair of pliers that also had wire cutters on them. Which I needed to use, after I unwrapped part of it. The wire ran under the ring itself, with no way to finish unwrapping it from this side.
Finally, it’s clear! I could leave the other seam as is, and lift the whole thing out from the compost pile.
I don’t actually have high hopes for the compost we’ll get out of this. What we added to it should be fine, but when I tried digging into it to turn it, earlier it the summer, I was still finding lots of wood (the summer before we moved here, my sister and her husband had piled pruned branches into it, with plans to burn it, until my brother pointed out that it was too close to an apple tree!). I also found plastic garbage and pieces of fabric rags. What else might be under there, I don’t know!
It’s free!
Plenty of roots were hung up on the wires at the seams.
After talking about it with a daughter, I think we will move this over a tree stump near near where the old wood pile used to be. The stump itself is in the way of things, and having a compost on top of it will encourage it to break down faster. Once the ring is in place, I’ll use it to burn some of the stuff I’ve been clearing out of the edge of the spruce grove. Things like thistles and spirea don’t belong in the wood piles we’re planning to have chipped. Before, I’d put them in the fire pit, but there’s so much of it, plus we’re actually using the fire pit for cooking, now. Some of the saplings I cleared away from around the tree stump are already growing back, so starting off with a burn will ensure those are killed off, too.
I hope I can find a better way to close up the ring than using those wires, though.
No, none of our giant sunflowers are blooming, yet. In fact, we didn’t even plant these ones.
Bird seed and deer feed we’ve been leaving at one end of a flower garden have been sprouting. Much of it is in the grass and gets mowed, but right under the platform feeder, we’re letting them grow.
I was surprised to see a sunflower blooming this morning. They are all really quite small plants! From the seeds I’ve seen in the mixes, I expected them to grow much larger.
Another sunflower will be blooming soon! The oats beside it are from the deer feed.
Then there’s whatever this is. Millet, maybe? I don’t know.
There are some other plants that I find myself looking at and wondering; is that from the bird seed? Or is it a weed? :-D
For now, I’m leaving them. We’ll find out soon enough!
Zucchini and sunburst squash I gathered this morning.
Yesterday, I made a sort of hash, first browning potatoes, cubed small, in butter, then adding leek and frying until softened. I cubed sunburst squash, a green zucchini and a grey squash (the lighter coloured, kinda striped, kind of zucchini; our grocery stores label them as grey squash). Once those were cooked until soft, I added seasonings and maybe half a cup of whipping cream. It turned out awesome!
I’m out of cream, though, so I think I’ll just pan fry them in butter with leek.
A patch of my mother’s flowers that she still constantly asks about is now in full bloom.
These are all about 3 feet tall. Can you make out the two markers hidden in them? That’s where the haskap berries are planted. The flowers are actually cleared away from around them, and they’re still hard to see! :-D
Does anyone know what these are called? I’ve tried using Google Lens on my phone, but the possibilities it offers up have included things like a type of coneflower, and even dandelions!
These pictures were taken yesterday, with the top one taken just as it was starting to rain. By the time I was out again and took the second one, it was bright and sunny again. For all the thunder and winds, we didn’t get much rain at all. More than we have in a while, to be sure, but it’s a good thing I needed to empty the patched rain barrel by the garden, because I still needed to water the squash beds.
I would really like to know what it is about where we live that pushes storm systems away. Watching the weather radar, the storm did not miss us. It passed right over. My mother told me they had a solid downpour at her place, yet we had only a light rainfall.
Microclimates can be strange and perplexing things!
Our first summer here, when we found the grapes among the overgrown spirea, the ripe grapes were barely bigger than the seeds. I was still excited, because… we had grapes! And they made great jelly (this from someone who does NOT like jams and jellies), and still tasted great, straight from the vine.
This year, they look massive in comparison. I am really looking forward to seeing how they are when fully ripe!!
This year, I’ve been allowing various things to come up in between the sidewalk blocks by the sun room, instead of taking the weed trimmer to them, to see what is there.
Quite a lot of flowers have come up through the cracks and crevices between the rain barrel and the clothes line platform. Most of them are either the purple bell shaped flowers we’ve got all over the place this year, or a taller plant with bright orange-yellow flowers.
Then, there is this one.
And it is just one. A single stalk with a single flower! I can’t see any other part of the plant.
I don’t know what this is, other than something from the allium family.
After looking up and confirming when to start harvesting cucamelons, I went ahead and picked the largest ones.
The fruit doesn’t grow larger than 1 or 2 inches, and we read that if they are left too long, they get really seedy. Which makes sense.
Aren’t they adorable?
There was just enough for 2 each, so the girls and I tried them last night, while I left the last two in the little bowl on the table for my husband to try in the morning.
One of them disappeared.
Either we’re going to step on a cucamelon at some point, or a cat ate it. :-D
So… how did they taste?
Like cucumber, really. :-D The skin to flesh ratio is higher, so you do have more of that slightly bitter flavour of the skin, but just enough to make them distinct. They have a nice crunch, too.
From what we read, picking the fruit makes them more productive, and they will produce for a long time. I look forward to having more of them to gather, soon!
I think these are definitely keepers for future gardening. Apparently, in colder climates with shorter growing seasons like ours, you can even dig up the roots in the fall for spring transplanting, and have earlier production.
I’ve just come back from adding a second layer of Plasti Dip to the picnic table legs and rain barrel, before starting on cooking. Then I realized I completely forgot to share a couple of things in my gardening post!
This is one of them; a friend among the cucamelons!
When watering the garden beds, we have been seeing a LOT of little frogs all over – more than I’ve ever seen before – but we do not see these green little tree frogs often.
We need to fill in those openings along the outside of the chimney blocks we’re using as planters. The tree frog will get out easily enough, but I had one of the other frogs end up in one, and it couldn’t get out. I ended up putting a stick in the hole for it to climb.
My mother also had a “gift” for me, yesterday.
A whole bunch of cucumbers! One of the local Hutterite colonies is quite involved with places like were my mother lives. Every year they host a dinner for widows and widowers, they regularly provide entertainment, and so on. Every now and then, they drop off produce in the lobby for anyone who wants! This time, it was a whole bunch of cucumbers. My mother took a lot (I really hope she didn’t take more than her fair share. :-( ) and gave me about half of what she had. I haven’t decided what to do with them, yet, but she plans to do quick pickles.
I’ve haven’t done pickles since I was a kid helping my mother! We might just make cucumber salads with them.
The Re-Farmer 