My Backyard Project

Tranplanted three zucchini.

Chinese lantern pumpkin and gourds.  I mulched with decomposting leaves from last fall. In the middle of the picture, daikon plants are growing wildly and more sprouts are up!

Tomatoes are on the ground! I have more tomato seedlings need to be transplanted. 

Corns and cukes!

Thinned Brooks Plums and made plum liqueur. Put 2lbs young plum, 1lb rock sugar, and 1.75L cheap vodka in the clean jar.

Wild strawberries!

Unknown strawberries. A lot of fruits are turning red :)

Beans are popping up around sunflowers.

Leaf vegetables and brassicas. Nasturtiums are up from last year’s seeds.

Bush roses, lavenders, and carrots in the pot.

Oh my sweet babies! :)

Herbs, mints, turnips and spinach. Last year turnips got lots of holes by root maggots. I hope planting in the container with new soil will prevent bugs.

My poor little daikon... Once the plants start bolting, they stop growing the root and get bitter. I blanched the leaves, chopped and mixed with steamed rice. The root was thin sliced, salted and added in the salad :)

春大根、とう立ち始めるともう根が育たなくなので敢えなく引っこ抜き、葉っぱは混ぜご飯に、根っこはサラダに加えて頂きました。

Cooked the last squash I grew last summer and kept in the basement. The inside of butternut squash was bright orange! I cooked squash custard pudding, yum!

去年育てたカボチャ類の最後の一個。涼しいベースメントに保存してれば、長期間中身が腐らずに保護する皮の役目ってすごいね。バターナットスクワッシュ、カボチャプリンにして美味しかった♪

Double Columbine

I started from seed last year and they finally bloomed! Beautiful flowers.

I also have regular columbine. These are colorful - pink, purple, yellow... They spread easily, but I let them do! :)

Daikon plants are bolting...! Last winter cop grew well without bolting though. When plants start bolting, their root or leaves no longer grow well. Darn! I will enjoy daikon leaves and will start seed for winter crop.

Kale and chard. Planted last summer. They started bolting, too. I picked most of leaves and flower shoots and cooked Greens (simmered with bacon, tomato paste and chicken broth). Yum!

Thimbleberry, native plant

Lots of flowers are blooming! Because of too much pruning or not, there was no flower and of course no berries last year. Can’t wait to see edible raspberry-like berries!

Both pictures are from same type of spinach seed; 

above - sowed on 3.17 in the pot, 

below - sowed on 4.1 int the outside container with hard plastic cover.

Onions are bolting!! Snip snip snip. Because of too much nitrogen? 

タマネギとう立ちし始めた！窒素過多か。とりあえず片端から摘み取るのみ。

Grape leavesare growing well.

ぶどう成長中！

Service berry, PNW native plant, edible fruit. It grew more than double for a year, and these are the first flowers!

サービスベリーという野生種。フルーツは食用可。去年もらった苗木から倍以上に成長、初めて開花！

Almost of all apple scions are survived!!

It’s been years to get rid of morning glory in the corner of backyard. Alternatively we just pull the rhizomes as much as we can and covered with scrap sheet metals through last year. However, since last week after thetemperature is going up, I’ve been finding those shoots! Getting fewer though, when I digged this shoot with less than 1 inch piece of root (rhizome), I rather surprized at the survival power...

I heard that planting pumpkins around moning glory might work to kill morning glory because of pumpkin’s enzyme. It sounds interesting, I gotta try it.

3.18.2015