Sprouting, Growing and Fruiting

Green Lacewing

Temperatures here have been 10-15 degrees above average encouraging seeds to eagerly burst from the soil and plants to put out lush growth. Beneficial insects are also coming out in droves to hunt out their harmful cousins and sweet sips of nectar.

Here is the garden this week

A lush rosette of Bloomsdale spinach

I am incredibly pleased with the growth on my tomatoes so far this year. Most are well over a foot tall and all are looking very healthy

Nearly all of the cherry varieties, like this Sweet Aperitif, are blooming

And even a couple of the larger varieties, like this White Beauty, have a few blossoms

My beans are popping up everywhere. This is Fortex

The Nero Di Toscana kale is almost ready for its first picking

Cucumbers are up

The Cascadia and Magnolia Tendril peas are vying for space on the trellis. I have a habit of sampling the tender shoots whenever I walk past them

An evil rodent decided that the summer squash seeds that I planted would make a good snack. These Casertas were somehow missed and I've replanted the others

The winter squash are germinating. This is Tahitian Melon

I've never had better early spring growth on onions than I've had this year. They still have about three weeks to put on green growth before daylight length triggers bulbing

The shallots have also never done better. Every set is producing fivefold or more

I thought that my sweet potato sets had died but checking this week I found new growth on them

The strawberries are blooming and setting fruit. From top to bottom are Rainbow Treasure, Pineberry and Yellow Alpine , the first of which should be ripe next week

Native bumblebees are enjoying the comfrey that grows in clumps around my property

The promise made by the massive bloom of peach blossoms earlier this spring is coming to fruition with hundreds of tiny fuzzy fruits having set

It looks like the plum has set its usual amount of fruit

Pie cherries look to be sparse again this year. As long as I have enough for a batch of jam though I'll be happy

My sweet cherry, on the other hand, has set quite well. We should have plenty for fresh snacking and freezing for smoothies this fall

My Silken apple has set very well this year and for the first time my Almata apple has set fruit. Though not great on their own, almatas (which have red flesh) are excellent pollenizers for other apples and for adding a lovely pink hue to applesauce