Struggling with iMac on Harvest Monday

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Arg, I can’t figure out how to work with photos on my new Mac. I can download them from camera to computer, but still don’t know how to process them. I have iPhoto and Aperture, but can’t find my new pictures in either program. I bought Paintshop Pro, which is what I used on my PC for photo processing, but can’t even seem to download it successfully. Frustrating! So you’re seeing unprocessed photos.

View of our front yard raised vegetable bed. If the only sunshine your yard gets is in the front, grow your vegetables there! That way, everyone can enjoy looking at your garden. Looks like my butternut squash and cucumbers are taking over.

We just got back in town after a week in Portland, OR, so I’m playing catchup in the garden.

The Millionaire eggplant is setting fruit but nothing is ready to harvest yet.

I grow yams, potatoes, and eggplants in containers in the driveway. The pot of blue potatoes is almost ready to harvest.

This is my pumpkin patch. I’m attempting to grow a Rouge Vif d’Tampes and a Queensland Blue pumpkin for each of my three little granddaughters. I’m thinking that six pumpkins in one little bed might be too much. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So far the plants look healthy.

This is the first butternut squash to have set fruit. The silly thing is growing upside down.

A second butternut blossomed a couple of days ago and seems to have set fruit. I’m growing them on a trellis to save space in my tiny garden.

Green bunching onions do nicely in a ceramic bowl. These are coming along.

A Mortgage Lifter tomato.

A Box Car Willie tomato.

A German Johnson tomato.

Amish paste tomatoes. Or maybe these are the Big Russian Paste tomatoes. Oh, boy, they’re turning ripe! But Mortgage Lifter already won the race for first ripe tomato in my yard. These will be second, beating out Early Girl.

My “mystery pumpkins” that sprouted from the compost pile are making lots of male flowers.

And the “mystery pumpkins” are beginning to make fruit. Sure looks like a zucchini. But it’s shorter and fatter than a zuke, not the typical shape. I let one of them get big, and it’s a really dark green but shaped more like a spaghetti squash without the ridges. I had no seeds from spaghetti squash or zucchini in my compost pile, so it had to be a hybridized seed. Those squash are so promiscuous. I think I’ll try eating this one as a zucchini and see how it tastes, but I let the other one get HUGE, thinking it would turn into a pumpkin or winter squash of some kind. Now I’m thinking that it’s just going to be an old zucchini. I’ll eat it anyway.

The nectarines are still hard as rocks, but they look beautiful.

Hiding way up there in the foliage is my first ripe Santa Rosa plum of the season. The possums left me a measly four plums, and since three aren’t ripe yet, they could still get them.

This is one of three August Pride peaches. They have great flavor, but the skin is tough and fuzzy so they need to be peeled. The skin of the Babcock Improved is thinner and those peaches taste like ambrosia, with a hint of jasmine. Incredible flavor. The Babcocks are small this year and most aren’t ripe yet.

Our three little granddaughters harvested all of this produce, plus a lot of snow peas. Their dad took this photo with his iPhone and sent it to me. I managed to download it and find it on the iMac. Rotating it is beyond me still.

On to the harvest for last week ending June 24, 2012

FRUIT

13 oz Lemons, Eureka

10 oz Peaches, August Pride (last of crop)

6 oz Peaches, Babcock Improved

1 oz Strawberries

Subtotal 1 lb 14 oz FRUIT

VEGETABLES

2 oz Green Beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears)

9 oz Peas, Mammoth Snow

3 lbs Squash, Yellow

Subtotal 3 lbs 11 oz VEGETABLES

TOTAL  5 lbs 9 oz PRODUCE plus 5 eggs

If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

 

 

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Harvest Monday June 18, 2012

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I think the only way I can get a Harvest Monday post done on a Monday is to do it in the wee hours, i.e., by staying up late Sunday night. It is now 2 am west coast time.

I just updated my year total for fruits and vegetables. Check the sidebar to the right. My goal for the year is 350 lbs, or half the amount of produce that an average American couple eats. That will be 100 lbs more than I produced in either of the past two years, so I have my work cut out for me.

This is a record year for fruit harvest. I have already exceeded the pounds of fruit harvested in 2010 and 2011 and it’s only June. I still have avocados, peaches, nectarines, lemons, limes and apples to harvest.

My vegetable harvests are finally kicking into a higher gear after the skimpy harvests of green stuff early in the year. My vegetable total to date is 114 lbs. Not too shabby for such a little yard. I have a Gro-Pot of blue potatoes in our driveway that is nearly ready to harvest, and the tomatoes and squash look like they’re going to give me a crop this year. I may finally be getting the hang of this vegetable garden thing. About time. I’ve been gardening since 1962.

Here are the makings of a nice Italian side dish. Saute sliced squash, onion, and garlic in olive oil until squash is browned. Add a splash of vinegar and top with grated Parmesan cheese.

Here is the squash sauté plus some fettucini with Italian sausage and spaghetti cause canned in 2010. Didn’t get enough tomatoes last year to can any sauce, although a froze a few packages. That’s all gone and I’m down to my last two jars of spaghetti sauce.

The entire harvest of apricots, plus nearly the entire harvest of blueberries and a handful of strawberries, made two servings for our breakfast. Those tree ripened apricots were incredibly sweet, best I’ve ever eaten. The chickens contributed the eggs for our scramble, which has green onions from the garden and grated cheese.

Four lbs of bok choy, some chard, our first ripe tomato, and the first Babcock peach of the season filled my harvest trug.

Look again. The first tomato of the season is snuggled next to a Babcock peach in that photo. Mortgage Lifter won the race.  It deserved its own photo, but I was pressed for time. Not sure who is going to come in second as none of the others are close to ripening.

Today’s harvest of snow and sugar snap peas (10 oz) went into a stir fry along with bok choy, chard, and some slices of leftover steak.

Harvest Monday totals for week ending June 17, 2012

FRUIT

1 lb 13 oz Lemon, Meyer

3 oz Lime

3 oz Peach, Babock

Subtotal 2 lbs 3 oz FRUIT

VEGETABLES

4 lbs 10 oz Bok Choy

17 oz Chard

14 oz Peas, Snow and Snap

3 oz Onion, Green Bunching

14 oz Squash, Yellow Straightneck

4 oz Tomato, Mortgage Lifter

Subtotal 6 lbs Vegetables

TOTAL 8 lbs 3 oz PRODUCE plus 5 eggs

If you had a harvest, or to see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Catching up; last week’s Harvest Monday

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I am so far behind, mostly because I have no clue how to process photos with my new iMac (and I work two part-time jobs, and have a community garden plot that is filled with weeds and rocks, plus all my new raised beds at home = OVERLOAD!!!) . Here is an attempt to catch up with what is going on in my garden.

This may be the same possum as the baby possum that i showed earlier, but we did catch two of them. i photographed the raccoon with my other camera, and pics are still in that camera.

Caught another opossum plus a HUGE pregnant raccoon and relocated them. The night critters will devastate my garden if I don’t keep trapping and moving them. I’m growing my garden for me, not them.

This is the only Snow Queen nectarine that has set fruit. 😦

Discovered why my Snow Queen nectarine tree has LOTS of new branches on the bottom and almost no leafing out on the established and stronger upper branches. I left the tag on too long. The string was polyethylene, not cotton string, and didn’t degrade. The string has cut the bark of the growing tree, nearly girdling it. The bark has grown around the plastic string, so I can’t remove it now. The upper part of the tree is getting almost no nourishment. I may have ruined that tree, which is too bad because it had a great shape. Consequently, we are getting only one Snow Queen nectarine this year.

Our first red tomato, Mortgage Lifter. It isn’t red enough to harvest yet, but it’s close.

Mortgage Lifter has won the race for which tomato is going to ripen first. It beat out Early Girl. Others that are full sized but still green are early Girl, Box Car Willie, Amish Paste, Big Russian Paste, and Black Plum. The others are straggling and struggling.

The first eggplant has set fruit. This one is Millionaire.

Ah, this one is in focus. I can’t see the tiny, tiny thumbnails on my iPhoto library well enough to see which one to choose.

My first butternut female flower, not yet open. This has a long way to go before harvest time.

My pumpkin patch. I planted one each Rouge Vif d’Tampes and Queensland Blue for each of my three little granddaughters who live in San Diego. My two big granddaughters are in college in the Seattle area, so I can’t grow Halloween pumpkins for them. 

A typical strawberry harvest, just enough for a bowl of cereal.

The pumpkin that I thought was going to be a New England Pumpkin looks like it is going to be a Kuri. Not a pumpkin at all, but a winter squash. Don’t know yet if it is a Red Kuri or a Green Kuri. I had seeds of both in my compost pile, from whence it sprang. The other mystery “pumpkin” is producing an oblong squash of some kind. Very interesting shape. This is not a pumpkin that I have grown, but a parent of a hybrid methinks. It remains to be seen how big it will get or what it will turn into. I’m thinking that it is a banana squash or maybe a spaghetti squash. Time will tell (I hope.) I would post photos, but I can’t tell what is what in those itsy bitsy thumbnail photos.

One day’s harvest last week of yellow squash, snow peas, lettuce, half my Dutch Redhead radish crop, and some oregano.

I’ve missed the past two Harvest Mondays, but I have had harvests. Small ones, but with a nice variety of veggies and fruits. I would love to upload my processed photos of said harvests, but I can’t figure out how to upload from Aperture, which is where I process the photo as best as I can. Maybe I have to put the photo back into iPhoto to upload it to WordPress. Arg, is there no end to the frustration of learning a new computer system? I can edit my pics in Aperture, but can’t seem to upload them from there. So these are my unadulterated photos from iPhoto. Bear with me.

A day’s harvest of chard. I only harvest as much as i want to cook that day. Otherwise it just goes bad. Oh look, there is a yellow squash hiding in that photo. Didn’t see it on the thumbnail.

I can’t remember when I last did a Harvest Monday post, but here is what I harvested for the week ending June 10. Don’t laugh, my garden is small.

FRUIT

8 oz Apricots (the entire harvest from my tree)

13 oz Avocado

5 oz Lime

1 oz Strawberries

Subtotal Fruit 27 oz

VEGETABLES

1 oz Basil

8 oz Chard, Rainbow

2 oz Lettuce

3 oz Radish, Dutch Redhead

10 oz Snow Peas, Mammoth

10 oz Squash, Yellow Summer

Subtotal 21 oz Vegetabes

TOTAL 3 lbs PRODUCE plus 4 eggs (two out of three hens aren’t laying)

Visit Daphne’s Dandelions to see what others harvested.

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Glass Gem corn

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Glass Gem corn, a flint corn used for decoration, popcorn, or cornmeal, and available next year from Native Seed Search.

I am a member of Native Seed Search, and buy some of my seeds from them. They specialize in seeds saved by various Native American tribes of the Southwest and Mexico. Most of these varieties are adapted to dry desert conditions.

Well, I don’t exactly live in the desert as far as temperature goes (far from it), but it sure is dry here. We get no rainfall from April until November. That means all summer long, my garden is watered with what little water is saved in my rain barrels and from the garden hose. That means our local groundwater, plus water that is imported from Northern California (Sacramento River Delta) and the Colorado River.

Part of our groundwater is now replenished with purified sewage water in a program that I think is called Green Acres. (Or is that a TV show? Brain is overwhelmed with new iMac, new Nikon Coolpix P510 camera, and new software for everything.) So seeds that will grow with little water are a benefit out here in sunny southern California.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about a new corn seed that is being offered by Native Seed Search. As a member, I’m on the priority list to get some next year when it becomes available. Check out this blog post from Native Seed Search for more info.

http://www.nativeseeds.org/index.php/community/blog/entry/story-of-glass-gem-corn

Can you believe how beautiful that corn is? So colorful and translucent. It is a flint corn and as such is no good as corn on the cob. It is for making cornmeal or popcorn, but I suspect it will be used mainly as decorative. Imagine a few cobs of this beauty hanging on your front door in autumn.

This is my first post from my iMac with a photo in it, but it isn’t one of my own. That comes next. It only took me about four tries to get the photo uploaded to my blog. Arg. I think I need a glass of wine before tackling processing and uploading my own photos. Stay tuned….

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Holy cow!

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Last night, we caught the biggest raccoon Ive ever seen. I’ll update you when I get a photo, but I’m still learning my new iMac and am not up to speed on photos yet. New camera, new computer, new software. Give me a bit. I even missed Harvest Monday.

I did manage to get my column written and filed on my new computer, and sent an invoice to the Orange County Conservation Corps for my work there, so it does the two most important things that I need it to do. Work stuff.

Speaking of which, I’m running behind this morning. We’re graduating 102 Corps Members this morning. They have earned their high school diplomas and are ready to venture forth into the wide world beyond. I dearly love those “kids” and am so proud of them for overcoming obstacles and persisting in getting an education. I’m proud to be a tiny part of their transition from gang member on probation (background of many of them) to functioning member of society. More later.

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Still waiting

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

My new computer still isn’t ready, so I continue to make do with my iPad. It is a spectacular June day in southern California. Birds are singing, a gentle breeze is blowing off the ocean, and all is right with my green world.

I just finished watering the front, and am sitting on my comfy chair on the deck in back, admiring my jungle of a garden back here.

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That was the front yard. With luck, a photo of the back will show up below. Or several photos.

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And that’s what the view from the deck looks like. My tomatoes have turned the back beds into a green tangle of growth. My German Johnson has reached a height of six feet already, but has set only one marble- sized tomato. It’s going to be a race to see which ones will ripen first– Early Girls, Box Car Willie, Mortgage Lifter, Super Marzano, or Black Plum. Neither of the oxheart tomatoes have fruited yet, and Paul Robeson is lagging behind as well. The Amish Paste and Big Russian Paste tomatoes are setting like gangbusters.

June is a happy time in the garden. Flowers galore on the squash, pumpkins, tomatoes and cucumbers, but nothing to pick, so I’m not up to my ears in canning jars. I think I ‘ll have another cup of coffee.

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Waiting for Godot

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

I am without a computer today. 😦

I feel lost with “only” my iPad. I bought a new iMac yesterday, and am making a switch from PC to Apple at long last. I started out my computing life in 1983 with an Apple IIe at home and a PC at work. I think that Apple had 64k of memory. How the world has changed. Can’t believe that I’ve been using computers for nearly 30 years.

I also bought a new camera yesterday, a Nikon Coolpix P510. I love my “old” Coolpix P90, but the P510 has more bells and whistles. I figured if I’m learning a new computer and new photo processing program, I might as well make my misery complete by getting a new camera to boot. I took pics of my garden this morning, but can’t process and upload them until the Apple guys finish transferring data from my PC to the new iMac.

Meanwhile, I’m just killing time. Guess I could go work in the garden. I have one more raised bed to build at home before setting in on my sorely neglected community garden plot, but this bed requires that I use my new power tools to saw a board to size. I constructed the other beds with lumber that was already the right size. I’ve never used a power saw before and have been procrastinating on this job. My husband is sitting right here, and I’m sure that he would be happy to saw a board for me, but I want to do this myself. OK, Tool Girl, give me inspiration. if you can do it, I can do it.

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So until I get my new computer up and running, and figure out how to process photos from my new camera, here is an iPad shot of my Giant Szegedi bell pepper plant, which isn’t producing any peppers yet.

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A Green Harvest Monday, June 4, 2012

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

Cabbage looper caterpillars are devastating my garden!

I’m picking off dozens of these darn things a day, but the cabbage moth caterpillars are winning. I’m about to resort to Bt spray, an organic option. I will spray it ONLY on my vegetables. I look first for caterpillars of native butterflies and move them before spraying.

I don’t want to tell you how many of these things I squashed yesterday, all sizes. This is too much. I thought I had gotten them all, but the centers of my lettuce plants were destroyed when I looked at them this morning. This is war!

I have a few bunches of grapes that seem to have set fruit. I have no idea how long it will take until they are ready to eat, since I haven’t grown grapes before. I am loving this new venture in my garden.

My “compost pumpkins” are about to flower. This female flower bud isn’t open yet, but it is pretty obviously a pumpkin. The odds are good that it is a New England pie pumpkin, as a lot of seeds of that variety went into my compost bin. The Amish pie pumpkin is larger at the top than on the bottom, and isn’t as symmetrical as the New England pie pumpkin.

Some green bunching onions have sprouted. I grow them from seed, and try to have several containers of them growing all the time at different stages of growth. These are babies, my future harvest.

I need to redo my container of ginger, show sprouting here. Bloodflower milkweeds have taken over the pot. I want the milkweeds for the monarch butterflies, so I will need to do some transplanting.

This is bloodflower milkweed in bloom, a lovely plant.

Daphne, look away. This is my row of yams, blue potatoes, and eggplants, all in pots. Not nice plants for people with Solanum allergies.

I am in awe of the transformation that my Garden of Infinite Neglect has undergone. I think I’m going to call it my Garden of Amazing Abundance. That sounds better than Bano del Gatos (Bathroom of the Cats). The nice thing about this view is that you can’t see all of the cabbage looper caterpillars.

Butternut squash and Scarlet Runner beans are growing up this trellis.

Ooh, I like this shot. Pretty marigolds, nearly invisible carrot seedlings, baby radishes, cucumbers about to march up their trellis, and in the background, an abundance of Bok Choy.

Oh boy, my first squash of the season! You wouldn’t think anyone would get excited about a summer squash, but I haven’t been able to grow them for the past three years. The crops failed miserably. The plants in the Garden of Amazing Abundance look like they’re doing really well, so I’m hoping that this won’t be my first and last squash. The yellow crooknecks are lagging behind the straightnecks. I don’t grow zucchini because I like the flavor of the yellow and patty pan squash better. Oh rats, I forgot to plant patty pans this year. I need more room!

Couldn’t resist a flower shot. The white ones are fortnight lilies and the pink ones are Mexican Evening Primrose, or Pink Evening Primrose. I identified them incorrectly in a previous post as Mexican Poppies. My bad.

Wow, look at that harvest of bok choy and kale. I can’t believe I grew all this. We ate the Lacinato kale as Kale Crisps. I’ll post the recipe and a photo on Thursday. I froze the bok choy, over 3 lbs of it. This is Joi Choy hybrid. I usually grow the dwarf bok choy, but I’m loving the productivity of these full sized plants. I just harvest the outer leaves and let the inner ones keep growing. I think I get more harvest that way, and all of the leaves are at the perfect size. None too small and none too big. I’m hoping to stretch this harvest on all month before the heat of July arrives.

See yesterday’s post for more pictures of the harvest, like my oranges. Now on to the week’s harvest in weight.

FRUIT

2 lbs 14 oz Oranges, Navel (last of this year’s harvest)

6 oz Peaches, Florida Prince (last of harvest, possums got the rest)

2 oz strawberries (ate others without weighing them)

Subtotal 3 lbs 6 oz FRUIT

VEGETABLES

5 lbs 4 oz Bok Choy (Joi Choi, Pak Choy)

1 oz Green Onions

0.5 oz Ginger

6 oz Kale, Lacinato

6 oz Kale, Scotch Blue Curled

5 oz Lettuce, Red Oakleaf (or maybe it’s Red Sails, can’t remember)

2 oz Snow Peas (Mammoth Melting Sugar)

Subtotal 6 lbs 8.5 VEGETABLES

TOTAL 9 lbs 14.5 oz PRODUCE plus 3 EGGS

Oh, dear, look at that tiny egg harvest. One chicken is four years old and seems to have stopped laying, one is broody and not laying, and the last one is three years old and carrying the load as best as she can.

To see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne at Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Kitchen Cupboard Thursday on Sunday June 3, 2012

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

As usual, I’m running behind. I didn’t make a post for Kitchen Cupboard Thursday, where people visit Robin at The Gardener of Eden to report how they used their harvests and stored produce. Hey, better late than never.

Bok Choy went into some Ramen noodles along with some leftover grilled Hungarian sausage. YUM!

Lettuce from my garden and spinach from the grocery store went into a salad with hot vinegar-bacon dressing, topped with a sliced boiled egg from our hens.

This is the last of our navel oranges for this year. We have lots of baby oranges on the tree, so we should start harvesting again in early January. The green onions and basil went into scrambled eggs from our own hens, along with an avocado from our tree.

This avocado is just a tad past prime. They don’t ripen on the tree, so I pick them, let them sit in a bowl on the counter, and have to judge the perfect time to eat them. That would have been two days earlier. This one went into scrambled eggs. I have about nine avocados left on the tree from this year’s crop, but I can find only one avocado that has set for next year. This was a lousy year for apple-set too, at least in my garden.

Sage leaves went into sage-buttered corn on the cob.

Chop 1-2 sage leaves per ear of corn. Mix with 1-2 T butter per ear, add salt (I used Himalayan pink salt), and spread on ears of corn. Wrap in foil and grill for about 10 minutes, turning once. Whoops, we ate all of the corn before photographing the finished product. Sorry. It was delicious!

I loved this bok choy and water chestnut dish, but my husband didn’t. The ginger and garlic are from my garden too.

Boy Choy and Water Chestnuts with ginger and garlic (serves 2)

6 oz bok choy, washed and sliced

1 -6 oz can water chestnuts, rinsed and drained

1 T grated fresh ginger

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp sesame oil

1 T olive oil

2 T mirin (Japanese rice wine that is sweetened)

Saute the bok choy and garlic in the two oils until wilted. Add the ginger and water chestnuts and saute briefly. Add mirin, stir thoroughly, and serve hot.

Miss Hillary, on the right, is being broody. She has quite laying eggs and wants to do nothing but incubate. Even if there are no eggs under her. Chicken Little, on the left, is “working.” Right now, she is my only hen that is laying. Henrietta is four years old and isn’t laying much any more. I need Miss Hillary, my youngest hen, back in production.

This fierce creature is just a baby possum. It makes #10 caught and relocated this year. I neglected to set my trap for a few weeks, and possums got all the rest of my peach crop, plus half of my plum crop. I only had four plums on the tree, and possums knocked two of them off, bit into them, and left them on the ground because they aren’t ripe yet. Darn possums.

I took a bunch of photos of my garden today, but if I post them now I won’t have anything to post tomorrow for Harvest Monday. As it is, I already posted pictures of my harvested produce. Oh well. Go visit Robin to see what others used from their garden this week.

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Harvest Monday on Memorial Day 2012

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Lou Murray, Ph.D.

If I hurry, I can still get my post done before the end of Monday. We just returned from a fabulous weekend trip, spending Saturday night with friends in Santa Clarita, and Sunday night at the Hyatt Regency in Indian Wells (Palm Springs area) with our son , daughter-in-law, and four young grandchildren. Yesterday and today were  spent by the pool in decadent splendor, watching the kids splash and swim in the pool while I drank mimosas brought by the cabana boy. Sheer luxury.

We came home to find that our Plymouth Rock hen, Miss Hillary, has definitely gone broody on us. She was sitting on a clutch of eggs when we left. I removed the eggs, but she was still sitting on newly laid ones when we got back. Fortunately, she is a good-tempered hen and doesn’t mind when I gather eggs from under her.

I am now faced with a dilemma. Do I try to “cure” her of being broody by isolating her away from her nest box or dunking her in cool water (two suggested cures), or do I try to trick her into thinking that she has hatched chicks by letting her set on a couple of dummy eggs for 21 days and then putting a couple of newly hatched chicks under her?

I’m really not set up for taking care of baby chicks because we don’t have a brooding lamp, but Miss Hillary may be able to do that job for me. We have no rooster, so her eggs aren’t fertile, but our local feed store sells day old chicks. I’m seriously thinking of trying to use Miss Hillary as a surrogate mom, which would fulfill her maternal instincts and give me a couple of new hens for next year when my current flock of three is older.They’ll be three and four years old next summer, and some new hens would keep us in eggs.

Hey, you folks out there with chickens, what do you think? How long will my current hens lay eggs? What do I need to know to be able to allow Miss Hillary to attempt to raise some chicks? I know our granddaughters would love seeing baby chicks and watching them grow up. So would I!

Once again, I ate all of my harvests before taking any photos, so you’re stuck with looking at pictures of what is growing in the yard.

This is the view to the west from our deck in back. How small is our yard? Well, except for the nectarine tree at the lower left, these trees are on the OTHER side of our neighbor’s yard.

This is the sitting area on our deck, where I like to contemplate my garden with a glass of wine late in the day.

This row of snow peas is by the deck, and will soon block my view of the garden from the deck.

These are the first snow peas from the second planting of peas on this fence so far this year. When this second planting of peas is done, I’ll plant pole beans here.

So far, only two Granny Smith apples have set fruit despite the fact that the tree had a record number of blossoms on it. This may look like a big apple, but it is only the size of the end of my thumb at this point.

Of all of the flowers on all of the fruit trees in my yard, this one excites me the most. It is the first and ONLY flower ever on my 20th Century Asian Pear tree since I planted it four years ago. I don’t know if this one flower will be self fertile or if it needed a pollinator. My Shenseiki Asian Pear also had one and only one flower this year, but an insect chewed on it before it opened, so I have no hope of it producing a pear or being able to pollinate this flower. I should know in a couple of weeks whether or not this flower got fertilized.

Maybe I’ll remember to take photos of my harvests next week. I am expecting my first yellow summer squash in next week’s harvest, plus a prodigious amount of bok choy. Meanwhile, here is the harvest ending Sunday, May 26, 2012.

FRUITS

3 oz Lemon, Eureka

10 oz Limes

2 oz Strawberries

Subtotal 15 oz

VEGETABLES

11 oz. Artichokes

13 oz Beets, Chioggia

6 oz Bok Choy

1 oz Green Onion

Subtotal 1 lb 15 oz (31 oz) Vegetables

TOTAL 2 lbs 14 oz Produce plus 12 eggs

If you had a harvest, or to see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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