What's Growing in the Garden

[trc65]

What do they taste like? Always the most important with fruit.

They have great flavor. Not as good as wild ones, but there is always a tradeoff when breeding plants. The increased productivity and disease tolerance/resistance is worth it.

 

[djg]

Tried a few experiments this year. In a bottomless barrel I mixed 2:1 wood much/compost. I planted a sweet potato plant in it. My thought was straw potatoes like my Dad use to do. Thought this mixture would hold moisture better and still be loamy enough for the potatoes to grow.


Did well until the deer found it (haven't put the electric fence yet). So I put a tomato cage around it. Guess I'll pile the vines up inside as they grow.

I'm also growing my squash plants up on a panel arch. I'll probably have to tie up the squash as they develop. The though was it would be easier to spray for those @#&*# gray beetles on the underside of the leaves and the stalks if they are up off the ground.


This is about the yield of my plum tree. Only a inch in diameter. The tree was a volunteer from a friend of a friend and variety unknown. Never pruned and is overgrown. Next year. These and any others I get, I cook down and make some kind of sauce so I don't waste them.

 

[trc65]

My sweet cherry tree as well as my peach trees got frozen out this year, despite wrapping the trees. Blooms after, but no fruit.

Between the freezes, storms and birds, sour cherry is only going to produce a gallon or two. Sweet cherry endured the same, but birds trashed all of them before they even started to color. Unbelievably, my peach survived all that with no help from me and is loaded with fruit.

 

[sprucegum]

My thornless and wild black berries are pinking up. I'm going to have a ton of thornless again. Thawed some of last years out and cooked them down. Normally I concentrate the juice down on the stove so I don't have to use a lot of sugar to thicken. Normally it scorches a little before I get to the point I wanted to be at. This year I used a double boiler on the juice from 2 gallon of berries and got down to half the volume of what liquid I started with. Some scum stuck to the sides but the juice is good. Batch of syrup/jelly (what ever happens) pending.

My wild berries are another story. When I first built here, the 100' or so row produce gallons of big berries over the years. One year, 12-16 gallons. They have blooms this year, but the berries will be small like last few years. Only less than a quarter of the plants that I once had and they got choked out by the weeds. Currently I'm trying to re-establish them by mowing a strip, spraying and transplanting some new plant I dug up elsewhere. I like wild much better than thornless.

The wild blackberries here tend to show up after logging, about 4 years after logging is usually the best. I usually harvest a few trees every year for various reasons. If I take several trees in an area it will let in sunlight and the berries will happen. Since they rippen over a pretty long period a few hundred sq feet picked every 3 or 4 days will produce more berries than we can use.

 

[DLJeffs]

The wild blackberries here tend to show up after logging, about 4 years after logging is usually the best. I usually harvest a few trees every year for various reasons. If I take several trees in an area it will let in sunlight and the berries will happen. Since they rippen over a pretty long period a few hundred sq feet picked every 3 or 4 days will produce more berries than we can use.

That's the same with huckleberries out here. The best places are up in the Cascades where the sun gets through the trees. Road cuts are good places to search. Berry pickers are only slightly less secretive than the mushroom hunters when it comes to good places.