What's Growing in the Garden

In the literature it reads that perhaps a sticky substance on the leaves and an interesting smell may discourage animals from chewing on them. The green seed pods can be eaten by us. Similar to okra it says. Brave or very hungry person to eat the first one. Can be found around you growing in pasture land. Let me know how they taste Chuck. Jim
 
JR Parks said:
In the literature it reads that perhaps a sticky substance on the leaves and an interesting smell may discourage animals from chewing on them. The green seed pods can be eaten by us. Similar to okra it says. Brave or very hungry person to eat the first one. Can be found around you growing in pasture land. Let me know how they taste Chuck. Jim
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Thanks! I will probably pass. I like Okra, but am not too adventurous in the food realm. Chuck
 
JR Parks said:
Devil’s claw (Proboscidea parviflora) Not really an edible plant (some eat the pods like okra) but not me - yet. I love these plants such a design. Grown from seed and I have 3 or so pods so far. When dry they split open as in the third photo. Seeds are dispersed as cattle, sheep pass and hooks of seed pods are snagged on legs and dragged through the pasture. (Sorry can’t seem to get rid of the double pic of seed pods)
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Devil's Claw tubers are an age old and fairly potent pain medicine.
 
Good size to the berries thanks to lots of watering. Got a quart or so tonight. Picked a few of the wild ones around, but most are 3/8" or smaller, so probably won't spend too much time beating the bush for them.

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Got our first harvest from the garden for the year. Cut some lettuce for salad. Nice big chef's salad for dinner last night. More for lunch tomorrow. Also cut the bok choy yesterday - it wasn't very big yet, but was already headed towards bolting. Not sure why as it hasn't been hot. Daytime highs about 70, give or take, and overnight lows in the 50's. Either way, what we got is going into a stir fry tomorrow.

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Here's how the garden is looking so far this year. Looks like the next harvest will be garlic scapes in about a week, along with some more lettuce. Peas just started putting out some flowers, so won't be too long and we'll be eating some snap peas.

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I've been having issues with several things bolting that really shouldn't be. We had an odd, very short heat wave in early spring but since it's been very cool so all I can think is stress from things being excessively dry. It's odd, the atmosphere seems to be unusually dry, I'm having to water far more than usual this year. Even the plants that are still inside under lights.
That and the world oligarchy trying to blot out the sun...
 
It's been extremely dry here as well. Having to do lots of watering - waaaay more than last year.

Once the garlic gets harvested, probably about a month from now, I'll have some space for fall planting. I'll give the bok choy another try, with hope for a fall harvest.
 
Seeing weird things here too. Dry and hot. Tomatoes look good, but peppers are small given all the heat we've had. Broccoli and cauliflower are normal size plants, but are way behind in production. Many of the cabbage are forming multiple misshapen heads.

Many types of stress can cause premature bolting. Just a few days of excessive heat may be enough. Extremely dry air is causing excessive wilting, even with adequate soil moisture. Plants just can't take up enough water to deal with the high rates of transpiration so they just shut down.

I don't know about the bok choy specifically, but many of the Asian vegetables are sensitive to day length. I don't plant any Chinese cabbage until late July or August as they will all bolt if spring planted.
 
Trying something different with the cherries. Since I only have a pint of them, put them in a jar and covered them with honey. Will let them sit on the counter for a few weeks and see how they taste fermented. Hoping they will provide a nice condiment to put on ice cream, much like the cranberries I fermented last fall.

Of course I pitted them first, but less than 1/2 cup of pits so not a lot of cherry pit syrup this year.
 
These are "Bristol Black" in my cultivated patch.

Wild ones this year are a bust, most are pea sized. Haven't had any rain for 6 weeks. My patch has been getting regular watering.
 
Eric Rorabaugh said:
Wish we had them around here. Don't see them like I used to. I do have a lot of wineberries around though.
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USDA maps show we have wine berry throughout IL, but I've never seen it around here. I assume it's similar in flavor, do they get enough size in the wild to make them worth picking a pail or two?
 
trc65 said:
do they get enough size in the wild to make them worth picking a pail or two?
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Oh yeah. When I go picking, I usually get a few gallons. They are good but I think its a totally different flavor. I probably won't pick any this year. Have enough jelly but who knows.
 
You know it's dry when you have to water the weeds before spraying them so they will uptake the herbicide.

We are in what is classified as a severe drought. The weather people are now all excited for a front that some models suggest might, if everything goes right, give us 1/4" to 1/2" of rain this weekend. The chances of rain are listed as 20%......

Just thankful we have a deep well with lots of capacity.
 
Down here it doesn't much matter on the water. Rain is nice but with the heat and fluctuating humidity the plants don't know what to do and if I don't have some shade over them the sun just sears them while I'm watering. Get some water on the leaves and they're goners. I can barely keep my onions alive by watering every day early morning. They are the only thing left and I may have to pull them soon. Everything wilts by 3:00 PM.

It's about time to roundup and till in the spring compost.

Alan
 
Eric Rorabaugh said:
Wish we had them around here. Don't see them like I used to. I do have a lot of wineberries around though.
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trc65 said:
USDA maps show we have wine berry throughout IL, but I've never seen it around here. I assume it's similar in flavor, do they get enough size in the wild to make them worth picking a pail or two?
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I was looking into this recently and I'm thinking that what I believed to be wild red raspberries are actually wineberry. Got side tracked and didn't finish looking into it. We harvest quite a bit from them every year, though last year was scant with the drought and always fighting the wildlife for them but they'd take over the property if I let them.
 
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