Late Summer Garden Update; Seed Nerd Alert

In the spring we planted all kinds of experimental seeds, and by now we are getting some kind of an idea about how they are doing. Above are the most interesting (to me, so far) of this years crossed bean seeds. I know the father was Cherokee Trail of Tears (when isn't it?) but I am embarrassed to say I did not record the mother! Perhaps Annelino Yellow? However, there are lots of beans, in an attractive dark green hazed with purple, following nice bright pink flowers. They were quite tasty eaten as fresh beans, stringless and with a melting texture, and so we did not eat them as beans... we are saving them for seed to grow again. We don't have many plants of this as the bloody rabbits ate about two thirds of them as seedlings. Unfortunately I have spotted a bit of anthracnose on one bean. So far that's it, but I will have to watch them carefully.

We are now keeping the peanuts and sweet potatoes covered, and they are now finally showing lots of top growth. Hopefully something is happening underground too. We shall see.

Onions have been blighted by some kind of fungus this year. It seems to be mostly on the tops and mostly doesn't seem to cause die-down until the bulbs are reasonably well formed. The Walla Walla are the worst affected; I'm not sure if it's because of the variety or because they bulb up faster than any of the others. You can just barely see some of the stems of our seed onions in the top left corner; about half of them have black patches all over the stems. Fortunately, we are going to have enough seed by the looks of things that we can afford to cull the fungus-affected plants heavily.

I am absolutely agog at this potato berry. It is on a plant that was sold to me as Russet Burbank. All the Russet Burbanks flowered profusely this year, but this is the only berry that formed. Given that Russet Burbank is generally sterile except under highly controlled laboratory conditions, it is still a minor miracle. Either that, of course, or what was sold to me is not actually Russet Burbank. Still, given the fact that this was the only berry in spite of the prolific flowering suggests that it's not impossible. Needless to say, we will be saving the seeds.

The next day after I took this picture it got knocked off the plant, to my considerable annoyance. It should be far enough along to still ripen nicely though. 

Compare it to the way this potato is forming berries! I believe this is on a potato we grew from seed ourselves, but I'm not completely sure of that until we dig up the plants, as I can't find my notes about what we planted. I know this bed is heavy on our own seed-grown potatoes. On the other hand it might just be Purple Viking.

Much to my relief, watermelons are finally starting to form. I was starting to worry for a bit; time is marching on. Seeds from the largest, earliest watermelon were planted at the far end of the bed, with later, smaller melons supplying seeds in descending order down the bed. You can see the difference in the plants. We did plant a few seeds from melons that did not turn yellow, but you can already see that the golden-ripening gene prevails in this bed.

These golden-ripening project melons are actually producing lots of melons! Sadly, I doubt any will be ripe for another month at least. There's no photo, but there is also one melon that came up as a volunteer from last years golden-ripening project. It is in a newly planted strawberry bed so I decided I could leave it in place. Last week it opened 2 female flowers which I attempted to fertilize with male flowers from the strongest end of the bed.

The orange-flesh project melons are also starting to form, but in general they are not as far along and there are notably fewer. Looks like we will have those melons in October.

This looks pretty sad, but it's actually our most successful crossed pea grow-out. I believe this is an f2 grow-out of Harrison's Glory x Dual. It combines the productivity and high seed-per-pod count of Dual with a more indeterminate growth habit from Harrison's Glory, making it more suited to home gardeners. Season is second early. The peas are the traditional paler green rather than the really dark green of Dual, which is more expected by modern pea-eaters, but what can you do? The flavour is excellent. The seed dries to a pale green with lots of wrinkles, suggesting that they are high in sugars. We will be growing this out again and following it with interest!

Okay, lots of things happening in this photo. In the bottom left, leeks have finally been transplanted for their final growth stage. We started seedlings this spring but most of them died through lack of care. Fortunately, we found a whole bunch of seedlings started up in the spot where we grew leeks out for seed last year. They all seem to be dropped from Verdonnet, a Swiss leek landrace. I wonder if they were mostly fertilized by Bandit, which is quite distinctively dark green and advertised as particularly winter-hardy. Interestingly, no seedlings were found around the spot where Bandit grew. This is the first and only time we have had leek seeds survive in the open over winter. We will be following this one with interest, too.

In the centre of the photo, we are experimenting with leguminous ground covers; hairy vetch and crimson clover. Good news/bad news - the rabbits love both of them. It's a bit exasperating, but hopefully the fact that they head there first takes pressure off of other things. They both seem reasonably good a suppressing weeds. Our one problem was that a fair bit of the vetch was eaten by birds as it germinated, but we can solve that in future by covering for a week or so. The little yellow flags mark some peppers that volunteered, and that I moved over to this bed. Again, first time I have ever had volunteer peppers. They appear to be out of Fish, which is variegated, making identification conveniently easy.

In the upper right corner, you can see an empty bed. We planted Flageolet beans in there this spring. That whole bed is beans, which was asking for trouble. They are out of rotation sequence and in the same spot we planted beans last year. But we had so many legumes, and so few leaf crops to plant this year. At any rate, about 2 or 3 weeks ago they suddenly became badly infected with anthracnose and so I pulled out the entire crop and hustled it into a green garbage bag. The Rocdor beans on the right are living up to their reputation and show no signs of the anthracnose. On the left are Berta Talaska beans and Ohio beans. The Ohio beans seem very resistant, but the Berta Talaska seem to be fairly susceptible, alas.

Our few, sparse chick pea plants are surviving and thriving and filling much of the space. I did come out one morning and catch a rabbit with its mouth full of chick pea leaves so it's pretty amazing they have survived this long. They are flowering and forming pods and we actually hope to get some seed. Oddly, a few plants have just up and died for no discernible reason. I noticed this with chick peas last time we grew them too.

Our new bed of currents and gooseberries, and next to them the well-established blackberry bed. A little too well-established. They are going to have to come out, at least from this spot, as they have intentions for world domination. Sad, because they produce loads of fruit over a long period of time.

Aaaand, hazelnuts! It looks like there will be an actual crop, if the squirrels don't beat us to it! (They will, of course, but we hope to snatch a few.) This is the first time since we moved that there have been any to speak of. I think the plants are finally mature enough, and also they like a mild winter followed by a mild summer, which is pretty much what we have had.

Speaking of eventual crops, Mr. Ferdzy has taken a break from working on finishing the gravel to work on finishing the trellis for our kiwi vines. It's finished! Now all we need is for the kiwis to grow, flower and form fruit. Might happen in the next few years. They have taken a long time to get going though; our soil is too poor and too wet to make them happy. Still, they have grown a lot in the last year or so, and Mr. Ferdzy raised and fertilized some of them and they are doing much better as a result.

And the gravel has at least been ordered; now they just have to figure out how to get the amount of gravel we have ordered onto our driveway. Apparently their bigger truck can't make the turn. Looks like lots of work to do still!

Posted in: Ontario Food