Our backyard is not really a vegetable garden. We just have some vegetables around the house. First in the list is ginger which also serves as ornamental plant. There's also onions and pepper with the ripening red fruits that are nice to look at. Some lime plants that are all fruiting. But the most prolific is the sweet potato and water spinach. They grow fast so we can harvest often.
My garden is a mixed bag. Some things are doing great, some have been a flop. I got way behind on the weeding with all the rain we had. We finally got he corn weeded and fertilized. The potatoes are doing great. I cut the vines yesterday. Onions are good but not as big as usual. Tomatoes have small ones growing. Cabbage and beets are about done. One of the purple cauliflowers is making a head. I watered everything yesterday for only the second time this year. Lime plants, Corie. You must be farther south than I am.I wish we could grow citrus and avocados here.
We left for a short vacation and I just came back home today. But before we left, my husband took shots of the lime that was fruiting, there were 2 lime plants, and the blooming dragon fruit as well. He said that he wanted to see the progress when we come back after 4 days. My husband is serious in his backyard farming. He even checks on the leaves for pests and his usual haunt are the lime plants that never fails to attract caterpillars. Now that it is summer, irrigating the plants is a big chore because my husband is not content in simple watering. He would train the garden hose to a plant and come back to it 2 times. The water, according to my husband, is only on the surface so you need to go back for more before the soil could fully absorb the water and provide the roots with food. That was what he does with his plants. And the reward? We got a huge harvest with that banana that yielded more than 200 fruits.
Hello Corie Plants don't waste water...people do. Very good link below for watering which may interest your husband. http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/water/az1298/
We got a late start in our gardening this year, since we skipped spring and went straight into summer, so I don't expect much from our garden. We do have beans, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, and some herbs planted but the tomatoes aren't doing well and I don't know that we'll get full-sized potatoes before the freeze begins in the fall. I also planted some rhubarb, which is a perennial that I hope catches on, meaning that it survives the winter.
I have corn, snaps, (AKA string beans) sweet potatoes, eggplants, bell and banana peppers, tomatoes, yellow squash and okra. So far, so good but we need rain. I've been watering but that only does so much good. We have a few days of 100ยบ or higher coming up. I'm not sure what that will do to the garden plants. I was out setting the sprinkler this morning and, I can tell you, it was HOT out there. I've never grown eggplant so I don't know what to expect from them. My son wanted to plant them. Have any of you ever grown them?
I was late planting this year. The space I usually plant in is not available, a weed has grown to some size between the two fences, has developed limbs that are shading the space I use for my garden. I have to get a saw and go to work on removing the limbs and find some way to remove the tree that is growing. I think I will plant a few things in planters before the end of the month. It is just getting hot here so I still have time to plant a few things.
Rains started to come last week and almost everyday it rains. Our mango tree has buds and in a few days will bloom. When it is blooming and it rains, the flowers will rot and not turn into fruits. That mango tree is the star of our backyard since it gave us countless of fruits. In one season, we could harvest more than 300 fruits. You can guess that friends are overjoyed with the free mangoes. Unfortunately, that mango tree was ravaged by typhoon Glenda. It was leaning on the fence so we had to cut the branches. And despite not having branches anymore the tree gave us 2 fruits which I harvested just last week.
Our garden is coming along, and we have been getting a few tomatoes here and there, and some of the cucumbers, and squash have gotten flowers on them; so I am hoping that they will also set some fruit from the blossoms. Some of mine are in planter pots and some are in the ground; but our soil here is mostly just hard red clay; so I think the ones in the posts with real topsoil are doing better, even if they do not have as much room to expand. The front yard is where we mainly have sunshine, and all my veggies are just growing out in the front by the road. Hopefully, people won't come along and pick them when they get ripe; but so far we have not had any problem with that happening.
@Yvonne Smith, is that the flowering cucumber? Our cucumber here in our backyard is the wild cucumber with small fruits. I have yet to see the vine of a real cucumber. With squash, we sometimes have that when the seeds that we throw in the compost area would grow and bear flowers but never a squash. We eat the flowers though, we mix that in the native vegetable dish. Another similar vine is the melon. From the seeds that we throw, there will be sprouts and some of the sprouts were left to crawl as vines. And they bear fruit but not a lot, just for the fun of it since the fruit is not so sweet. But the point is we get to harvest from those leftover seeds.
The vacant lot beside our property is being used by my husband as extension of our garden. He had planted it with a variety of vegetables and other crops. One such plant is my favorite blueberry. It's actually mulberry but we were oriented in it as blueberry so the name stuck. It grows by itself even when there is no irrigation. It's branches are low so it is easy to pick the fruits - green becomes red and when ripe the color is purple. Here is the close up photo of our mulberry...
That mulberry tree is beautiful, and the berries look SO delicious, @Corie Henson ! I love blackberries; which are similaar; but they grow on vines. We do have mulberry trees here in the US, and if we had room for one; I would love to grow a mulberry tree. the mulberry tree was actually one of the first trees specifically planted here in the Eastern United States. Since silk worms live in and eat the mulberry leaves; the early settlers in America were going to grow the mulberry trees and raise silk worms to sell silk; but the whole project just never got going well, and now we just have the trees as shade trees, and to eat the mulberries. I have never tasted a mulberry; but they look like blackberries. The picture that I posted is one of my little squash plants out in the front yard. Some of the other ones are larger; but that one had blossoms on it; and it does resemble a cucumber vine, as well. When I was growing up, we had what was called a wild cucumber vine. The vine grew profusely each year, and would be covered with tiny white flowers, and then later, it developed wild cucumbers. These were like the size of a small lemon or lime, and about the same shape, and had little prickles all over them. The inside was pithy and full of seeds, and my mom said that they were not edible and would make you sick if you did try to eat them. I don't know if what you call a wild cucumber is the same thing; but if it is edible, then it must be a different variety of wild cucumber. I will look online and see if I can find a picture of them; so you can tell if it the same as yours or not. Picture of the fruit of a wild cucumber plant. http://blog.cranesmill.org/2013/05/...-the-cranes-mill-campus-part-2/wild-cucumber/
@Yvonne Smith, the leaves of the mulberry is a good fodder for cattle. But goats relish those leaves when still attached to the branch so you have to let the goat come near the tree. The fruit of the mulberry is very sweet and would be a good dessert. We have several lemon trees here. My husband call them plants because he said trees grow big and the lemon stays that small. We have that American lemon with big fruits. The fertilizer used is quite surprising for those who do not know organic. Since we do not use chemical fertilizer, our usual fertilizer is the water used to wash meat or fish from the market. That's it. Here is the pic of our American lemon before we harvested it and used to marinate the porterhouse steak.
OOOOH Corrie how good does that look. There is nothing nicer than picking and using fruit straight from the tree. Oranges especially. They taste so different than those that have been shipped. I have a small Victorian garden so no fruit trees. My attempts at growing potatoes that after much loving care resulted in 2 tiny spuds which then committed veggie suicide the minute they hit boiling water
Here is another lemon plant with green fruits for now but would be turning yellow soon. Indeed, the lemon and lime plants are in season. But I wonder why they cost so much in the grocery? The main enemy of the lemon tree is the butterfly and the moth. It is imperative to check on the young leaves of the lemon tree every morning because a single larva would finish up to 10 new leaves. Here is the picture of that green lemons. PS. I am sorry but I cannot upload photos now. The site is crawling. Perhaps there is a technical problem?