July Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

In participation of May' Dreams Garden Blogger Bloom Day, here's what is currently blooming.
In the flower gardens:

Daylilies
Impatiens
Pink Lily Rock Garden Flower

Unknown

Weeds & Wildflowers:

Nettle Leaved Bell Flower

Unknown

UnknownAster Family

In the garden:

Peas
Tomatoes
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Arugula
Tatsoi
Broccoli Raab
Onion
Swiss Chard Flowers

Tart Cherries

On Monday, my sister and I drove out to Hicks Orchard just across the border in NY state to pick tart Montmorency cherries. The cherry trees were grafted on semi-dwarf rootstock, but my sister and I are of semi-dwarf stock ourselves. There was wonderful fruit out of reach at the top of the trees, and a fair amount of good fruit within reach. We worked hard for an hour, stretching and reaching to pick ten and a half pounds of cherries. What surprised us was how many picked right off the stem. We drove from Hicks Orchard to Cherry Hill Farm to pick red currants. It only took us ten minutes to fill a couple of quarts.

Here are the fruits of our picking: red currants and Montmorency tart cherries.
The first thing I made with them was a cherry-currant jam. I got the recipe from Seasonal Ontario Food and I liked it because it uses the natural pectin in the currants rather than adding additional powdered pectin. The cooking down to the jelling point took longer for me, about 45 minutes, but it always seems to be slow on my stove. We ended up with (6) 1/2pint jars of cherry-currant jam.
While the jam was cooking down, I experimented with picked cherries from the NY Times. I have no idea how these will taste, but they sure look beautiful. It was quick and easy to make them, hopefully it will be worth it.
The final cherry preparation for the day was a fresh cherry pie. We used the recipe from the Joy of cooking, which only adds sugar, cornstarch, and a dash of almond flavoring. It is already half gone.
Today I had to decide what to do with the remaining cherries and currants. I decided that I have lots of jam already and that a cherry pie in the middle of winter would be a wonderful thing. So the remaining cherries were canned in a 30% sugar syrup. They measured 8 cups before they went in the pan, but when I ladled in to the jars, I only ended up with one quart jar and one 1/2 pint jar. So we will have one cherry pie sometime this winter, and some cherries on ice cream another time. The cherries look beautiful in the jar, though they all push towards the top.The remaining currants made one 1/2 pint jar of jelly which is very good. It is good enough that I'll probably be picking more currants soon to make more for Christmas gifts.

Kale Harvest

Matron over at Down on the Allotment is hosting Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009.
I'm entering this photo of my kale leaves. To join in, take a picture of 6 veggies of similar size and email to her at Ahhmatron@aol.com. She will be judging the photos on July 14th.


They were chosen from this large harvest of kale that I picked last week before I left town for vacation. It was almost 12 oz of kale. I stripped the plants down pretty good leaving only a few smaller inner leaves because I knew I wouldn't be there to attack the cabbage moth caterpillars for the next week. I wanted to give them less surface area to eat on. We'll see if it worked when I return later this week.

Lyman Conservatory Visit

As soon as school was out, I knew the first thing I wanted to do (besides wait for the plumber to come fix our leaky tub). I wanted to visit Webs Yarn in Northampton. I'd heard great things about their deals in the back room from other knitters and had some birthday money that I could spend. When I mentioned to a colleague that I was headed that way, she recommended a visit to the Lyman Conservatory at Smith College. So I made a day of it. I drove down to Webs and found some great deals on yarn. I got enough for two sweaters and three pairs of socks. Then I drove to Smith, found a parking space and walked to the conservatory. I wandered through amazed at the diversity of plant life. I wasn't a careful student of the labels, so in most cases I'm not sure what I photographed, but here is a sampling of the best.

From the outside, the size of the Conservatory was amazing. Inside it was labyrinth-like, with room after room of different growing conditions.
The larger rooms were filled with plants from around the world. I couldn't believe the height of the trees.There was small room filled with ferns with this cute mini-greenhouse in the center.The colors and textures of the foliage were amazing.

In most rooms there were only a few blossoms if that.

My favorite room was the orchid room. It was a lush, humid place. There was a pool in the middle with gold fish. All around the room hung baskets with orchids.

I also enjoyed the semi-arid room with the succulents.
There were these strange plants called Living Stones or Lithops. They almost look like rocks.
There were more flowers in the gardens outside, including these poppies which held their color despite the rain. They also had a rock garden where I found these interesting flowers. I wish I had more time to look around outside, but my stomach was clamoring for lunch so I took a quick walk through and then left to find something to eat. I'll definitely be returning to the Conservatory another time. I hear it's a great place to go mid-winter when you need to see something growing and green.

Asian Spice Experiments

Back in late April I planted black sesame seeds. I started them indoors and then transplanted them into the cold frame in early May. For the longest time they were going now where, just stuck with four leaves or so. When we moved the walls of water off the tomatoes a few week ago, we put them around the sesame seeds. Finally they seem to be growing in height. I'm concerned I won't get a harvest from them because they take 120 days to mature. I may have to cover them to protect from the frost come fall. I think that they are growing so slowly because of all the cool and wet weather we've had. Sorry for the red tinge to the photo, it's the red light inside the wall of water.
In early April I planted some ginger root. However, the first root rotted instead of sprouting. I tried again and recently my plant spouted. Now I have two shoots growing in my pot.

Here's a photo of what mine might look like some day. This was taken at a visit to the Lyman Conservatory at Smith College last month. I'll share more photos from that visit in a future post.

Garden Pests

This week the fearsome garden pests showed up on the scene. I caught my first cucumber beetle taking a snack on one off my cucumber plants. I haven't seen any more since I squished him.

The snails and slugs seem to be everywhere with the wet weather. I've noticed a few missing seedlings, and so I've done my fair share of crunching and tossing them over the hedge.

The other pest to arrive was the cabbage moth caterpillars. I first noticed some damage to my kale this weekend. Up until now, we'd been enjoying pristine kale.
Inspection showed a few caterpillars. I've found a few for the past couple of days, but today as I took a closer look, I noticed the yellow eggs on the edge and undersides of the leaves.
So after one round of inspecting all the leaves for caterpillars I took a second look and rid the leaves of the eggs. I did buy BT this year to try on the caterpillars, but I understand you have to re-apply frequently when it rains and right now that is just about every day. My plan is to do a visual inspection for the next few days. I'm concerned what damage the caterpillars might do when I go away for a vacation, so I'll probably apply the BT before I go. At least I know I've eliminated quite a few eggs now so they won't have to start damaging the leaves before I find the caterpillars.