Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, July 29

Above, a lovely flower from Dave in Oahu. Do you wish you were there?

Edible Gardening/Putting Things By

By-Tor's results are in from the Orange County (CA) fair:

Results are in. Apple butter 2nd place, sauerkraut 3rd. Not as good as LA County but I'll take it.

Congratulations!

11 lbs of peaches is now peach jam. It's simple- peaches, sugar, citric acid and pectin, cooked to a rolling boil, then water bath canned. Although if you do a small batch of a few jars you can just refrigerate them.

Any more fairs coming up? Or are you just eating it ALL?

Does anybody in The Horde have a garden as wild and wonderful as Grimmy's?

We have a nice look at the two raised beds at the very beginning of the season, which are now completely overgrown with pumpkin and watermelon.

We had a few extra seedlings I just threw in...they spread rather aggressively! My wife doesn't want to cut them back or cull them, so we just redirect them from the pepper, potatoes, and raspberry bushes OUTSIDE the fence that they're encroaching on. Dozens of watermelons of various stages of development are scattered throughout.

My Aronia shrubs are coming along, with their dark, astringent berries.

Japanese beetles are a problem this year as always. I have lots of traps setup at the far edges of my little 3.5 acre lot, and they fill up quickly, but the little guys love my raspberry bushes, as well as my quince and medlar trees. The long fence with my neighbor is overgrown with wild grape, which they also swarm upon.

A few pictures of the aforementioned medlar. A funny little fruit. My quince trees had several flowers that seemed to be turning into fruit, but I haven't seen any yet, which is weird. As well, we have 3 pawpaw trees that looked like they had fertilized flowers, but they don't seem to have fruit. Watering all of this in the very hot and dry season we've had in central Iowa has been a delight, I assure you.

Wow. A lot of variety! And challenges! Those Japanese beetles are terrible!

See the beetle?

Medlar:

Ah, Nature

Ever wondered about those bees you see sleeping on flowers?

Mornin’ folks.

We’ve had a lot of people enquiring about and commenting on #bumblebees asleep on #flowers, especially at this time of year, so here’s a quick (long)🙄 thread explaining what’s going on.

Please retweet so more are more informed.
Thanks good people.#bees
1/16 pic.twitter.com/O1NCzphai4

— The Bee Guy (@the_beeguy) July 22, 2023

Gardens of The Horde

Crepe myrtles seem to not get much love, but I don't know why since I think they are marvelous. This is a pic of my favorite specimen, on a property I own, and it will bloom like this through September.

My Brugmansia has been blooming earlier in the year than it usually does,
I can't decide which of these pictures I like more, the closeup or the standoff.
And thanks for all the work you do for us on weekends!

- Tom Servo

Spectacular flowers!

Hope everyone has a nice weekend.

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Week in Review

What has changed since last week's thread? Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, July 22

Any thoughts or questions?

I closed the comments on this post so you wouldn't get banned for commenting on a week-old post, but don't try it anyway.

posted by K.T. at 01:30 PM

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