Mostly Pictures

It's been another busy week. I took a vacation week last week and spent this week at work catching up. Sometimes taking a vacation isn't worth it. I've neglected the garden even more than usual this week and it's a mess.

But here's an update anyway. Mostly just pictures.

The sugar sorghum I'm trying has put out seed heads. I'll cut it down in a few weeks and see if it's actually sweet.





I checked my garden this morning and set up some irrigation. My two remaining walking stick cabbage plants looked pretty good. They both had several large leaves at least 18" long and probably closer to 2 feet long. This afternoon, one of them has been eaten by something.





The vine that came up by itself in a flower bed is still unidentified. I thought it looked like a pumpkin but now it's got fruit and I don't know what it is. It's nothing I've ever grown before.





The fuji apple I cut down due to fire blight is putting out new suckers. I'm cautiously optimistic.





Something's been eating blackberries. I think it's a groundhog. At least he left me two.





The upside down tomato experiment on my porch is a limited success. It never got as big as I had hoped but it only gets a few hours of sun a day. It does have a red tomato.




The loofa sponge gourds are getting big. I'm not sure when to harvest or even what to do with them once I do harvest but this was my wife's idea so I'm off the hook. I also don't know how to spell "luffa" so I'll be trying out all possible spellings hoping I get one right.




And finally some of the grapes are almost ready. Several bunches are just raisins. I don't know why.

June Drop, Fire Blight, Squatters

Last year, all my peaches fell off the tree in early June. This year, the peaches on the tree look bigger and healthier than they looked last year and I hoped I was in the clear. Yesterday, it started. June Drop. When peach trees have too many fruit, they do drop some fruit this time of year, I'm hoping that's all this is but after last year, I'm expecting the worst. No body knows exactly what causes it but competition for nutrients and water seems to have something to do with it. We've had plenty of rain and I fertilized earlier this week.

June Drop

I've had to cut two branches out of one pear tree. It looks like fire blight to me. Fire blight is a bacterial infection that works its way down the branch to the tree. There is no cure. The only thing to do is cut out branches as they start to show symptoms. You cut several inches below the obvious infection and hopefully it hasn't moved down past where you cut the branch off. A few days ago I was hoping that the 5 or 6 pears on the tree survived until they were ripe. Now I'm hoping the tree survives.

I can spray some preventative chemicals next year in early spring but it's too late to do anything now and it can spread into the rest of the fruit trees.

fire blight

Something's moved into my grapes. I don't know what it is yet. My wife thinks it's a Mocking bird.

squatters