Oh, yippee!! I just came in from cutting my first yellow squashes; this should be enough for the 2 of us to have as a side dish. The largest one is just over 7" long. (The tomatoes and banana pepper in the background are from the dining room Aerogardens.)
Finally, I get to see the tulips in full bloom. It's been years because some critter, my guess is squirrels, would always snatch off the buds. This year I took the bottom off of some bird cages and covered them. My neighbor had given me three bird cages saying I know you'll find something to do with them.
More wild foods: I picked a few greens from my planter in the window and just ate them. Why not? They are pure and organic. Then I noticed some granules on my fingers. I put my glasses on and saw they were squished aphids! They didn't taste bad.
So beautiful, Von! Tulips are my favorite flowers. My son sends me tulips every spring for my birthday.
Today I picked my first bowlful of green beans; plenty for the 2 of us! Also snagged a few more yellow squash and zucchinis, and I noticed a bloom on one of the little dwarf okra plants. I see a bunch of marble-size tomatoes and some cucumbers about the size of my pinkie finger. I decided to plant a few radish seeds last week but I think they are going to be shaded out by tomato plants before they make anything. Can't win 'em all I guess.
My wife started to dig her way into the one garden and one orchard today with the tractor. We are down to less than 2 feet of snow there, so it isn't terrible but I am too lazy to do it, even with the tractor bucket. I began the planting of cucumber starts today--64 planted so far with many more to go. I passed the variety list and inventory to my wife, who controls all things food-related here, for her okay. That only covers the larger varieties, and I may have more of those to plant. The smaller outdoor types are yet to come, and those are mostly picklers and relish cucumbers. When my wife posted a picture of herself digging into the garden on her messenger chat, my son in Missouri responded with the salads he picked today for his family's dinner. Envy....
I'm still clearing out the invasive Mexican Petunias. And jake raked some leaves up for me and I put them over my canna lily's and milkweed [butterfly's love Milkweed].Still have a lot more to weed out, hummingbirds like the damn things ort I'd get rid of everyone of them.
I am trying to plant milkweed here for the first time. Monarchs don't make it up here, and we have very few hummingbirds if any. Ii is just an experiment, and I am a bit concerned about it becoming invasive. We'll see....
Our Milkweed is just a stalk now, so many butterflys ate the leaves. But they always come back. Good luck with them Don, I'm sure you can get them to grow, long as you protect them in winter. We had temp get down into low teens here one year 15 or 20 yr ago. I covered my plants in raised bed with plastic, then set up my oil lanterns in it and it kept everything ok. I keep the lanterns for power outages.