Update on the first tomatoes to form in my garden.I don't know exactly what they are because this plant started as a volunteer but I'm guessing Japanese Black Trifele because of the fruit morphology and leaves.
My Sungold cherry tomatoes this week.
I think this is the year of the Japanese Black Trifele in my garden. I started this plant from seed.
Spied the first Momotaro. This is one of my favorite hybrid tomato plants. It does 'just okay' in our foggy summer clime but I try to grow it every year anyway.
White hollyhock in my garden. It stands about 8 feet tall.
Stink bug invasions in the news. Seems they are threatening stone fruit crops, even worse toasters. Now that's worrisome. There is even a stink bug trap, sold for $50.
Update on the first tomato, on a volunteer. I'm pretty sure it is a Japanese Black Trifele. Actually, there are two tomatoes now.
Compare with the about a month ago.
First cherry tomatoes, Sungold, developing.
More tomatoes on another volunteer. It is Japanese Black Trifele-ish from the plant morphology. But we'll see.
Have you heard of the exploding melons in China? Apparently, this involved fields and fields of melons. How dangerous are they? Personally, I think this could be a good project for the Mythbusters.
Not a green and yellow basket but the first basket of boysenberries harvested today.
There's a dance I do with the ripening berries. The longer they ripen on the vine, the darker and sweeter they get. These are the tastiest berries, sweet and warm and without much tang. Very yum. But at this stage, the berries don't fare well at all with picking, falling apart as I handle them. Just means they don't get home to my family, and my fingers are smeared purply.
So for home, I pick berries not perfectly ripe but they make the journey in one piece, more or less.
The latest shot of the first tomato. Rain this week, which meant I spent very little time in the garden. Bet those slugs are celebrating. This tomato plant is a volunteer. I'm thinking it is a Japanese Black Trifele from the leaves and the shape of the fruit.
Eleven days ago, it looked like this.
LA Times editorial on the trials and tribulations of the infamous South Central LA community garden which was dismantled a few years ago. Maddeningly, the lot has been left vacant for all these years.
I've noticed in the last month the boysenberry bush has filled in the empty spaces. I've got a mix of flowers and developing berries, which means the season will be a bit more prolonged than in previous years.
Here's what I mean by filling in, taken from about two months ago. Looks a bit bare.
Another angle.
A semi-dwarf lime tree, a Bearss Seedless. What is with the ss?
Not only that, I don't quite understand what semi-dwarf means. Is it 'dwarfish' as opposed to being a a real dwarf? Whatever it is, I'll take it.
Voice of America covers green spaces in New York. This I didn't know: there are about 500 community gardens in the city of New York, under the Operation Green Thumb program, the largest community gardening program in the country.
Here's an idea: this city gives grants to groups in order to seed community gardens.
A great way to encourage self-help: this West Texas food bank opens a community garden, the plots free to anyone or any organization.
Having a heck of a time with slugs this year as noted in a comment over at Wild Suburbia.
Each morning, I get to my garden plot and spend the first few moments doing the dirty deed. I use a garden spade. I look under all pots, containers and as many rocks as I can find.
I think the slugs gravitate to my plot because of the many delicious and delicate things I have planted. The carrots have been decimated each time I've sown them.
I imagine the slugs singing "Bad Romance" while they chomp and chew through my garden at night. Here is my favorite version sung by the very talented University of Oregon a cappella group, On The Rocks.
