New England August 2014

Update on this little fellow that I posted in the thread
Any Strange and Wonderful Visitors? Photos please!

Don't worry, QB, it hasn't moved one iota except to turn it's head and look at it's back, and it's quite emaciated now.  An entomologist is coming to look at it this week. Apparently it's a bigger deal than I thought.  She also wants it but I said no, I'm keeping it.

CC

Aww, CC give it to her. You'll have another one soon since you now have more little wasps in the neighborhood.

Nah, this is only the 2nd tomato worm I've ever had in my yard and I've been growing tomatoes for a lot of years. 
  knock wood

She can take pics.

What, pray tell, shall you do with the corpse?

CapeCoddess wrote:Nah, this is only the 2nd tomato worm I've ever had in my yard and I've been growing tomatoes for a lot of years. 
  knock wood

She can take pics.

CC, you are indeed a fortunate woman to have only had two (ever).  I was "blessed" with many hornworms last year.  This year I was blessed by my introduction to BT.

camprn wrote:What, pray tell, shall you do with the corpse?

+1

Well, like I said, I've had a ton of hornworms in the past, but none this year, which is weird.

But I've never had one with parasitic wasp eggs on it. I've always heard if you have one with parasitic wasp eggs, to keep it somewhere nearby because when they hatch they'll kill off your hornworms. The wasp actually lays eggs in the caterpillar - yuck.

yolos wrote:

camprn wrote:What, pray tell, shall you do with the corpse?

+1

At the rate it's shrinking up there may not be a corpse in the end.  If there is, my guess is it'll fall to the ground and get lost and mowed over in the grass. 

Gruesome...
 

It hurts my heart to watch this process, but I'll keep posting pics so we can see what happens next.  I'd like to see the little wasps emerge.

CC

I was hoping to collect some elderberries today but sadly they were not quite ready. I did manage to find some wild blackberries and came home with 2.5 pounds of those. Hopefully the elderberries will be ready for the weekend.

  score!

That's very nice. It takes a long time to get multiple pounds of them over here, where they get no water over the summer and most are either small, shriveled, or both. Only the lucky ones in the shade get bigger than thimbleberries.

Marc and Camp,

I have my two blackberry bushes (one died) on my drip irrigation system and give them supplemental watering from time to time.  I'm hopeful that I'll have a decent crop next year.

This wild patch was a lucky find. It is a shaded spot at midday and a nearby water source made for mostly plump berries.

I cannot remember if this was posted here.
http://chickenscratchny.com/2014/07/last-minute-garden-crops.html

Over the past few days I have sown Japanese turnip, purple top turnip, rapini and bok choy. The zucchini I sowed the first week of July is a most ready for picking and no SVB troubles so far and unlikely to e an issue. The potato plants have started falling over, the aubergine is gaining girth and the tomatoes are starting to ripen two at a time.

Guess I should run the canning jars through the dishwasher this weekend.

Yup, I've been growing and harvesting mild radishes daily since it's been so cool here.
This mornings quickie harvest before today's storm can damage them: 

I'll leave these to fend for themselves - tomatoes, lettuce, chard:

Baby Kentucky Wonder pole beans, all the big ones were harvested last night:

I'm harvesting curly cukes at the rate of 1/day this week  , but higher up they seem to be straightening out.  This is a Burpee Burpless, PM resistant:
Just need some warm weather to keep them developing ...and it sure ain't today! Only 65 right now.

SFG is still transitioning from cupboard boxes to all wood - there are only 2 cupboards left to take down.  The 3 newer boxes on the right are planted for fall:

The front new box has bush beans, peas, mustard spinach, beets, radishes and squash.  The new box behind it to the left has scallions, peas, romaine, arugula, Buttercrunch, 2 types of kale & collards. The older box to the right with the trellised cukes & peppers has been recently planted with chinese cabbage, 2 types of spinach & peas:

Notice how the pole beans & cukes have stopped growing?  As have the tomatoes.  The only summer plants that seems to get bigger are the squash leaves.

This is the garlic bed. All the greens are crankin' now that the garlic is gone.  This Simpson Elite lettuce just keeps on giving and there are newly planted Marvel of the Four Seasons seeds just sprouting. The 3 transplanted tomatoes bungied to the screen are not thrilled with this weather. The one on the right is the hornworm host:

Meanwhile the perennial gardens under wood chips keep on truckin' and the grass stays mostly brown:
Hope they'll stand up to possible 60mph gust today...  

Once again I've done a tour without meaning to.  Can you tell I'm bored at work?
  
CC

Shoot...almost forgot my peach:
NHG, you posted your blushing peach a while ago.  See how far behind I am now from the rest of NE?  Did you eat yours? How were they?

Very nice, all! Thank you for the photos.

I'm not doing fall plantings this year. Actually have never done them. But first I want to get my beds and soil all straightened out. Most everything continues to produce, altho I could pull the pea plants, those are almost entirely done. But I read somewhere to keep them in the soil and they keep nourishing the soil. Unless I read that wrong.

This fall I have a ton of weeding, carboard placing, and chip piling to do, and mulching with seaweed, leaves, etc. I have a few new sheet mulching beds I need to make, put 2nd stories on several of the boxes, and mainly just straighten out, organize, do something with strawberry runners to get them under control. I can't even get to my spinach bed, it's so overgrown with the strawberries. I did plant oats in the finished garlic and pepper beds, to use as a green mulch. So this fall I'm focusing on organizing and cleaning it all up. Mark my words, next summer, I'm pulling weeds when they're little! No more overrun! (These weeds are mainly between beds, or creeping just inside.) But the strawberry runners continue to taunt me.

Nice peach, CC! I had about 12 blossoms on my peach tree, but only ended up with 2 small peaches. The bigger one fell off when we touched it, so we tried that, but it wasn't that good, so I'm thinking the tree needs another year to get strong before it will produce good peaches. The other peach tree didn't blossom, but I hope it's getting stronger.

Yesterday I picked 2 zucchinis, 4 yellow squash, and 5 beautiful cucumbers! The kitchen island is now covered, the freezer already has enough shredded squash/zuke for many zucchini breads.

2 small watermelons are looking really good out there (thank you QB for showing that you can grow them up here), and the butternut squash is really looking good. It does turn yellow first on its way to tan. Interestingly, they all turned tan at once. It threw me off because I didn't realize even the small ones would tan, I thought they'd get big and tan, but there are all sizes of butternuts out there, all turning tan. And the pie pumpkins are also looking really good. They're continuing to orange. It must be a sign of end of summer that the winter squashes are turning colors. How did they know?

What's the watermelon growing secret???

CC, I love your perennial flower garden.   

CapeCoddess wrote:What's the watermelon growing secret???

Well, it might start with the variety for our climate - I think these are Sugar Baby - they don't get real big. And then, the vines just love a ton of compost/manure. This is the first year I've been able to get them to grow. I indoor seeded all the vines and transplanted.

NHGardener wrote:

CapeCoddess wrote:What's the watermelon growing secret???

Well, it might start with the variety for our climate - I think these are Sugar Baby - they don't get real big. And then, the vines just love a ton of compost/manure. This is the first year I've been able to get them to grow. In indoor seeded all the vines and transplanted.

Hmm...I've only ever planted Sugar Baby.  This is the first year I've been able to get them to grow also.  These were direct seeded into a huge black pot of straight compost with no manure, instead of in the SFG.  One is trained up a trellis and won't fruit, and the one that's traveling across the ground now has 2 softball sized fruits on it as well as some smaller ones.  

So it must be the ton of compost. 
 
Are yours on the ground?

Ooh nice CC, I didn't know you were growing them.

Yup, mine are along the ground. There's one between a softball and a basketball size and the vine is traveling like it's going to town but no other fruit on it, which is probably good because it probably sends all its energy to this watermelon. There's one that had a nice watermelon started but then the vine died, I think something may have chewed thru the vine, then another probably twice the size of a softball and that vine didn't travel real far, it's kind of under a butternut squash plant and I think it may be getting shelter there. So one watermelon grew per plant. I wonder when you know they're ready...

Is everyone getting wet? We are getting drowned here! Haven't been online much or outside at all. Trying to recover from a concussion which has robbed me of the past three weeks of summer and looks to want to steal the rest of it.

Before this happened I had planted a lovely Kopper King hardy Hibiscus shrub. It has had some beautiful flowers this past week. Even though the plant was a very good size, I was not certain it would flower this year. The flowers are show-stopping that is for sure.

I am trying to live vicariously through all of your gardens as my plans for a garden this year seem to have necessarily halted. Oh well....

CapeCoddess wrote:

NHGardener wrote:

CapeCoddess wrote:What's the watermelon growing secret???

Well, it might start with the variety for our climate - I think these are Sugar Baby - they don't get real big. And then, the vines just love a ton of compost/manure. This is the first year I've been able to get them to grow. In indoor seeded all the vines and transplanted.

Hmm...I've only ever planted Sugar Baby.  This is the first year I've been able to get them to grow also.  These were direct seeded into a huge black pot of straight compost with no manure, instead of in the SFG.  One is trained up a trellis and won't fruit, and the one that's traveling across the ground now has 2 softball sized fruits on it as well as some smaller ones.  

So it must be the ton of compost. 
 
Are yours on the ground?

I'm going to try moon and stars again next year.

cpl, so sorry to hear that. I hope your concussion continues to heal well!

We're getting rain, but it's not as heavy here (seacoast area) as in some places, I don't think this area is in the flood watch stage like other areas. Massachusetts seems to have gotten a lot more rain than we have here this summer.

CapeCoddess wrote:Yup, I've been growing and harvesting mild radishes daily since it's been so cool here.
This mornings quickie harvest before today's storm can damage them: 

I'll leave these to fend for themselves - tomatoes, lettuce, chard:

Baby Kentucky Wonder pole beans, all the big ones were harvested last night:

I'm harvesting curly cukes at the rate of 1/day this week  , but higher up they seem to be straightening out.  This is a Burpee Burpless, PM resistant:
Just need some warm weather to keep them developing ...and it sure ain't today! Only 65 right now.

SFG is still transitioning from cupboard boxes to all wood - there are only 2 cupboards left to take down.  The 3 newer boxes on the right are planted for fall:

The front new box has bush beans, peas, mustard spinach, beets, radishes and squash.  The new box behind it to the left has scallions, peas, romaine, arugula, Buttercrunch, 2 types of kale & collards. The older box to the right with the trellised cukes & peppers has been recently planted with chinese cabbage, 2 types of spinach & peas:

Notice how the pole beans & cukes have stopped growing?  As have the tomatoes.  The only summer plants that seems to get bigger are the squash leaves.

This is the garlic bed. All the greens are crankin' now that the garlic is gone.  This Simpson Elite lettuce just keeps on giving and there are newly planted Marvel of the Four Seasons seeds just sprouting. The 3 transplanted tomatoes bungied to the screen are not thrilled with this weather. The one on the right is the hornworm host:

Meanwhile the perennial gardens under wood chips keep on truckin' and the grass stays mostly brown:
Hope they'll stand up to possible 60mph gust today...  

Once again I've done a tour without meaning to.  Can you tell I'm bored at work?
  
CC

Shoot...almost forgot my peach:
NHG, you posted your blushing peach a while ago.  See how far behind I am now from the rest of NE?  Did you eat yours? How were they?

Echinacea purpurea.