Why I Oughta...

If you buy strawberry plants once, you'll have strawberries for years, they say.  We started with container-grown bareroot strawberry plants in 2018 .  And, guess what?  They ESCAPED.  Now, we have Strawberry groundcover in one of our beds.   Back in 2019 - I called them 'volunteer' strawberries and thought it was cute.  But, they they spread.  And spread.  I ripped some out.  They came back.  I ripped out more.  They came back . But, we haven't eaten any of the strawberries in the years since they grew in 2019.  2020, 2021, 2022 were all strawberry-free years.  Why?  Well...we did *grow* strawberries.  But, they were gobbled up by the critters.  This year, however is different. In addition to leaving the strawberry groundcover in place, I also dug out eight plants and put them in our vertical Greenstalk tower.  After a period of transplant shock, they stabilized and began to throw off strawberries. Between the two spots, I started to see some 'red' peeking thro

Back at the end of June, I posted a photo of the bounty that we took out of a yard in Downers Grove ahead of their teardown  that someone we're close to was undertaking.  (We didn't just glom on to the plants!  We were invited!)  Along with the hostas and peonoies and irises, I also grabbed a ratty-looking Raspberry plant.  Or at least, I was pretty sure it *was* a Raspberry plant.  I stuck it in the back of our property and promptly forgot about it.  Fast forward to this week and here's two different evening harvests.  Not a ton of berries, but after the transplant shock, I'm surprised we got any at all.  Not to mention getting scarfed up by the critters that run through our yard on a regular basis.  There are a few dozen more emerging/white-ish berries that will ripen soon, too.  So we'll be at it for a while it seems.  But, with just one plant, we'll never be in a position to fill pint after pint like some folks. Like the rest of their 'teardown&

In our old garden back in Elmhurst, we had a couple of strawberry plants.  I put them in a giant pot (that came with our Ginko tree) and they came back year-after-year we lived there and bore fruit that we (sometimes) ate and other times were enjoyed by various critters.  Here's a photo showing one of the big fruits from 2013 .  Here's a look at one of that plants just about six years ago and  here's a sample harvest from 2012 .   Also, in 2015, I came across this Hula Berry plant which features strawberries that taste like pineapple.  I planted it, but then before we were able to harvest, we sold our house and moved out.   Fast forward to this year: I found this package of 10 bare root "June Bearing All Star" strawberry plants from M&G Holland.  They sat on my desk for a few weeks until recently when I had the two containers left over from planting the kids Earth Day trees .   I wanted to run a little bit of an experiment in terms of plant

We have two containers on the driveway that we're planting tomatoes in this year - instead of the usual raised bed garden that we had at our old place - and this is one of the varieties:  Chocolate Sprinkles Hybrid Cherry Tomato.   An heirloom, this isn't.   We picked them up at the Home Depot on North Avenue and let the girls pick out their own plants.  One of them picked these.  Guessing it was the name.   From the Bonnie site , it says this is new for 2016: This cherry tomato has it all: good looks, great flavor, heavy yields, and disease resistance. Bite-sized, cherry-type fruits are beautifully colored — red striped with dark green — that explode with rich, robust flavor. This highly productive plant forms its fruit in clusters, and starts bearing early in the season. We'll report back on the harvest through the season, but I'm hoping that they'll survive the driveway conditions.

Some friends came over for pizza this weekend and they brought some fruit including these Cotton Candy grapes.  And you know what?  They TOTALLY taste like cotton candy.  I had NEVER heard of these things before I ate a few and I was completely amazed. They're apparently ' taking the world by storm ' and with good reason they're a delight to eat.  They proudly have a 'non-gmo' label on them, but aren't they actually modified food stuffs?  They're grown by cross-cultivating two different grape varieties : They are made by plant breeding, meaning that farmers who cultivate these grapes cross different types of grapes together. David Cain, a horticulturist, and his team at the International Fruit Genetics in Bakersfield, California mixed two types of grapes — a Concord-like grape and seedless Vitis vineferia, which is a grape vine commonly found in the Mediterranean. Sounds modified to me?  And that's just fine thank you.  

Our little blueberry bush is starting to throw off fruit this summer.  Mind you...not A LOT of it, but a handful of berries are ripe now and more are coming in soon.   The plant isn't doing as well as it did last year - see the post here - but I think the birds have gotten to some of the fruit this year. This year has been bad for just about all of our garden.  I haven't been tending to it as close to other years, but I've noticed that while the pumpkin vines are going crazy, the tomatoes are struggling.  Anyone else feel like their tomatoes are lagging behind other years?  Is is the lack of heat?

Lots of tomato talk around these parts lately, eh?  'Tis the season, I guess.  This is the last of the tomato posts for a bit (until I get them into the ground), but is an important one.  Above is the Apricot Dream Tomato - a orangish cherry tomato. The most important thing about these is buried in the description on the back: The ridiculously huge trusses each have 20-30 oblong cherry sized tomatoes that are super sweet with a Brix rating of 11.5 giving them a candy like sweetness .   Emphasis, mine. I think there are a few missing hyphens in that line, but that's not the point.  The fact that these are an 11.5 on the Brix scale *is* the point. If you follow tomatoes, you'll know that 11.5 is a rare score.   This post talks about the ranges for tomatoes (usually you eat ones that are 6-10's ).  The girls eat cherry tomatoes off the vines each summer and I am guessing if this variety comes in, I'll know their favorite ones:  these sweet Apricot Dreams

I have no idea what these are going to turn out like, but I couldn't pass them up.  In this four-pack from Home Depot, they're selling "Hula Berry" plants.  Three white ones, one red one.  The red one produces pollen for the white ones, it seems. They have a Facebook page where they say they're 'going fast' in Chicago , so if you're curious about them like I was and find yourself out and about, head to Home Depot to try to pick up a set. I'm going to plant them out in the garden and see what happens.  I have very little expectations, so if they do, indeed, turn out to taste like pineapple, I'll be pretty amazed.

We've been picking one or two strawberries off our little plants almost every other day the past few weeks.  This morning, I went out and peeked at the blueberry plant and it had some ripe ones that came off the branch so easily. I planted this bush just about a year ago and it started to pay off in this small amount this year.  I had to put a small fence around the bush as it kept getting eaten by rabbits (the bush) and that was causing it some stress.  The berries last year were all picked away by birds, so this year the fence helped big time. Nat wants more, so I'm going to see if I can find another few bushes and plant them - permanently - in the garden.

While it isn't going to be a bountiful harvest, it is looking like we're going to indeed get some blueberries this year off of our bush.  I netted the plant this year to try to fend off the birds and it looks like it is working. Here's the first post when I put this particular bush in the backyard .

Just two months after I noticed that the pear tree in our backyard had gone through a growth spurt, we're dealing with our first *real* pear harvest.   With a little bit of reading, turns out you're not supposed to allow pears to ripen on the tree .  I pulled down as many as I could, but I need to get on a ladder this weekend to remove the rest. From the fine folks at Oregon State University : Pears picked when slightly immature will ripen with better quality than pears that are over mature when picked. To tell if a pear is mature, a general rule of thumb is that, while still on the tree, most mature, ready to ripen pears will usually detach when "tilted" to a horizontal position from their usual vertical hanging position. Bosc pears always are difficult to separate from the spur.  "Unlike apples, which are ready to eat from the day they are picked, pears must go through a series of changes before they can deliver their full splendor," explained Sugar

Earlier this Spring, we moved our Strawberry plant from the center of the main raised bed to a separate, stand-alone pot that could allow it to spread out a bit.  Due to that stress, I'm thinking that I stunted the plant's growth this year as this morning I was able to pull just one - the first! - berry off. Granted, it is a bit early, as last year it wasn't until late June that we were getting a lot of fruit .  Nat and the girls enjoyed this one berry and Nat said it was delicious.  Makes me want to go out and buy a few more plants.  I know it takes multiple seasons for them to start paying off/bearing lots of fruit, so we better get started now to have something by next Summer.

3 Weeks later and look at the difference in the melon!   Here's the same melon on the last day of July .

The Strawberry bush that I planted a few years back is starting to really throw off some fruit this year.  The strawberries are plump, red, and (apparently) juicy.  I say apparently because I didn't actually eat one of these.  I was beat to them by The Babe who grabbed them straight out of Nat's colander in the sink.   

We went out plum picking at Jollay's in Michigan this weekend and came across these things: They're called Donut Peaches or Saturn Peaches.  They (apparently) came from China more than 100 years ago and gained some popularity in the 1990's.  I don't remember ever hearing about them, but seeing them on the tree, they're kind of a novelty.   Seems like it would be a fun tree to grow in the yard - especially because they're described as 'frost hardy' .