Finally got the last of the chiles and the "Tomatoberry" tomatoes in the ground, as well as about 10 cannas.

Progress report: the cannas, planted as roots June 5, are now 8-12" tall, and ready to have complementary summer company (snaps, ornamental sweet potatoes) in their large containers. The 'Tomatoberry' tomatoes, now 16"+tall, are on their first set of 'keeper' blossoms (I always nip the first set, to encourage root growth). Santaka chiles are still very small, but holding their own; the poblano & serrano chiles in the front garden & the habanero in back container group are growing like mad, & branching without having to be pruned. Sweet!

My hops plants, in their second year. Cascade on the left, Centennial on the right. Just started sprouting little cones.

We're limited by our deck space, but I think we have a good selection going: two tomato varieties (yellow pear and early girl), fresno & habanero chiles, mini bell peppers, basil, mint, thyme, rosemary, oregano, and tarragon.



The plants are quite a bit bigger now, and they are producing significant numbers of fruit.

Late to the posting here, but I have a Cherry tree, and a garden that refuses to grow anything other than herbs, so I have chives, sage, mint, several basils, oregano, thyme, rosemary. I harvested the cherries Sunday and made a pie on Monday. That's all I ended up with, though, as it's still a young tree (about 4 years old) AND I got Cherry Fly worms so a good 1/4 of the cherries had to go. Next year I have to spray and put out traps in the early spring.

Here's the cherries "on the hoof" and in the pie

Garden abundance for sure! Currently overrun with various greens (romaine, arugula, mesclun mix, rainbow and golden chard, mustard spinach, dandelion greens); celery, garlic, and all manner of herbs. Picked a small container of sugar snap peas so far. Tomatoes are looking gorgeous--lots of fruit already visible and flowers galore. Have some banana peppers that should be ready by the weekend. Cuke and squash babies all chugging along and fried up a lovely batch of squash blossoms this weekend.

Things might have gotten off to a slow start but the nice temps and moderate rainfall have moved things along nicely. And the best news of all--the dogs have (so far) stayed out of everything except one pot of peppers (stupidly placed between them and their view of the scene at Scooters) and a pot of cranberry beans and another of squash whose leaves they've munched on a bit. Looking forward to the coming weeks! Anyone looking for greens let me know--I'm open to a reasonable trade

our first Pan Patty Squash is growing quickly!

Significantly fewer flowers on the chile plants after that storm

jblth wrote:Significantly fewer flowers on the chile plants after that storm

Yep. Right now my garden is full of golf ball sized hail, and not much more than that.

Yep. Tomatoes & ice just don't go well together. Also the eggplant & beans got punched, literally there are holes in the leaves. Lost several flowering stems on my sungolds.

Man am I glad I don't make my living this way.

Thank you to the farmers.

I'm heart-broken... After having worked so hard to get around the problem of rabbits eating so many of our plants, we lost most of the garden to the hail and wind last night...

Antonius

While I haven't been out yet to check the front garden, my back container garden, where the majority of my edibles are located, is completely unscathed. Strangely, the hail bypassed Rogers Park completely, and we received nothing more than an interesting lightning show, a lot of racket, a bit of wind, and a good soaking rain. We didn't have so much as a flickering light, either. Go figure.

I note that the same oddball weather pattern is continuing this morning, with the big storms going due south over the lake. They are not skirting the lakefront, today, though, but rather saving their bombardment for NW Indiana. Ouch!

I got a look at the damage when I got up this morning, it sure ain't pretty.

The hail came down really hard and destroyed my daughter's kiddie pool:



Cucumbers did not fare well at all, this was a 2-3' tall plant:



This was a tomato plant, that was also about 3' tall:



There was only one good thing that came from it - free ice:

we missed the whole thing out in North Hoffman Estates, not even any rain
So far, the tomatoes and the pan patty squash are doing well
melons, peppers eggplant and (now denuded beets) are not doing so well..
One of my neighbors was tossing 6 tomato cages and the green soaker hose
I scored!

This being our first real garden I'd appreciate any advice....
and some close-ups

It is probably less of a problem since you aren't using containers, but al of the rain this season has probably washed out a lot of the nutrients in the soil. A good fertilizer might be worth a go. I know it did wonders for my plants.

the garden is new and while the contractor provided a few yards of topsoil (full of little clay balls) I added about 3 cubic yards of screened compost from the village. Spent a few days at the village yard with buckets, bins and bags and shook the soil thru a chicken wire mesh screen to remove all the big chunks of branches and clay and lots of other junk...

What kind of fertilizer should I use? Miracle grow?

I think it is "Bonnie" brand, though probably no different than miracle grow. It just made a big difference after all of the rain, so it is something to try. Really, as far as I can tell you just need to provide water and nutrients, and then hope you get enough sun.

A couple of questions for those of you with more gardening experience:

I have a couple of exuberant zucchini plants. They have been flowering wildly, and tiny zucchinis have gotten started, but about half of all the babies have shriveled and died. Is this kind of a "self pruning" aspect of the plant, to protect those that are succeeding? Because they don't like growing in pots? (It's a balcony garden so everything is in pots.) Or should I be looking for some sort of infestation or other issue? (I lost all my pansies to little white web-building crawlies, so I don't rule out bugs.)

I've also got a fair bit of arugula planted, and that is kind of baffling me. I planted seeds last year for wild arugula, and I got loads of lovely but tiny plants (leaves not much more than an inch long). When it got hot, I let them go to seed, so I've got a pot full of self-seeded little plants coming up again -- but the pot next to the arugula, where seeds appear to have dropped, the arugula plants are huge -- leaves two to four inches in length, and looking much more like the stuff you buy at the store. So what happened that caused some to grow into large plants -- more space? other plants in the pot? (One pot is just arugula, but the one with the stray seeds also has a couple of onions and a load of thyme.)

Everything else is doing splendidly -- mostly herbs, a few onions, and one micro-tomato (I only get about 6 hours of sunlight a day, so it was suggested that smaller tomatoes would be more likely to ripen). But the zucchini and arugula have me wondering.

Thanks for any insight.

Zucchini is pollinated by insects with a very small time window (hours) for the female blossoms to be pollinated. The nascent fruits of unpollinated female blossoms will shrivel. With a small number of plants pollination misfires are common unless there are a lot pollinating insects around.

Growing zucchini in pots may cause problems that are more likely to show up in foliage or reduced blossom production.

Zucchini are prime targets for squash vine borers. Because the adults fly, growing on a balcony is no panacea. Squash grown on the ground tend to put out roots at vine nodes and so can tolerate losing the lower part of the vine. The borer destroys the ability of the plant to transmit nutrients and water up the vine. If you catch signs of a borer early, slitting the stem to get at the borer and kill it can work. Unfortunately, borers can cause the whole plant to wilt and then die pretty quickly. With any luck you will be suffering from zucchini surfeit before the plant dies.

ekreider wrote:Zucchini is pollinated by insects with a very small time window (hours) for the female blossoms to be pollinated. The nascent fruits of unpollinated female blossoms will shrivel. With a small number of plants pollination misfires are common unless there are a lot pollinating insects around.

Growing zucchini in pots may cause problems that are more likely to show up in foliage or reduced blossom production.

Zucchini are prime targets for squash vine borers. Because the adults fly, growing on a balcony is no panacea. Squash grown on the ground tend to put out roots at vine nodes and so can tolerate losing the lower part of the vine. The borer destroys the ability of the plant to transmit nutrients and water up the vine. If you catch signs of a borer early, slitting the stem to get at the borer and kill it can work. Unfortunately, borers can cause the whole plant to wilt and then die pretty quickly. With any luck you will be suffering from zucchini surfeit before the plant dies.

Thanks so much. I'm guessing I'm seeing the shriveled nascent fruits from not having enough insects.

We have a lot of trees here, but not a lot of folks grow veggies -- so I'm hoping that means that the area is not all that attractive to borers. The plants look pretty enthusiastically healthy, just those few little shriveled squash. So I'm hoping your first scenario is the one I'm looking at.

My apricot harvest for 2011. Thought about making preserves, but I ate it instead.

oops! let the broccoli get to flower...

found a soup recipe for the flowers.

yanked the tomato plants today and had a large green harvest.