Cabbages, butterfly, ladybug and hops

Cabbages fascinate me endlessly. This is a tiny 2nd growth.

This better illustrates what's going one, though these have not filled out like the picture above

I have not seen many butterflies but this one flitted around a lot. It likes verbena, lantanas and coneflower.

here's a late season ladybug. I seem to have manged to keep them in my garden all during the growing season. I swear flowers have been vital for that.

Hop Harvest

Todd here is helping me uncover our mailbox. We made the mistake of harvesting some immature cones but there's plenty more.

Our hops were planted specifically for brewing beer. I am sorta amazed by how many people ask me "What do you use these for?" Goes to show that I have been keeping different company than I used to.

Decades ago I worked on an archeaological project with 2 crews, the limp dicks and the fat lushes. I was a fat lush. But yes, I suppose I might actually consume some simply as tea.

Thought I'd link to this, Harvesting Home Grown Hops, from Ben's Home Brew youtube account. Ben is actually local to Pittsburgh. Todd has gotten brewing and winemaking supplies from his Tarentum store.

Obscure Mailbox, Bumblebee Eater, Cypress Flowers, Rainbow Peppers

My mailbox is getting hard to find.

Sylvia likes to eat bumblebees. If you look closely at the leaf next to her arms, you'll notice a couple balls of pollen from a bee's hind legs. I guess she doesn't like pollen. I get mad at her but she can't help it. Mantises will eat anything that moves.

I stills get a kick out of these flowers and the lacy leaves.

Rainbow peppers are very pretty and VERY hot.

Catching Up Eye-candy

It really is hard to keep up. Here's some non sequential photos that caught my eye.

This was the salad bowl. The beets were in it early on and though they are stunted are still lovely. Enough has survived in it to keep it pretty even though they aren't exactly thriving.

This is a good view of the 2nd crop of cabbages filling out. I get a kick out of this everytime I look at it.

These hops are glorious. It will be worthwhile to harvest them this year. Last year they were far less productive.

This is my 3rd post today! I intend to do one more post. I took too many pretty pictures not to.

Hops

The hops are producing cones. There are 3 varieties cascade, centennial, and unknown. Here we have a cascade cone.

This cascade is in its 2nd year here and it shows. The 1st year I had it in a large container because I wasn't ready to plant it in the ground. This year I had reclaimed enough space and it was pretty clear to me that the plant had outgrown its container.

This unknown variety of hops has shown its gender. A friend who worked at the Mung Dynasty brought me a small pot of what I thought were going to be unknown established pants with rhizomes. Instead they were a small pot of many, many seedlings. Out of that, I repotted some of them into a 9 cell seedling pack. When they got bigger I repotted 6 into small pots. Even later I planted 4 of those into different planters, but kept the 2 still in small pots. Of all of these only this plant which was still in a small pot and stunted for it, has shown any sign of cones.

I'm not a hops expert but I do know that each plant is gender specific. The cone producing gender is female. In most hops farm they only grow female hops. Why these hops have both genders I don't really know, but they do and I intend to keep only the female hops. I might end up discarding the rest of the wild hops if they show signs of being male.

I have tentatively named this female hop either "Mung Duke" or "Duke Mung" because not only did they come from behind the mung dunasty but it also used to be the Duquesne Brewery, where they brewed Duquesne beer, also called "duke."

Who knows, perhaps I have a unique variety. I have tried searching for what these might be without success. Perhaps they will be productive enough to share with other people. I think I will need to keep them for a few years before I know.

Porch Chaos and Hops Buds

Here's a window into my porch, my main center of potting and planting. I seem to have an ongoing fight with myself to eliminate small seedling pods. I keep planting things out and then acquiring new plants somehow.

The majority in this 1st image are Siam queen and lemon basil. I was at a nursery in Washington county that had some pots with 50+ seedlings crowded together which I couldn't resist buying and dividing. Most are planted out somewhere.

Next is the front wall. The salvia guaranitica keeps getting bigger so I keep moving the pots next to it further and further away. I think I have it settled now. This black and blue sage is a magnet for hummingbirds. I have seen 3 this past weekend make a beeline for it and spend considerable time feeding at more than a dozen blooms. The cypress vine is starting to climb so I poked bamboo into the planter for them to reach a good height. I hope that it makes a good screen.

Here's my secondary table with some now empty vases. Projects on this table include future bean seedlings. I decided to pod plant them 1st because the cats often disturb bare soil in bad ways(I mostly suspect SALLY). Better to let these get a little bit of growth before placing them in their final spot. There's also a couple black and blue stalks that broke when I poked the bamboo in that I am trying to root. I think I want a planting or 2 on my back porch to better see more hummingbirds.

And finally, the cascade hops are getting ready. It looks like we'll have a lot more than last year. Many of my wild hops are starting to show similar signs. I should be able to sex them soon.

Hops, Tulip Bulb and a Cute Kitty

It's getting hard for me to come up with titles. Given that these posts are photo driven rather actually about any specific gardening issues.

The cascade hops are growing fast. I might expand the area I have for them to climb on. The salad ball is still filling out but some stuff is getting past its prime like the mizuna. I have nibbled on a couple flower stalks so far. I'm not sure if I want to let it go to seed or harvest the whole thing. It would leave a large bald spot right now. When the nasturtiums fill in I might pull it. The lettuce hasn't bolted yet.

Should I be explaining stuff here? See, I can say a bunch of random things about whatever, but it's sorta easy for me. Once I talk to people, especially new gardeners I'm struck by how little they know.

I'm not a tidy gardener. I groom this ball and my saladbowl, and my beds actually by kinda grazing. If I see a leaf overshadowing something else, I'll pull it and eat it on the spot. If it's a whole plant I generally save it for later.

I pull a few plants up by the roots and put them in a glass of water on my chocking board. Basically, for the past few weeks I have made a series of 'salad bouquets' Really, they are quite pretty.

The bouquet on the right is from a month ago. That's mizuna and fennel. They must be 500% bigger now, especially the mizuna.

I am pretty happy with how my tulips turned out but now I am a bit confused by this recent development. What you see here is a tulip bulb forming just bove the surface of the soil. There seem to be 6 of these growing.

Does this mean my tulips are really happy, or are they very unhappy? It does look like the healthiest tulips are the ones doing this but what do I do with these bulbs?

I tend to treat tulips like annuals, something I pull up and compost when they are done, but these were so pretty and so many passers by commented on how lovely they were. Should I dig them up in a few weeks and store them till September? I will decide soon, won't I?

Sally is a ham for the camera. This is her response to "Sally, do something cute." Need I say more?

More Stuff!

As promised, I am doing another post. It's May you know? There is just so much beauty I could cry, but I won't.

Here's the cheddarhead eating by my saladbowl, which is filling out nicely though this isn't its best side. Behind it is lacinato kale and an eggplant. Yup, I haven't caught up with everything here.

This planter has a matching one, sorta, on the other side of the steps. It started last year with lipstick salvia which i wintered with partial success. The salvia was kinda ragged so i filled it in with mizuna which already needs to be harvested, allysum and of all things hops! The hops are an unknown ungendered quanity. A friend gave me seedlings this spring and just for kicks I am keeping a few to see what's up. Who knows, I might end up having a new variety.

This porch still life is my fancy swedish ivy, mona lavender, with vases of chamomile and acapulco anise hyssop. I trimmed back the feral chamomile a touch but wanted to see if the buds would bloom in a vase. They have.

Chives are so easy and pretty, especially when they bloom. In the background is one of my bokashi buckets.

Well, I think that's it for today. I have a lot that I haven't covered.

Garden Eyecandy

This might be obnoxious but I haven't been updating fast enought to catch up with my garden. Everything is just exploding!

This tomato is not in an ideal habitat but this isn't about perfect tomatoes, it's about fun and maybe sharing with the neighbors. It's a cherry, either juliet or super sweet 100. Don't be fooled by it's shady spot. I have plans to somehow train this against the railroad tie wall where there is plenty of sun. I just think I will have to tweak the balance of nutrients in its soil more carefully than a standard planting.These feral chamomile have miraculously not been tread upon. Either my neighbors understand that this isn't a weed or they just think I am crazy and are afraid to damage this flower. I think that they somehow understand that I am up to something special.The saladball is slowly filling out. I plant something else as if this were a sketch I sit with every few days. Always a work in progress. It already looks different than it did from this photo which is maybe a week old.For some reason this little bay laurel makes me happy. It suffered so much this winter and now it looks alive.These cascade hops are in their second year. What a difference a year makes! Maybe it will be worth harvesting this year.This blur of plants are pretty much all greens and all edible. OK, a few aren't but they aren't weeds. I thin them pretty much everyday. It sorta forces me to eat my vegetables. There's mizuna, red cabbage, pansies, florence fennel seedlings, onions and probably something I have forgotten. Damn! I have surpassed the 20 item limit of things I may tag this blog with. Sure, I could have made it 2 posts but whatever.This lacinato kale should be pretty graceful in this pot. I tucked in some allysum and some chervil thinnings from the salad bowl. There's even a basil plant, just basic basil. Now if I can find some red russian kale, I will be happy. I might have to grow it myself. hmph. One disadvantage of Pittsburgh is a lack of exotic stuff. Now if there were enough of a demand I WOULD put more effort into growing my own to share or perhaps sell with to other gardeners.These wallflowers are nice, and half haven't started blooming yet. Tansy, monarda and calendula have yet to flower. This wall is built of found things. I am quite fond of thrifting, indeed, my latest project is the result of thrifting, actually a good find. More on that shortly. I don't know if I have said it here, but I sorta feel like recycling in whatever form is a very patriotic thing to do. I don't want to be preachy, but when I think about things coming from far, far away and using fossil fuels to do things when it's all in your backyard it kinda upsets me.This cat always looks scared. here is a rare view of my backyard. It needs a lot of work. This was taken through my kitchen window. I don't think this cat is feral, she's just a scaredy cat.

These are my tulips at their best this year. Already more than half of them are done blooming. Just this yesterday I heard a very small child say very clearly "TULIPS" when he passed by with his family. This made my day.

These oyster mushrooms show a new direction I am going in garden synergy. If my experiments work out, I'll share them. Honestly for the most part if I show you something here I think you should try it for yourself. The stuff I am trying that I'm not sure about, I don't share.

These ants with amber distended bodies fed from my hummingbird feeder until I filled the ant guard with water. I really do not like ants but these look like jewels. These ants are actually, at least on my browser, a fifth of the size they are here. The black surface they are walking on is a cast iron shepard's hook which looks fairly smooth in normal vision.

I hope that in the future that I will stick to my goal of posting twice a week. I think the poison ivy set me back. Anyway, already I have a lot to document.

Progress

For lack of a better idea, I titled this 'progress' really because I wanna see some. Spring is here but the my garden has yet to explode in growth like it will.

The romaine lettuce isn't large yet but it is adapting to its habitat. Hopefully something will sprout on the surface above within a week.


This bay laurel is in it's 2nd year. I will try not to neglect it as much as I did last year and maybe it will grow 6 inches like my plant guides tell me it will. Those red pebbly things are hydroton, expanded clay that I've experimented with in making selfwatering containers last year. I topped this bay laurel with it to possibly discourage fungus gnats from getting to it.


Finally, my mint is showing some life!


A friend told me of some hops growing where he works. I asked if he'd share a rhizome with me and he brought me a pot full of these! These are hops seedlings! I decided to save a few and try to figure out their genders later on. Allegedly, these have some sort of Belgian beginnings. All I know is that there were 2 varieties of hops where these came from that have been there for about 10 years. If I am lucky, I might end up with something unique and good.


My red mustard seedling after many months, are growing true leaves. Again, I'll have to thin these when they finally start to grow.


This is cascade hops I transplanted from a pot I grew them in last year. Last year they weren't very productive, this year I believe will be very different.