Early fruits come in

Asian pears and apples

When I checked the orchard last evening, there was a big Shinseiki asian pear on the ground. It had a big rotten area on one side, but the other side looked really good. I wanted to taste it and see how close it was to ripe, so I took it up to the house to cut out the bad part. When I cut into it, the flesh was so crisp it crunched as I cut, and juice dripped from it. Of course I ate it! It hadn't developed much flavor yet--it needs another month--but it was mildly sweet and the texture was terrific. So I decided to go around and shake all the trees. Seven pears and five apples!

The dark red apple on the lower right is the only gala--it really didn't want to come off but it's so blemished I doubt there'll be much to eat on it. Its footie got peeled back early on by a critter and it's been scarred since it was half this size. The two on the top are Honeycrisp and the two smaller ones on the bottom are liberties. The two darker pears are Chojuros, and the light yellow ones are Shinseikis.

Several of these fruits have wounds where squirrels tried to chew through the footies, but I can cut around those. I weighed the bagful and it was six pounds! I put the apples in the fridge (I still need to check and see if the Honeycrisp need cold storage) and the pears out on the counter to ripen a bit more.

The squirrel repellers I put up two weeks ago still seem to be keeping the squirrels away. The liberty and the pears still have another month or so till full ripening, but I'll keep watching them and checking. I'm glad I'm getting some of my harvest!

Summer, Saturday, and Strawberries!

What an incredible day! I spent the morning in a garden workshop at Gracewood Studio (see my other garden blog for today) and came home to a wonderful quiet afternoon, 75º outside, no wind, and a dozen and a half of fresh-pickable strawberries, not to mention a couple snap peas and the first raspberries of the year.

I rinsed these off and have eaten half of them already, with my supper. For the last few I mixed up an easy instant chocolate sauce (1 Tbsp. nonfat Nancy's yogurt, 1 tsp. cocoa powder, 2 Tbsp. powdered sugar. Adjust quantities for sweetness and thickness), and oh my goodness, what incredible, astonishing flavor. I feel that I am now in a position to HIGHLY recommend Seascape strawberries! They are growing and producing great guns, and throwing runners like it's going out of style, and the berries are so sweet and bright-tasting they practically effervesce. They have exactly the same sprightly bubbliness on your tongue that a perky flute of champagne does. I have no idea how that happens, but it does.

The Liberty apples are growing faster than any of the other apples and pears, about 1.5" in diameter now. The pears have grown, as have the other apples, but they're way behind the Liberties. So far the footies seem to be stretching easily to fit the fruit. I'm wondering if I'll need to go around and partially untwist the footies so they'll stretch more easily. I'm just keeping them under observation for now.

My tuscan kale is so beautifully lumpy! It's also more tender, quicker to cook, and milder than any of the kales I've grown so far. I need to start blanching it because I can't eat it fast enough to keep it under control. It's great with potatoes and vinaigrette.

My bergarten sage in the veggie patch is looking beautiful and blooming more than last year. The other little ones I put out other places are still getting established, but I'm hoping they start looking like this next year. I love the big light blue flowers.

I've learned a bunch about basil this year, trying to grow it for the first time. In mid-may I bought 7 little pots of it and planted them in with my blueberries, and one green one and two purple ones in a pot on the patio. The slugs promptly ate every one I put in the ground, and within a couple weeks the ones in the pot were rotting at the base of their stems and falling over. I told a friend and found that she keeps hers in her greenhouse till June. Two weeks ago, I happened on an herb man at the Oregon City Farmers' Market who told me that basil plants do just fine outside down to 40º, but only after they've been hardened off. My big mistake was buying plants from greenhouses and then setting them out immediately, and not to mention, putting them in the ground without a moat of slug bait around each one. I bought two new green ones from him, and put them outside in the pot with the one living remnant of the purple ones that's still hanging on. I did put a plastic cloche over them when the rain was coming down hard, just to keep them from getting too wet and beat down. July 4th and the dry weather are both coming. The fragrance is fantastic. I pruned the sprout tips tonight and put them in with the potatoes I cooked. Mmmmm. This is turning into a wonderful year.

My apples have footies!

It's been a busy spring, but the veggies and fruits have been doing great without much help from me. But I finally got in with them today, weeded the orchard, put footies on all my apples and pears, and made a first pass on a bird-proof cover for the strawberry bed.

I also took a bunch of pictures. My tuscan kale is really looking great! It definitely is tuscan kale, lumps and all! I took a nibble out of one leaf today, just to see what it tasted like. It was very mild, thick and chewy. It's probably going to take a lot of cooking. I'll be trying some soon.

The broccolis are 18" tall! The potatoes are a foot tall and a couple are starting to bloom. I don't know what happened to the potatoes, but they practically leaped out of the ground. Maybe the soil was warmer? I still haven't put hay on them but I will soon. June is usually the last month of rain, but it's so weird this year, who knows what will happen?

I counted 172 cherries on my Montmorency tree today. Time to get a fruit fly trap on there.

The Seascape strawberry plants are looking really great, and I can't believe the berries!

And here are the footies! Between the Gala, Honeycrisp, and Liberty apples, the Bartlett pear, and the Shinseiki and Chojuro asian pears, I put footies on 53 pieces of fruit today. If they all make it to maturity—which they won't—that will be a lot of fruit! Here's a nicely-twisted footie on a Chojuro baby. I'm prepared for the eventuality that some of them will fall off or blow off. I'll go down with some wire and tie them back on when (if) that happens.

And here's what one of the better-laden branches of the Shinseiki looks like.

Here are two little Honeycrisp babies before I put the footies on. So cute! I'm really hoping some of them make it to harvest because they are sooooooo delicious! There are eleven now so there is a chance.

Whatever happens this year, it's going to be interesting again.

The apples are in!

Well, so much for not hurrying the apples along. The rains really started coming down and when I went down the next morning, one of them had a crack in the skin.

I figured it was from how much water the trees must be soaking up after our three-month dry spell, when the apples really don't want grow any bigger. I thought, if one more gets a crack, I'll bring them all in. That night we got 2.4" of rain, and while it was coming down at 2:30 in the morning, I decided I'd bring them all in as soon as I could get outside in the morning. So I did. There was a bucketful!

There were so many I put them all out on the counter after I washed them so I could count them.

Twenty-one in this batch, plus the five in the fridge and the four I'd already dried—makes thirty! Way more than I thought were on the tree! Wow! Hooray for Liberty apples!

It's apple time!

There's not much left in the garden to harvest besides the potatoes I'm still bringing up every week, but the apples are coming on in the orchard! I went out this morning with a bucket and got 5 that came off in my hand as I touched them. There are still nearly a dozen that say, "No, no!" when I pull on them, and I don't want to hurry them! I've already dried 4 that came down or I knocked off in the last two weeks, and though they're really tart, they're certainly flavorful. I've read you can let them sit in cold storage for up to a month and they'll gradually grow sweeter without losing their crispness, so I may just hold these in the fridge till they're all down. I've always wondered how I'll know when they're ripe, but it's completely obvious once the abscission layer has formed in the stem—the slightest touch dislodges them. It's not a question of pulling on them—it's as if nothing is holding them there. I have to pick with both hands to keep them from falling. I honestly don't know why they didn't come down in the breezes we've had.

And they're so pretty! The flesh is crisp, flawless, and white. I can't wait to taste a fully ripe one! The sunscald spots are just thickened, dried areas, on the very surface, and easy to cut out.

I also dried my three asian pears, which have been sitting in the fridge for several weeks, waiting for me to have enough to dry. The two I pulled off early have a little sweetness, but the last one, probably the only one that actually got ripe, has an amazing nectar-like flavor that really surprised me. Now I can't wait till next year, and I hope I'll get a lot more. Yum!

This is my third year of drying fruit that I've bought, but the first time I've ever dried fruit I've grown. I have to say, there's something really deeply satisfying about slicing up a beautiful—and even the not so perfectly beautiful—piece of fruit that I've known since it was a flower bud. I recommend it highly. It seems more personal than the potatoes, which form underground, and you don't know what you're getting till you dig them up. Being able to see them go from buds to flowers, to itty bitty fruits, then get bigger, change color, and then finally—finally!—come off the tree into your eager hands.

Speaking of apples, I've decided to move the young Gala that I planted up in the back yard 3 years ago to where it will get more sun. It has barely bloomed, let alone fruited, where it is, so I moved an ornamental grass to make room for it on the near side of the barn. There isn't any more room in the orchard, so this will be the best I can do for it, but it will definitely get more light, and lots more direct sun. I also bought it a buddy, whom I've already planted. It turns out that Gala and Honeycrisp are good cross-pollinators, and I found a lovely young Honeycrisp on sale this fall, so I'm hoping they'll hit it off and make lots of pretty little apples once they get established. Neither one is as disease-resistant as the Liberty, but they are two of my favorite eating apples, so why not give them a try?

My pineapple sage came through as promised with these scarlet red flowers. It was one of the plants I was struggling to keep watered during the seemingly endless drying winds we had before the rain finally came, because the flower stalks were just forming then and I didn't want to lose them. Next year I plan to get a half-dozen more of these for other places in the garden, and pinch them back a bit so I'll get more flowers. They're a great shot of color for so late in the season.

I still haven't moved my rhubarb plants out of the garden. I've been sidelined for two weeks with a pulled shoulder and I'm still not quite ready to get out and dig holes. I hope I can get them out before the ground gets too cold, but if I have to wait till next spring—oh, well.

I still have several weeks' worth of potatoes waiting to come out, and have a few comments. I was really underwhelmed by the Russian Bananas. They taste fine—mild—but I really didn't get many. Maybe fingerings in general need more richness in the soil? If I didn't such nice clumps from the blues, I'd take it personally. It probably is something I'm doing wrong, but I don't know what. So far I haven't been impressed by any of the fingerlings I've planted. The blues and the red skins, including the Cherry Reds I planted this year, give me  a nice haul of big fat taters, and both blues this year have such outstanding flavor compared to the others, I may just stick to them. I am really impressed with Purple Majesty. I can't say I like them any less than the All Blues, and that's saying a lot. I don't think I could tell them apart except for the white layer under the skin on the All Blues.