Mums The Word...

One of my long dormant gardening interests has always been a passion for mums. It started I suppose with the traditional garden mums that pop up at home centers every fall, but it definitely grew from there once I was introduced to all of the truly amazing cultivars and Japanese shaping techniques known collectively as Kiku. I first ran across them when researching a visit to the NY Botanical Gardens a few years ago. Here are just a few of the amazing shapes:

Kengai: Mum Cascades - NYBG

 

Ozukuri: 1,000 Blooms - NYBG

Ogikui: Single Stem - NYBG

Of course you can't just go out to the garden center and pick these up, so it means planning ahead and special ordering plants via mail order to get started. I went with King's Mums out of Oregon which is one of the largest providers in the country of the special varieties used for the Kiku methods. If you check out their site you'll quickly see that there are a ton of different types and varieties of mums. I decided to start with a sampler pack to get started and have a chance to try out a variety of different types of mums. That way I get a chance to experiment a bit and see what works, what I like, and exactly what it takes to grow the different styles. 

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Bringing in the Harvest

The first flush of the summer harvest has begun! This past weekend we celebrated our very first full scale harvest of something besides the salad greens which we've been enjoying for a couple of months now. (And would still be enjoying if not for the groundhog...)

Here's a quick peek at our first haul:

Broccoli and Cauliflower

 It got SUPER hot here the past couple of weeks which caused the broccoli and cauliflower to start to head towards bolting pretty quickly. This is actually the "seconds" of the broccoli. We had harvested the main heads last week because of the heat.

Yellow Summer Squash

 The green squash got off to a slow start after it had to be replanted, but the yellow squash has been cruising right along. The one on the right is about the ideal size, the one on the left was let go a BIT too long. The problem with squash is that it seems to go from tiny to HUGE overnight!

Bush Beans

This is the first flush of the 2012 bean crop. I was actually surprised that these guys were ready to go before July 4th, but they were nice and plump. I've just finished the second planting of bush beans after the salad greens finished, but I had a few plants in just to bridge the gap before the climbing beans kick in. Speaking of climbing, the climbing beans and the winter squash are both going like crazy:

The tomatoes are really coming along now as well:

On the left, some Razzleberry Hybrids, and on the right some Zeebra heirlooms. (You can already see their stripes developing. After as slow start, the Romas are starting to ripen... just in time for the 4th!:

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