Bumblebee on Zebulon Sunflower
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@areallysmallfarm
Bumblebee on Zebulon Sunflower

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Beets
I've never grown beets before (the big stock feed mangles don't count) so I decided to plant a mix of color and shape varieties plus a variety named "Cylindra". Beets need a deep loamy soil free of stones and rocks and my soil definitely does not meet that description, but I planted anyway. Almost all the seeds sprouted and for the first two months the plants stayed small putting on just a few leaves. I weeded, thinned out the smaller plants, pulled soil up around the others, and mulched with a light scattering of old hay over the plants during the July drought and heat wave. On the hottest days I went up and down the rows watering the plants. This little bit of TLC had paid off and I am now harvesting beets. There are long dark red, round dark red, round bright red, orange, and white beets and all sweet and earthy at the same time.
Cucuzzi!
It won’t be long now before I can harvest the first cucuzzi squash. I’m thinking it will taste better than the frost-nipped one I got last year. A few days of growth, a more little water and this and few more will find their way onto a dinner plate.
There are many flowers being produced everyday which is much better than last year or the year before when only one seed sprouted and then did nothing. The white flowers open late in the day and stay open all night. By mid-morning the next day they are withering. Even as they wither the flowers look interesting as the delicate tissue between the veins thins out and turns opaque.
Bumblebees (Bombus ternarius and B. vagans)
The milkweed plants in the rough areas outside of my gardens have been covered with bumble bees everyday for the past three weeks from sunrise to sunset. So far I have identified two bumblebee species, Bombus ternarius (top) and B. vagans (below), but there are at least two other species. Besides the bumblebees I have seen butterflies (monarchs, Milbert’s tortoiseshell, great spangled fritillary, dusky skipper), honeybees, and several species of the so-called solitary bees on the milkweed flowers.
First squash of the summer
Just 60 days after planting and I am harvesting the first of several varieties of summer squash: Yellow Crookneck, Straightneck, Zuchetta Tromba d'Albenga, and Zuchetta Rugosa Friulana. There is also a small and tender Spaghetti Squash which is really a winter squash but young fruits are edible and good, too.

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Dew on spider and web in the corn patch
Dew on corn tassels
Finally
The warm weather and rain have worked together with the soil to create tiny cucumbers with lovely trichomes. Soon it will time to make pickles and relish.
Cucuzzi Squash Flower
One of my new squash varieties, the Cucuzzi Squash, has really put on a lot of growth. I tried growing this squash last year but it did not do well. The seeds were slow to sprout and the plants did not seem to recover from the struggle of germination. This year I had better success with germination. It was fast and almost 80%. Then the new plants put on growth just a little slower than the other squash varieties growing with it.
This morning while making my rounds in the gardens I saw two flowers on the Cucuzzi. They are staminate but when I looked more closely at the vines I could see many small pistillate flowers forming. Pistillate flowers are the ones that will become fruit if pollinated by the staminate flower. That's where the bees come in and there were plenty of them out and about, too.
Although it is called a squash Cucuzzi is really an edible variety of the birdhouse gourd Lagenaria siceraria. The fruits are elongate and are eaten when between eight and ten inches long. They can be cooked like summer squash. Allowed to grow larger they will become huge bean pod-shaped gourds.
There have been reports of toxic reactions to Cucuzzi so I think on my first meal I 'll just take a few bites. The toxic compounds are called cucurbitacins which are triterpenoids found in all squash, melons, and cucumbers and give these fruits a bitter taste. Cucuzzi that are overly ripe or stressed from bad weather will contain more cucurbitacins that normal and will taste very bitter. The cucurbitacins are not without benefits and have been investigated as possible treatments for cancer especially one called Cucurbitacin E. I've been eating squash and cucumbers for a long time with no side effects so I think that this squash/gourd on the menu will be just fine.
Pollinators
Honeybees aren’t the only insects that pollinate flowers. Syrphid flies, bumblebees, other bees, and certain species of butterflies and moths are all active pollinators of wild and cultivated plants.Â

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Companion Plants
Common milkweed and Dakota Ivory Corn growing together.
The East Garden
This is my east garden which, in 2010, was a fallow hay-field with miserable pale brown soil that grew daisies and stunted grass. Since them I've added tons of moldy rotten hay, biomass from vetch and rye cover crops, and bedding with manure from my sheep sheds. The soil is still stony but the texture has become crumbly and the color much darker, sure signs of increased organic matter.
The view in the picture is looking south at the winter squash trellis and the Painted Mountain Corn. To right of the corn is a strip of yellow mustard, buckwheat and vetch planted to feed pollinating insects. In the foreground and out of focus are other crops: more squash on the right, shell and drying beans, tomatillos, mixed varieties of beets, amaranth, and Zebulon sunflowers.
The garlic has been harvested and in their place I have transplanted most of the broccoli and cauliflower, about 75 plants so far, that I started earlier. Once the onions are harvested I will be transplanting more broccoli and cauliflower and some small cabbages that might do better if they had some room. There is also a potato patch about 100 feet long by 12 feet wide and strip of Kamut wheat. Along the east side of the garden is a wide strip of vetch planted for the bumblebees and other pollinators and as a larval food plant for the clouded sulfur butterfly (Colias philodice) and the alfalfa butterfly (C. eurytheme).
Everything is growing wildly this summer from a combination of warm weather, rain, and soil improved by organic methods. Just today silks and pollen appeared on some of the Painted Mountain Corn only fifty-four days since planting.
Nantes Carrots and Cicoria di Chiavari
This year I planted more carrots than last year in three rows for a total of about 120 feet. One row did poorly but the other two are looking good. The plants are getting crowded so I'm thinning them for better production.
I planted some other root crops this year that I have never tried before. One is a variety of chicory called Cicoria di Chiavari (root chicory). The leaves are tough and fuzzy, not good salad greens. The roots get very large and can be cooked like parsnips. Their flavor is slightly bitter but when mixed with carrots, onions, and garlic the different flavors seem to go well and the bitterness is moderated. I cooked up a batch last week in a little oil in a covered sauce pan over low heat until they were tender. Today I've gone through the row again and thinned out more crowded plants. These, the carrots, some shallots, and garlic with a little fresh parsley and maybe some new potatoes will be on the menu for dinner tonight.
Circinate vernation in tendrils of tromboncino zuchetta (Cucurbita moschata).
Potato Flowers
Although potatoes are grown for their starch tubers they also have some very nice above ground features. The flowers, for example, are large, showy, and often colorful. I have noticed that potato varieties with pigmented tubers often have flowers of similar color. Blue potatoes will have blue flowers, red potatoes pink flowers, and white potatoes white flowers. So far I have not seen yellow flowers on yellow potatoes, just white. The flowers of potatoes are fragrant, too, smelling a little like petunia and tobacco leaf.

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American Toad (Bufo americana)
One of the best insect eaters in the garden, a healthy full-sized American toad eats about 1.12 grams of insects each day. Depending on the size of the insects eaten that could be as many as 1,000 insects.
You can encourage toads in your garden by placing small pieces of wood or rocks along the edges where they can hide during the day. Mulch also provides good hiding places. Toads cannot drink water but can absorb it through their skins so a shallow saucer of water in a shaded spot is good for them. Change the water every few days so it does not become stagnant.
Toads breed in shallow ponds and other wetlands with standing water. Protecting wetlands from pollution and destruction will ensure that toad (and frogs, too) do not decline in population size.
If they can escape predators and avoid other dangers toads can live between five and ten years. That’s a lot of years of insect eating.
Stick Logging
I’m getting closer to finishing the squash trellis and not a moment too soon as the plants are at the stage where they are ready to vine. Yesterday I cut 10 more balsam fir that are about the right diameter to use as poles on the trellis. These need to be trimmed of small branches and cut to length before I haul them to the garden. I also hauled in eight 12-feet long poles (the ones in the photo) that had been cut and trimmed the day before. Then I cut a few more very short and spindly sapling firs (size, not age as most of these are 10 or more years old) for stakes. When the temperatures cooled down a bit in the late afternoon I attached the poles to the trellis frame using wood screws. The whole thing is looking good.
Although I dislike the word “management” there is more to my stick logging than getting poles. My other goals are to let a little more sunlight to the forest floor and encourage the growth of herbaceous vegetation like bunchberry, dewberry, and small sedges and grasses, and some woody shrubs like hazel, Canada honeysuckle, and blueberry. All of these plants and the others that come in will provide forage for many species of moths and butterflies. The fruiting plants will feed songbirds and ruffed grouse. Another goal is to make room to plant a few white pines. I don’t expect the pines I plant or any of the trees I am releasing from competition to become large in my lifetime but that is not why I plant trees.