We’ve harvested four heads of lettuce, and the first two are growing back, and are about ready to harvest again.
We have the first little zucchini. We’ll be flooded in a week.
We have a mystery with the peas. My wife bought a packed of snap pea seeds (they were out of snow peas) but some of the pea plants that have come up are snap peas and some are snow peas. We’re starting to get between a half pound and a pound every other day.
I had a mature Norway Maple in the front yard, growing in the city-owned easement (a strip about 15 feet wide parallel to the street) that had hit it’s expiry date and was dropping larger and larger branches. The city came and removed it 4 years ago in the fall. They have a program to replace such trees, the homeowner can select from a selection of native varieties, so I chose a Honey Locust. The sapling was about 8 feet tall when planted 3 years ago, it’s now almost 25 feet. The best part was that last year it was mature enough to flower. The flowers don’t last more than a few days, but have a wonderful scent. This year, there’s even more flower buds and it looks like they will bloom this week if the weather warms a little.
We planted a sterile honey locust about 20 years ago. The plus is no slimy giant seed pods. The con is no gorgeous flowers.
Chicago has been very cool this year. Heat is starting up today. Hoping to see some real growth on the vegetable plants, which are all still very small.
Here’s my spring project. I switched allotments over the winter, taking over my friend E’s plot. One of the deciding factors was the profusion of soft fruit bushes. Here’s something I noted in post #26
Actually, I managed to forage more lumber and other materials. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure - here are those caged fruit bushes. Apart from the netting and nails etc, almost everything I used to build the cages came from Network Rail skips (dumpsters?). Completed a couple of days ago.
The whole structure is about 12 meters long. If you look closely you’ll see an additional 3 frames which will be used to make a cage for the redcurrants (out of shot) when they have finished fruiting and been pruned.
j
Had our first semi-giant strawberry harvest a week and a half ago (Mrs. J. made excellent strawberry shortcake) and there’s plenty more out there that needs picking.
Tomatoes are coming along nicely. Varieties include ‘Juliet’ (an excellent large grape-type tomato, very prolific and tasty), ‘Eye Candy’, ‘Raspberry Burst’ and ‘Purple Calabash’.
Most weeding and pruning in the main ornamental border is done. Roses are blooming well, even the David Austin types that have had winter dieback in the past.
And our Russian pomegranate variety survived the winter and has a bunch of new shoots growing.
Great job! My husband made cages for our two blueberry bushes out of scrap wood left over from our fence and deck projects. Now if only we could make some big enough for the peach trees … lol.
Is that treated wood? If so, what is it treated with?
Some treated lumber can leach poisons into the soil that the plants may pick up and feed to you. Wood treated before 2004 is even more risky, as it’s likely to contain arsenic; but even wood treated more recently isn’t recommended for garden beds. A small trace of copper is a nutrient, but too much of it is a poison.
Thank you! There’s a solitary blueberry in the cage, along with a lot of gooseberries and blackcurrants, and rhubarb which will be moved to a bed later in the year to provide space for another interesting currant bush (TBD).
j
For whatever reason ( presumably price) Network Rail use 4x2 PAR (planed all round, don’t know what the US term would be) which is intended for indoor use and so isn’t treated. I treated it myself with something plant and vegetable safe, so we’re all good. 
j
Great!
I’ve run into a lot of people who just don’t know about that.
– very odd for the railway to be using wood only rated for indoor use, though. Seems it would be a lot more expensive in the long run; especially if it led to the kind of failures that disrupted service, or even caused significant damage/injuries.
Well, I guess as it was thrown into a skip/dumpster it had only been used for temporary structures whilst repairs were taking place. It was all pretty much “good as new” ( once I had got the nails and screws out). I presume that it was never intended for long term outdoor use. But I agree with you - intuitively you would guess that PAR would be more expensive than rough cut wood. I don’t know why they use PAR, but I’m very happy that they did!
j
Raspberries are starting to come in.
Todays haul:
Thursday’s looks to be bigger.
Nothing better than raspberries right off the bush. I used to grow them but got tired of fighting the varmints for them.
Mrs Magill was treated to a full bowl of bush ripened raspberries this morning. I hope it was a respite from all the other shit we’ve got going on right now.
Here in the Chicago area we are nearly SIX inches down in terms of average rainfall (10.25" compared to avg 16.20"!) Current 10-day forecast has rain predicated on several days, but no more than .25" on any one day.
Fortunately, it has been a cool spring/summer so far, so the gardens are filling out nicely. But if we don’t get some good steady rains soon, it is gonna be a LONG July and August!
And we just planted a couple of raspberry bushes in an area that has been problematic for us. No fruit this year, but hopeful!
Had a TON of rabbit damage over the winter. They took a number of relatively new bushes down to the ground. 12 years in this house and 35 years in this immediate area and I’ve never seen the like.
Please take some of ours. My fields have been too wet to work in for most of the spring planting season; whether I’ll be able to catch up any this coming week is still uncertain. They’re mud right now.
(Excess rain in one area is almost always not enough rain in some other area. And vice versa, of course.)
This was abysmal year for our spinach - the stunted plants quickly bolted when we got three consecutive warm days, but I don’t think my Little Marvel peas have ever done so well. Not only did we have ~95% germination but the plants are producing bumper levels of pea pods now.
Yeah - last weekend I drove just 100 or so miles east into NE IN, and there was plenty of standing water in the fields. Crazy!
From my experience, it takes a year for a straw to produce fruit. You should get a handful next year, but the year after…
The wildflowers I planted from seed are just starting to bloom now - I’ve got a couple Moroccan toadflax (white and pink) and a single fivespot. There’s buds on a few other plants - looking forward to see what else happens.
The globe amaranth I started inside look great. I put a few seeds in a pot outside so there will be more blooms later.
I also went to the nursery and got some balloon flowers for the hanging baskets on the front porch - those are pinkish white and a purple/blue. Doing well so far.
Lavender is just finishing up, cardinal flower and aromatic aster are coming along. The oregano has blooms on it too - delicate tiny white flowers.