Tomayto, Tomahto

All four of the tomato plants have green tomatoes on them now!  The plants smell heavenly, too.

Mama Leone (A red paste tomato)

Black Icicle  (purple tomato)

Costoluto Genovese (red tomato)

Djeena Lee's  (orange tomato)

A jungle of tomato plants and borage in the center of the garden.
In the foreground are leeks (R) and celery (L).  

Does this image make you yearn for a pot of homemade soup or a Bloody Mary?

Nearly ready to be pickled.

Now, that's wee!

Mother Nature is the finest architect.

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Growth spurt

Suddenly there is fruit on the vines!  It never ceases to amaze me how much growth can occur in the garden in a single day.  Saturday afternoon I spotted the first of the Black Icicle tomatoes as well as a single tiny green orb that will become a Mama Leone tomato.  Today, these same tomatoes are literally twice the size!

Everything in the garden continues to grow rapidly.  Even a couple of the soybean seeds have finally sprouted.  The borage and bergamot blooms are in full swing and attracting many different types of bees to the garden, as well as dragonflies.  So far, with the dragonflies on patrol, there aren't any pest problems.

I suspect that by this time next week the garlic will be ready to harvest.  The warmer temperatures earlier in the season have really moved growth along.

Borage

Mama Leone

Watermelon

Muskmelon

Collard greens

Cucumber
C'mon, how cute is that little lady?

Black Icicle

Butternut squash

Pie pumpkin

Red beet with a couple golden beets in the background.

Bergamot

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Introducing Wright Garden Recipes!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Wright Garden Recipes

Garlic scapes

Seemingly overnight scapes appeared on the garlic plants.  Scapes are the would-be flowers, but we want the focus of the plant to remain on producing a bulb of garlic, not flowers.  Once the scapes are long enough that they  curl, cut them off, but don't toss 'em into your compost bin.  Save them and cook with them.

The stem of each scape contains loads of flavor and can be used in a myriad of ways.  In the past, I've thinly sliced the stems and have used them in soups, stir-frys, marinara sauce, and pesto in lieu of garlic cloves.  Where you would use garlic, the scapes make an excellent substitute.  This year, I plan to use them to make a compound butter.  In fact, the scapes will be ground to a paste in our new molcajete!  The compound butter can then be rolled and frozen in wax paper so we'll have a supply of garlic butter on hand.  Hmm, this gives me an idea.  Perhaps I should maintain a tandem food blog that includes recipes for foodstuff such as this?  In the meantime, back to Wright Gardens...

Four collard green plants are growing in the patch of straw.
The 2' square beds are home to a (L to R) Minnesota Midget Melon (muskmelon) plant and a Golden Midget Watermelon plant.

Tomato flower

Potato flower (Yep, those delicious starchy tubers)
My Bonus-Mom planted a couple potato eyes last year but nothing much happened.  One plant returned this year and is thriving!

The appearance of garlic scapes signifies that the garlic is approximately two weeks away from being harvested.  Shortly, the leaves will begin to brown one-by-one from the bottom working toward the top of the plant.  When there are only 4-5 green leaves remaining, it's time to harvest the garlic.  Seed Savers Exchange provides an excellent Garlic Growing Guide at their web site.

To keep critters from munching on our strawberries, as if the bed is a sweet buffet, netting was added around the bed and secured with stakes.  I don't mind loosing some fruits and veggies to wildlife but every time a berry is a day away from being ripe, I anticipate picking and eating it.  The following day, when I reach the strawberry bed, the berry is gone or has been half eaten!  Hopefully, the netting works to keep birds and animals out.  It would really be a drag if an animal made it's way underneath one end of the net and then couldn't manage to easily get back out after they've had a snack.  They'd likely make a mess of the bed and plants trying to get out. We'll see how this turns out.

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Fresh and fruity with a side of mantid

The weather is perfect and everything is growing vigorously.  It seems like in the course of one week everything in the garden has doubled in size.  With the exception of the French green bean seeds and the soybean seeds, everything else that was planted in the garden has sprouted and is doing well.

The tomato plants each have numerous flowers, and even the okra plant is sporting a couple flowers.  Two handfuls of red raspberries have been pulled from the bush (the first handful on Sunday and the second today) and boy are they sweet!  A couple strawberries will be ripe and ready to eat before the end of the week, too.  Many of the red raspberries will be turned into jam.  In fact, our kitchen will be a part-time canning factory throughout the summer.  Whole fruit and vegetables, sauces, jams and pickles will be canned and stockpiled in the basement.

Sparkle strawberry

Burgundy Okra

Toro blueberries

Red raspberries

Jam-in-the-works

Spencer found the strawberry bed comfy.

Garden friend - Twelve-spotted skimmer

The butterfly bush started blooming late last week!  We're eagerly awaiting our first butterfly and hummingbird sightings.

Mantids are everywhere!  They're becoming easier to spot now as they've doubled in size.  They're still relatively small by comparison to how large they become but they're growing fast.  

I wish this blog had a zoom feature because the second mantid photo is crystal clear.
When zooming in on my laptop, you can see the mantid's details, including his pseudo-pupil!
It was very brave and patient while I moved the camera closer and closer to snap this photo.  I thanked it and then left it be.
We love these amazing creatures.

We hope you're enjoying this amazing weather, having great success with your gardens, and discovering wonders of your own.

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A perfect day

Yesterday was a perfect day.  The temperature was 95, which feels fantastic to me, with relatively no humidity, and a nice breeze was blowing.  I spent the entire afternoon outside in the yard communing with nature.  The afternoon felt like those of my youth; a girl in a field observing and appreciating nature in all its forms.

Everything in the garden is growing wonderfully and the flower beds continue to dazzle us with splendid shapes and colors.  The irises have given way to poppy, yarrow, peony (they're late bloomers), saliva, and a few Stella d'Ora lily blooms.

The most exciting discovery is that the praying mantis' hatched!  We purchased three eggs in March and placed two in the front yard and one in the back yard.  They've been outside for approximately three weeks now and we've been carefully observing the eggs daily for signs that the mantids have emerged.  The eggs looked differently today, which excited me, but I thought that it was just the beginning of the hatching process.  One side of the egg had a ruffled look to it.

To my delight, as I pulled the camera away from the egg (after taking the above photo), a swift movement toward my left hand along one of the leaves caught my eye.  It was a teeny tiny mantid!  It quickly retreated back into the depths of poppy leaves and disappeared once I turned the camera in its direction.  At their size disappearing is easy to do.  Presently, they are approximately half an inch in length.  Once their presence was known, I spent at least thirty minutes carefully inspecting the stems and leaves for praying mantis's so I could attempt to photograph them.  This proved to be difficult as they were frightened by the large object moving toward them and, even with the super macro setting, the camera had a hard timing focusing on the tiny beings.

Enjoy Sunday afternoon as seen through the lens with Lisa:

A strawberry flower

Wright Gardens

A Question Mark butterfly (Polygonia Interrogationis) 

Skyward

Young red raspberries

Our neighbors young peach tree is finally taller than the fence separating our yards.
These now fuzzy green orbs will be delicious treats come August.

Lamb's Ear

A female carpenter bee.  She's huge!  Nearly two inches in length.
The white stripes are Spackle.  I used it to plug the holes these industrious
creatures created on the eaves of our garage.  I feel bad about doing this now.

Newborn mantid.  Do you see it?

Hello!

Such remarkable creatures mantids are.

Leggy.

Have a better look at these photos at the Wright Garden Chronicles blog itself, or review past blog posts and their respective photographs, at http://wrightgardenchronicles.blogspot.com.  For instance, the August 27,  2011 blog post includes a video of a hummingbird moth that appeared only as a blurry photo in the (then) new-post email.

Enjoy your Memorial Day plans and don't forget to raise a glass to all of the men and women who have died while serving in the U. S. Armed Forces.

Late Spring brings the next wave of color

The tulips have faded and now it's time for the iris' to take center stage.  The plants are well established now and each of the stems have several sockets blooming at once.  The colors are dazzling!  We're excited to head outside each day to see what else is blooming.

A couple poppies have already bloomed but it's just the beginning; there are many more pods forming and getting ready to burst open.  Yarrow and peonies aren't far behind.

Safari Sunset

Sadly, I cannot recall the name of this lovely iris.

Papaver Somniferum

Praying mantis egg nestled in poppy leaves.

Spent poppy

Tour de France

Boo!  Can't tell you the name of this beauty either.

Gingersnap  (She smells like root beer!)

Rave On (orange iris)
Sadly, I cannot remember the name of the iris in the foreground.

Today I pulled the first four radishes from the garden!  The act of harvesting food from the garden, especially when started from seed, is one of life's simplest pleasures.  The entire process of gardening makes me so happy.  These radishes are about four inches in length, they're crisp and have a pleasant bite to them.

Long Scarlet Radish