Garden!Porn -- Mid-summer edition

[apple_pathways]

Everything going on in the world of my garden! There are tiny little golf ball-sized pumpkins, and we should be harvesting yellow squash within a week. The chinese cabbage will take over the world, if I don't eat it all first!


(Click any picture to see a larger version.)

Pride of the pumpkin patch! My best vine so far.	Another view of the pumpkin vines. The trellis is working out great! (Also, you can spy these interesting little tree-like things one of my neighbors grows every year. I cannot remember the name, though!)	My Moon & Stars Watermelon vine. It's a bit behind--no baby watermelons yet!	My Charentais (french canteloupe) melon vine. Again: no melons yet!
This broccoli should not be flowering! Bad, BAD broccoli! (It grows much better as a cool weather crop. I keep trying to tell my mom...)	Cucumbers! There are little baby cukes, but I didn't get a picture of them.	Chinese cabbage! Producing like gangbusters. I had some for dinner last night, and it was yum!	The beans (purple Violettos and Emerite haricot vert) have finally taken hold of the fence, and are reaching for the sky! There are flowers, but no baby beans yet. (In the background: one of my neighbors has apparently claimed his plot of land for both America and Italy, the greedy bastard...)
Another view of the beans, this one with lovely flowers!	Tomatoes! All green and healthy...	...and producing babies!	evilhippo has called chard the "hipster of vegetables", and I can't help but agree!
Just look at these hip, gorgeous bastards!	They'd best not get too cocky, though: woodchucks are the tough, hipster-hating jocks of the garden!	For some reason, there are a lot of empty plots this year. He's some lovely pink weeds growing on one of them.	And I know these are weeds, and therefore I should hate them, but: oh, they are darling little blooms! And the combination of the orange-y coral and the bright blue is just stunning!

In other plant news: Thursday's hail storms in Chicago have severely damaged the Garfield Park Conservatory. My friend actually works there as their director of family programs. It's a beautiful conservatory, with a massive collection of plants. The whole conservatory is devastated, with nearly all of the glass roofs laying in ruins and 80% of the plants damaged. It's closed until further notice.

If you can, please consider donating to help repair the damage! You can do so on their webpage.

Comments

[rachel2205.livejournal.com]

I love that your gardening is SRS BZNZ not just some weedy crap. If a zombie apocalypse does come you have some useful skills there.

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

Oh, they all look lovely! I'm so jealous that you've got enough space for viney plants and climbing beans. And you've already got tomatoes. I have a feeling tomatoes are going to be hard-won for my plants this year.

You are going to need to let me know what those little tree things are. I'm curious now.

Boo to the chard-hating thug woodchucks! They should get together with my squirrels and go live somewhere else and let our hippie selves keep our hipster veggies.

[ravelled-ribbon.livejournal.com]

Your garden is so pretty! I am very jealous, all I have is my kitchen windowsill.

[ladylovelace.livejournal.com]

Every time you post pictures of your garden, I get the urge to go dig a plot in the back yard and start growing stuff.

Then I remember that the dog would just eat it. So I am gardening vicariously through you and might pop up to the Sunday market for some herbs.

I am deeply excited for your Moon & Stars watermelon. It has such a fantastic name!

[stick-poker.livejournal.com]

Cor, serious vegetable goodness. Being able to grow melons would be insanely cool.

If I can be nosey, I'm kind of intrigued by the set-up there, or rather the lack of boundaries between plots - is this like a corner of back yard? Or what I would call allotments?

[javidan.livejournal.com]

Garden plot looks awesome!
I finally went out to look at my stuff yesterday---and water, lord it's HOT. I'm excited to see my tomatoes look pretty healthy this year...keeping my fingers crossed.

And too bad for the Chicago Conservatory---we just got hail this evening!

[alias-amy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the shout out regarding the Garfield Conservatory! It's a lovely place, a real oasis in the midst of a neighborhood that gets very little city attention. I got caught in that hailstorm on Thursday as well, and the streets flooded in less than 20 minutes. CRAZY.

Enjoyed the chat room the other day immensely, btw. Thanks so much for doing that!

[zolac-no-miko.livejournal.com]

Plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaants~!! :DDD

[jobey-in-error.livejournal.com]

There's a whole harvest sitting there! Wow. Gorgeous.

Between you and evilhippo, I'm finally looking up chards... oh, it's silverbeet. So now I have a reference point but I've still never had any. ;)

[tierfal.livejournal.com]

YOUR GARDEN PORN IS BEAUTIFUL.

Also I've never even heard of that hipster!plant before, though I know I've seen it and I'm pretty sure I've eaten in it salads. (Probably because California is the hipster capital of the world, pretty much…) All the same, I lol'd more than a bit. :'D