7-22-2011 progress

I have canned 5 quarts of green beans and have another batch awaiting me to break and can, happy happy.

The first picture is of both the African and Italian beans.  You can see that the Africans, on the left, are filling out nicely.

The Italians are a bit surprising,.  They have a really pretty flower somewhat like a pea.  I will try to remember to get a pic of one if there are any more of them.  What is most surprising is the growth habit of the bean pods, (the second picture) I have never seen anything like it.  They stick almost straight up in the air and are long and very thin at this point.  It is truly different from what I am accustomed to seeing.  The only info I have is these beans are quite small for a dried bean, but that they can be eaten as young pods like green beans or can be used as soup beans once the seeds are developed and dried.  Oh, and that they ripen over a long period of time so if you want to use them as snap beans, you would have to be picking them every day, but....don't we do that anyhow with our usual varieties?  I plan to let them fill out the pods so that I can have more seed for next year. 

Here is the new zucchini plant.  Hope it will give me at least a few more zuchs before the plant succombs to frost.

These are the two Indian (Africa) that I have allowed to mature.  It looks like I should have let more of them grow.  I didn't know the mature size of them so decided not to let too many grow in case they were huge.  At this point they look like they won't be very large at all.

Here are two of my 6 or more ( I forget how many there are lol) buttercup squashes that are all at this size now.  Beautiful.

Butternut squash, at last count I found 5 like this one and a few smaller ones, I am culling the new ones that try to grow so that the remaining ones will mature to a nice size.

When I planted the squashes I  thought I would be happy with around 12 nice sized mature ones at the end of the season.  It looks like I will get very close to that number, probably a few more.  That would average 2+ nice fruits for each plant.  Yes, squash is technically a fruit.


The rest of the garden is doing very well, I have gotten over 5 pounds of potatoes by just reaching under the straw and picking them when I need a few for supper.  :) 

The tomatoes are growing rapidly now.  I bought two 50 foot soaker hoses and this is keeping everything green and growing in this too hot and humid weather we are having.  There are no red ones yet.

I found this nasty worm on a tomato plant.  It is a tomato horn worm that has been parasitized by a species of wasp.  This is a very good thing to find.  Poor worm :(  It means that these little cocoons will develop into more parasitic wasps and kill more horn worms.  This is the balance of nature at work.  I have not seen any horn worm damage on the tomato plants so either I am not looking under enough leaves lol or there isn't much to speak of.  By the way, the "horn" on these worms does not sting, they are quite docile, happy to have a tomato plant to munch on.

Zucchini and squash borers

7-10-11
I'm sorry for the poor quality of this image, it was taken at dusk.  At least you can see the way the leaves are drooping and turning yellow.  I have never had this problem before so had to do some online research.  The best thing for me to do, based on the info I found, is destroy the plant, seek and destroy all the grubs in the plant and in the soil around it and replant.  It's not too late to get another one grown and producing since the bug that laid the eggs has ended it's life cycle by now.  So far there is no evidence of the pest being on any of my other squash plants.

 7-14-11
Update, I destroyed the plant, found a couple of grubs in the plant, none in the soil so replanted more zucchini seeds.

Here is the squash growing on the trellis (and the place where the zucchini was) as of 7-14-11.  The trellis is almost invisible beneath all those plants :)  I am still concerned about the weight of the fruit as it grows.....

There are for sure two pumpkins on the African pumpkin vine, you can see one vine from it inching it's way towards me,  lol.  There are also a possible two more on that vine, I have pinched off the growing tip, there are enough there for this year.  The vine is huge, it got a later start than the squashes but took off once the weather was steadily warm.   I just looked it up, it is from Bangalor India.  The pumpkin is the yellow one in the picture below.  There are 3 more on the vines that have been recently pollinated.  This is going to be a surprise because I do not know how big they will be at maturity.  

In this picture I captured 4 fruits, one pumpkin and 3 buttercup squash.  The production is exceeding my expectations, at this point I am happy about it all.

Here is my largest butternut squash.  It is about 8" long  There are at least 8 more that I found over 3" long, and even more that have just been pollinated. There promises to be bounty for me to keep and share as well.  :)

These are my standard bush beans I grow for canning whenever/wherever it is that I have a garden.  If you look closely enough you can see beans here as well as more flowers, the leaves you see at the bottom of the pic is my sweet annie growing next to them.


The italian beans are doing surprisingly well given their dark place between the potatoes and the african beans.  I will probably have enough beans from them to plant a nice plot of them next year.  Sorry, no pic of it this time.

The African beans are filling out their pods, there will be a good harvest from them, I believe there will be enough to plant at least 10 feet next year, maybe even 20.  That will give me enough to eat some and save seed for the future.  

And here is my tomato jungle :))

There are no red ones yet but a boat load of green ones and even more blossoms.

June 28 pictures

 all these pics were taken on june 28.  This is being written on July 6.

In this pic the beans had not flowered yet but today they have buds all over them.  The surprise climbers are doing great and the smaller Italian ones are doing well but not as well as the others, I am afraid they will suffer in their spot between the surprise climbers and the potatoes, they won't get a lot of sun there, hopefully they will get enough to make a good batch of seeds for next year.  

Yesterday I picked a small green tomato and two 3" zucchini, fried them and oh!!! yummmm!!! What a treat.  I usually designate one tomato plant to be the one that never, or rarely gets a red one, I eat them all green as they grow, but since I have 8 plants and only 2 are cherries, I will just pick them at random from all the vines.

 Here are the pole beans, they have now reached and gone beyond the top pole which is approximately 7' high.  On the closest pole I have a morning glory vine growing.  If you click on the pic to view it larger you will see it winding it's self around the pole.  It is now up to the top pole.  Just one will be plenty I think lol

 My trellised squash are going to overtake everything close to them LOL.  I love it!  I have started pinching off the growing tips to keep them in bounds, there are enough little squash on the vines to give me a respectable crop.  I am still skeptical about whether or not the trellis will hold all the squash and pumpkins that will be hanging around it.  Time will tell :)  In the foreground you can see a couple of my herbs, sweet annie and borage, I also have sage, stevia, and horehound.

 Bad angle, sorry.  The tomatoes are doing very well,  There are flowers everywhere and lots of little green ones just started.  Lovely :)  Can't wait for the first cherry tomatoes to ripen.

My Huuuuge zucchini plant, I hope it will be more than just giant leaves, this baby is more than 4 feet wide.  There are at least half a dozen little squashes on it now and there are more than that many flowers where there will be more little squashes :)  Fantastic!  I looove zucchini, I doubt there will be much left for me to dehydrate for winter.  I hope I am wrong :)