While summer technically isn’t here yet, it sure has felt like it lately in southwestern PA. The last couple weeks have been crazy dry (like, no rain whatsoever) and crazy hot (90 degree days in late May). It’s required a lot of work in the garden to make sure nothing was burning out or drying up, especially because almost all of our plants are little seedlings that we started indoors. While we may have had a few small casualties, we’ve gotten through the hottest stretch in pretty good shape.
The pumpkins and squashes up front are starting to get flowers! While I think they’re still too small to be doing any hand-pollination, it sure is satisfying to see the big yellow-orange blooms on something that was just a little seed in my basement not too long ago.
One of the blackberry bushes has the cutest little pinkish flower, and our potato plants have started flowering too! I’ll be pruning the potatoes though, for 2 reasons. One, we want all the plant’s energy right now to go into developing the tuber. Two, the aphids love the potato blooms and buds. The amount of little pink, green, and black specks I’ve picked off those things in the past couple days is wild.
The peas are growing like champions, popping the cutest little orchid-like flowers. The honeysuckle vines (which I did not plant, and are invasive) smell absolutely wonderful. I’ve picked a bunch of the flowers and am going to be experimenting with making honeysuckle wine, simple syrup, and maybe even use it to scent some soap. Then when they stop blooming and providing food for the pollinators, we’ll be cutting them back as usual, so they don’t take over the whole fence.
And just a couple pictures of some flowers that we won’t be producing us any food, but are beautiful nonetheless.
I hope your gardens are starting to pop too! Can’t wait to share the fruits of these little blooms with you.
Mark & Beth's Homegrown Adventure 