a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: How Things Grow

  • Thousands? Why Not Millions, or Billions?

    ThistleSeedsC

    Biking to the post office this afternoon, I noticed that a row of thistles had gone to seed. Just a week ago, they were in full bloom with lovely purple flowers. “I should stop and take some pictures,” I thought back then. But today when I went past them, they had turned into ghostly forms, as if overnight, a million spiders had spun webs all over them.

    ThistleSeedsA
    ThistleSeedsB

    When it comes to procreation, nature is prolific to a fault. Why stop at a thousand seeds? Might as well make a million or even a billion seeds.

  • The Color of Growing Food

    PurpleBeanVines

    Many plants display a kaleidoscope of colors as they grow. I’m fascinated by the purple of these bean vines. They are starting to bloom so it will be interesting to see what color their flowers are. The pods are supposed to be purple, and I’m waiting to see how intense a purple they will be. The one disappointing thing about purple bean pods is that they turn green when cooked.

    PurpleBeanVinesFlower
    ButterSquashFlower

    Few vegetables have as spectacular flowers as squash. A squash vine will blossom for months. Plant a squash seed and not only will you get a good harvest of squash at the end of summer, you’ll enjoy brilliant flowers all summer long.

  • Seeds of Mystery

    140805-CarrotSeeds
    140805-CarrotSeedsB
    140805-CarrotSeedsC

    So what are these seeds? These are carrot seeds. These are the seeds from one cluster of carrot blossoms. A single carrot will produce many of these clusters, so from one carrot you can get thousands of seeds.

    Every carrot you ever ate at one time looked like this. Think about that the next time you bite into one.

  • Grapes This Year?

    140805A-Grapes

    Every summer we look at the grapes on the champagne grape vine and wonder if they will ripen this year. Most years cool, autumn weather sets in before the grapes ripen. This year looks promising. Maybe this year we will be able to enjoy ripe champagne grapes. In the ten years we have been here, the grapes have ripened only once.

    140805B-Apples

    Even if the grapes don’t ripen, the apples will. This year it looks like they will ripen early, along with the plums.

    140805C-Plums

    There is so much beauty in fruit before it ripens. From the blooming flowers to budding fruit to ripening fruit, there is so much to enjoy. When you watch fruit go from flower to ripened fruit, you are very aware of all the effort it made growing into an apple or plum or grape. You can then take that apple and congratulate it for working so hard to provide you the pleasure of having something delicious to eat.

  • The Magic of Beans

    Beans140804A

    The White Flower Beans are in full bloom. As an experiment, this year I am trimming half of the vines once they get about seven feet tall. I’m also thinning the number of flowers on these vines to see if this will result in larger beans. It works for many other fruits and vegetables, why wouldn’t it work for beans? This fall I’ll compare the beans from the trimmed vines to the untrimmed vines and see if there is a difference.

    Beans140804C
    Beans140804B

    A steady stream of bees visit the bean vines all day long. They find plenty of food in the blossoms and make sure that many flowers get pollinated in return.
    [wpvideo 82GhoJ5r]