July 2009
July 01/2009: July panorama. The nine-foot-tall bolting lovage somewhat blocks the view. Notice on the right - the neighbouring garage and tree are gone, just a pile of dirt left! And a lot of noisy construction to come. At least they left the fence.
July 01/2009: A very enthusiastic zucchini patch (Cucurbita pepo).
July 01/2009: A zucchini flower. Zucchini plants grow separate male and female flowers - this is a male flower with pollen.
July 01/2009: A ripe zucchini! (Cucurbita pepo) We had this one for breakfast, fried up with bacon.
July 01/2009: This is very much NOT a zucchini, despite having a "Zucchini" tag at the store where I bought the seedlings. Guesses anyone? Our friend Starfield thinks it's a blue hubbard squash.
July 01/2009: So my mother has a new hobby: finding mushroom-themed garden ornaments for our garden! This one is a solar light, and gets bonus points because there is also a squirrel involved. In the foreground, notice there are some baby arugulas! (Eruca vesicaria)
July 01/2009: Strawberries, genus Fragaria - we're not sure what their scientific name is, but we've been calling them "Alpine Strawberries". The fruit is smaller and spongier than normal - kind of like those candy marshmallow strawberries?? only better, because they taste like real strawberry and not flavoured sugar.
July 01/2009: The growth habit of this strawberry is also different: the plant puts out flowers and fruits up above the plant, rather than along the ground. We LOVE this - it means we lose fewer of the fruits to slugs!
July 01/2009: In the background - the long slender stalks of onions. We planted onions throughout the strawberry patch to try and keep the aphids away.
July 01/2009: This is a mix of alpine and regular strawberries (Fragaria). They seem to desperately want to crawl out of the bed! I keep snipping off the runners and planting them in other places... I give them away to people... they keep making more...
July 01/2009: Flowers of an onion, Allium cepa. We let a few of them go to flower so that we could maybe get some babies for free next year.
July 01/2009: Lettuce (Lactuca sativa). Some kind of heritage variety - the only ones that survived from a mix of seedlings I got at the Van Dusen sale.
July 01/2009: Ferns and yarrow (Achillea millefolium).
July 02/2009: The poppies came back this year! (Papaver somniferum) I love these guys, I made sure to throw their seeds back in the bed last year.
July 02/2009: These are carrot flowers, Daucus carota. They're biennial, i.e. they flower in their second year. We grew carrots last year for eating, but we left a few so that they would make seeds this year.
July 05/2009: More strawberries... they are actually producing a lot now!
July 05/2009: A yellow zucchini (Cucurbita pepo). It's finally perked up after its trip home from the nursery where I accidentally broke off almost all of its leaves.
July 05/2009: A bumble bee pollinates one of the purple potato flowers (Solanum tuberosum).
July 05/2009: Winter chives (Allium fistulosum), just about to bloom (left) and just bloomed (right). They are like little fireworks! The other greenery is branches of oregano, Oreganum vulgare.
July 05/2009: A wasp sits on a kale leaf (Brassica oleracea, Acephala group). We haven't really had a problem with wasps in our yard, thankfully... we just see a few here and there.
July 05/2009: My lettuce bed! (Lactuca sativa) I bought seedlings of green leaf and buttercrunch, and they've already paid for themselves in salad greens. This bed also has some lemon balm, purple sage and feverfew... and notice the red strawberry runners - they are trying desperately to take over the entire garden. (I don't mind!)
July 05/2009: Buttercrunch lettuce, close up.
July 05/2009: The garden peas have outgrown the bamboo stakes! Those are 7-foot bamboo stakes. It's pretty exciting... I get to eat fresh peas in the morning on my way to work :)
July 18/2009: Strawberries, blueberries, and flowering winter savory! (Fragaria sp., Vaccinium sp., Satureja montana).
July 18/2009: Zucchini, Cucurbita pepo. Also known as dinner! Or lunch, or afternoon snack. This is about as big as we let them get - any larger and they get stringy and not as sweet.
July 18/2009: Mystery squash, possibly a blue hubbard?
July 18/2009: The mystery squash again - these vines are growing like CRAZY, we need to get taller stakes for them as well. They are monsters! It makes me wish I had a gazebo or a nice trellis for them to grow up, they would be so happy.
July 19/2009: That's right, it's a 10-inch-zucchini. And no, we didn't notice it until just now.
July 24/2009: Okay... it's a 16-inch-zucchini. We seriously were not planning on letting them get this big.
July 24/2009: So the big one in this photo is the 16-inch-long one, to give you some perspective. That round one - it's the mystery squash. We thought it looked like a winter squash (i.e. the ones with hard shells like a butternut) but now that we've picked it, it seems like a summer squash?!
July 24/2009: After cutting into it, I definitely think it's a summer squash - the skin was very tender, and the seeds on the inside look small enough to be edible, like the regular zucchini.
July 24/2009: Dinner! It's been brushed with olive oil and seasoned with basil salt, in the oven for an hour at 350 degrees F. It is fantastic! The skin is totally edible, it's firm yet juicy and has a lovely sweet-zucchini flavour. If anyone knows what this is, please email me :)