VEGETABLE GROWING 2020

@shiney You are right that they were not ideal for eating straight from the plant. Sweet but with some sharpeness to them. Good for jam or mixing with yoghurt or ice cream though!
Now they taste definitely sweeter though! So I might do another round of picking and canning on Sunday.

200 flowers after finally I managed to pollinate two californian pumpkins well enough to actually grow! I always wanted some halloween pumpkins in the garden, let's hope they keep growing..

 

Growing veggies has not been my main priority this year, too wrapped up in decorating, selling a house and now buying a house.

That said, I've been harvesting Climbing French Beans, Courgettes, COS lettuce and my toms are nearing the ripening stage. My Sage, Thyme and Rosemary all doing well and the bay tree has gone mad.

 

Whoop whoop, the carrots are doing well in their makeshift raised bed on the patio. The Teenager was immensely proud to take these for her picnic at the nearby park with her friend.



First harvest of bucket tatties have been eaten as well, delicious with fresh dill. Amazing what you can grow in a postage stamp of an urban garden. Not enough to see the family through the winter, but lovely and fun.

 

Everything proceeds but it is a bit of a mixed bag.

The blackberries are doing great and should now be sweet and dark enough to pass the @shiney test
My kid did what he could to consume a boatload of them, and my wife came up with a tart, but I think I am stuck making more another few kilograms of jam. I like it but probably I will have to gift a lot..


The cucamelons outside are finally cooperating and start to look more like tiny melons and less like microscopic cucumbers..





The front bed is doing well, however the Uchiki Kuri pumpkins are starting looking a bit unwell. The leaves are suffering and all new fruits shrivel and darken when little, before making flowers.
I have four plants spread over different locations and they all seem to suffer from the same problem, so I am starting wondering if perhaps it is just the way they are and after making a few fruits they will wither and die off. The worst off is the small one here on the right side, with only one orange pumpkin (they are small pumpkins, so they ripen early).
Still, because of the looks, cute fruits and tasty flowers I would probably grow them again. Wong says that they are his favourite pumpkins as for the taste, but I still need to test that theory.



The more traditional "californian" pumpkins (normal pumpkins basically) are catching up though and diligent hand pollination seems to be , well, bearing fruits :D
I had little hope actually, because they seemed to only make (edible) male flowers by the boatloads, for the longest time.
Now I am waiting for the Marina di Chioggia to finally open a few femal flowers. That was a big disappointment last year, very fragile variety and loved by slugs and borers, but this year I am giving it an elevated spot, so, who knows..



One corn patch is gettign there, I think I will need to review how to hand pollinate that, because I do not necessarily trust the wind. Last year several cobs were not usable.



The courgettes are very disappointing this year. They seem to suffer a lot despite relatively frequent watering and fertilizing. These are the worst off. I guess I will try removing the affected leaves and see how they react. Otherwise I will put something else in that planter. It is around 120 liters, so I thought they would be happy there, but perhaps on the long run it is not enough soil and too prone to drying.




The arch cheers me up though. The tomatilloes in there are exploding, the tomatoes on the side and back are doing very well. The tromboncinos and squash are climbing on top and the blackberries look happy there too and ripening.
If the tromboncini manage to make more squashes so they cascade from the top it will look exactly as I hoped .
They have a tendency to develop end rot, so I pollinated manually the ones I care particularly about. But is weird. While all the other squashes have an often disheartening high proportion of male flowers, the tomboncini are the other way around.. More fruits than male flowers, so even if I have 6 plants, it can be a struggle to find a male flower with lots of pollen when I need it.







Still in the great scheme of things, they are very healthy and resistant to pests, easy to grow, decorative, productive, very tasty when cured and positively enormous. So I think they will always be my favourite squash
When everything sucks, I normally go check the tromboncino :D

 

Thanks Shiney!
Thing is, today (well, yesterday, it is now 1:30am :D ) all my cucurbitaceae, pretty much, were showing either mildew or some other leaf infection or issue.. Pumpkins, courgettes, cucamelons, you name it.. The only one only mildly affected seem plants which are planted later in the season..
It all happened pretty suddendly, and I am a bit worried about the large pumpkins, because of course it will be 2 months before they are ready.

So I removed diseased and mildewy leaves from all of them..



There is not much left of the courgettes actually.. I hope they will recover..

 

Today's beetroot harvest is a month ahead of schedule this year.


Here they were a few moment ago.





It is normal for the leaves to droop at this stage in the hot day time temperatures. So, fear not - they will perk up again once it cools or if they are heavily watered.

 

@misterQ What a crop!

 

The first of the cucumbers came three days ago.


And, yes, you've guessed it. Here they were a few moments before that...

 

Ditto with your blackberries.


My own have already been picked clean and now cut down to a stump.

This is what they looked like back in June.


The consensus amongst twenty people, from a two-year old to a pensioner, is that half said that the blackberries were acceptably sweet and half exceedingly sour. I fell into the latter camp.


Anyway, this is how they were trained earlier in the year.

 

Continuing the theme of training fruit,

A trident pear in progress.


And, a step-over apple.



The white frameworks are just upcycled parts of a broken drying rack for clothes.