drifting in the breeze

the banana trees are continuing to grow fast enough I'm somewhat worried that their roots are running out of space?? also thinking they're about ready for a good dose of fish emulsion too!

(also, my mother bought me an olive tree, which is the itty bitty little stick of green leaves right behind the front banana plant's leaves in the top pic. I don't know how big it gets so finding it a container is going to be interesting!!)

and of course, my spikey sons!!! big boys!! thinking I might have to give them their own individual pots sometime soon, because the boys are getting very crowded here! they're about a year and a half old now, I think!

red japanese, ginseng, and all purple sweet potatoes are all mixed in together here, and there's a mirror of this on the bed directly across from this one, only it has 3 molokai purple sweet potatoes + gourd plants in it.

look, do I have a harvest yet? absolutely not. but I refuse to stop being excited about this because look!! at!! those!! tassles!!!

this is the true gold sweet corn- heirloom, so I'm curious at how it's going to taste! since heirloom corn tends to not be as sweet as hybrid sweet corn and all.

succulents/indoor plants

• everyone's been moved outside to enjoy the summer weather, saving electricity on the grow lights (which wouldn't be on anyway because it's too h o t)

• the ginger and turmeric plants are set and settled, probably won't need anything other than some water here and there until winter. roughly 9 months to go until harvest.

• both truly tiny banana trees have hit huge growth spurts, and interestingly enough, one of them (in a shallow dish that had more sand mixed in the soil) is having just overall lots of growth, while the other is slightly slower (deeper dish, less sand), but seems to be forming a pup at the base!

• the plumeria got hit hard by spider mites and lost almost all of its leaves :( got it treated with soapy neem, now the lingering, old diseased-looking leaves are all dropping off and healthy, bright green new leaves are growing back! it's in desperate need of a transplant to a larger container, though. gonna do that soon.

• several succulents are starting to form pups/offshoots! baby retusa haworthia has grown out into the star/circle shape it's supposed to have. the spikey sons are continuing to grow but a few are showing signs of pest damage, probably going to have to treat with soapy neem.

• new plant baby incoming!! I got my hands on a scented geranium! :D :D she's a peacock geranium and she smells like roses!! she is very little and baby but she should be moving up into a new pot soon <3

main gardens

• LOTS OF SUMMER GROWTH

• the entire garden got mulched!! I didn't get to help with that because my allergies were kicking me in the face so I got sent inside asdfghjkl. but this was super badly needed and should hopefully make the garden a bit more resiliant this summer!!

• baby tomatoes and peppers are growing!! set's not that heavy, so I plan to do a circit every day or so to flick flowers and hopefully get some more tomatoes on those vines. lots of vine growth though, nice and healthy green!!

• scarlet runner beans were blooming, but for some reason we're suffering on the pollinator front and nothing pollinated them, so the flowers all died without making any beans :( probably not going to get a crop from them unless they rebloom, which I am keeping an eye out for!

• jack-be-little pumpkins all blooming! since the pollinators are MIA I'll probably pick a male flower here and there to try hand-pollinating the female flowers just in case. probably not that far off from a harvest, since they're a 55 day mini pumpkin!!

• MY DRAGON'S TONGUE BEANS HAVE BEANS ON THEM!! eeeee they look so cool, I love them?? green beans with purple specks!! I'm kinda just keeping an eye on them for now bc I'm not 100% sure when to pick/snap/can them, I think I can go ahead and use some of them fresh tho.

• balsam, black-eyed susans, calendula, snapdragons, bee balm, bachelor's buttons, borage, and poppies are all blooming!! and some roses of course, they're all looking lovely!! gotta pinch those snapdragons back tho

• the sweet potatoes have taken off. I'm gonna have to take pictures later, they're just turning into this slowly-spreading carpet of green leaves and it looks so cool!! my poor pretty red/pink regular potatoes got hit super hard by that late frost though and I reluctantly must say I don't think I'm going to get much from them :( oh well, there's always next year!!

• the arches for the climbing plants are starting to get covered!! currently in the lead is luffa gourd, which is actually being a nice and obedient plant and climbing the trellis without trying to escape (unlike the cucumbers, who are trying to eat the tomatoes)

• corn is up, squash is up, but I did lose all of one variety of squash to squash beetles. watermelons are also up. peanuts are blooming, not sure they're getting pollinated so I'll be looking up what to do there, alpine strawberries are continuing to produce a handful of strawberries a day, and the sprouting broccoli is still producing!

• lastly- I planted like 200 sunflower seeds and they're up and growing fast. some of these babies are going to hit 10-12 feet!! (3-3.6 meters) there's also a dwarf type I planted, but it's had some pretty spotty germination and seems to be struggling a bit. I want to sow some more around, because it's impossible to have too many sunflowers!

food forest

• my base plans have Changed but it's still happening!!

• I got some trees to plant, the little elderberry babs I started from cuttings are probably going down there too. finally managed to get my hands on a witch hazel!! I'd love to get more though, we should be having them all over the place and they're a vital source of early food for the bees

• current goal is to get my hands on some mulberry tree cuttings, blueberry shrub cuttings, and some grape cuttings from my late great-grandfather's ancient concord grapes because they're stubborn and tough and will probably outlive me by a matter of outright decades as long as humans don't decide to rip em up

• I also want comfrey. like, I'd fight a man for comfrey, that's how much I want it. important plant.

• also turns out alpine strawberries make a great groundcover for a food forest so guess who 100% intends to try and start like 150 alpine strawberry seeds next january??

other plant projects

• still haven't planted my roses. we're trying to find spots, but we're currently overloaded byyyyy.........

• the large number of plants my parents and I indulged in getting because we all are incredibly paranoid by the absolute mess this year is (what with the shortages and all) and we're all on-board with trying to become way more self-sufficient. I have claimed the porch as plant-space. I am doing my best to cover it completely.

• the plants for two woodland medicinal gardens are in the works, one down at the creek, one a bit closer. I've got money set aside specifically to buy ginseng and goldenseal seeds this fall, and hopefully I can get my hands on some ramps seeds and blue cohosh seeds too! trying to work on restoring some native plants around here!

• pollinator garden plants. we all got kind of spooked by the vanishing pollinators, so we're planting milkweed, bee balm, and the like. also planning on large amount of multi-seasonal flowers (if we can find them) and trying to plant enough flowers in general to support at least one hive of honey bees next year (preferably more, but just one would be an absolute blessing)

• I still don't really know what to do with my seed-started lemon trees whoops?? they're growing like crazy too, some of them are starting to get thorns! I don't need 7-8 lemon trees tho asdfghjkl that is. too many for the space I'm working with XD

• I'd really like to be able to get some dwarf orange trees/dwarf coffee shrub/dwarf olive trees and some other stuff like some saffron crocus bulbs and then just some other tulip/daffodil/iris bulbs (and maybe a new type of peony??) just for the pretty but I'm not sure that can happen this year, gonna have to wait and see

• basically my life is just plants right now tbh

purple cauliflower, sprouting green broccoli, and green macareta cauliflower are the first three pics in order!! they have many holes in their poor leaves because the little green caterpillers that show up every year won't leave them alone D: I've gotten two heads of broccoli harvested tho and the pic's of a third one I haven't picked yet!!

last pic is one of the arches we set up to trellis on- between the two beds and the arch, there's 21 sweet potato plants, the arch itself is lined with small gourd seeds, and two lil baby peppers were planted on the bed to the left. they're doing good so far!!

[id: photo of four long greenish-brown plant pods set on a gray surface. Three of them are lying side by side and one of them is apart from the rest. This one has partially split open to reveal a row of round black seeds lined up inside it. One seed has fallen out and is sitting near the pod. end id.]

they actually gave me a few extra- the all purple (purple flesh) was the only one that had 6, the red japanese (white flesh) had 7, and the ginseng (orange flesh) had 8!! :D but I still have my 3 molokai purple too, so I've got 21 sweet potato slips :D

the tricky part here is that we're going to need to fix up special places for them, probably some raised beds, amended with a bit of creek sand. which we can't do right now because everything's sopping wet. oh, well, maybe in a few days!

last one for now! my mom's double peony bushes are blooming- they're very small bushes, but according to her they were given to me by my great-grandfather, and are probably around 50 years old!

I have seven rooted black elderberry tree cuttings and they have so far been my only successes. I literally just cut a handful of twigs and stuck them one leaf-node deep in soil and left them alone to nature's whims. apparently elderberries just take anything in stride?

complete opposite of blueberry cuttings so far. all of my blueberry attempts just kinda withered up and died, so I'll probably try and do dormant cuttings of them next and see how that goes. we don't have enough berry plants around here!!

first pic's a redbud tree that had lots of seedpods on it I'm planning on harvesting this fall!! I'm determined to get my seedlings for my food forest!!

second pic is a lilac bush's seed pods!! I'm hoping I can catch the harvest for them too and see if I can get me some seed-started lilacs!!