My Backyard Project

I'm a beginner gardener who grows vegetables in Portland, OR

[emioopdxbp]

June.2015

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.

The one on the left is a year old. It smells and tastes wonderfully fruity :)

[emioopdxbp]

5.10.2015

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.

Giant poppies, I started from seeds last year!

[emioopdxbp]

5.4.2015

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♪

Bees love thimbleberry flowers!

[emioopdxbp]

4.30.2015

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!

A mushroom popped up from tobacco seedlings! :)

[emioopdxbp]

4.29.2015

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.

The later ones are obviously growing well (and how delicious fresh baby spinach is?!). Now I learned the sowing date and the sun light is more importlant to plants. :)

[emioopdxbp]

4.15.2015

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!!

どうしよう接ぎ木したりんごの枝がちゃんと生きてる！

[emioopdxbp]

4.14.2015 Hail! Young borage and strawberries, these are companion plants!

[emioopdxbp]

Bloomed house plants-- Leototes bicolor, orchid - adapted four types of orchids from my friend and just this type bloomed. Euphorbia milii - got the plant a year ago. Very tiny though, growing pretty well. Amaryllis - first time it bloomed on two flower stems! I just read that a bulb of amaryllis may last for 75 years...! No need a big pot or fertilizer, amazing.

[emioopdxbp]

Heehee! Some holes are occupied by mason bees! You can see a female bee is laying eggs in a hole. 

[emioopdxbp]

Just identified a cherry tree in front of my house is Kanzan, 関山, Kwanzan or Sekiyama, type of prunus. The flowers are pompom like double pink blossoms. I can see the trees on the sidewalk of every block in my neighborhood.

[emioopdxbp]

Collected yellow lichen which I believe Xathoria from pruned apple branches. Supposedly Xathoria dyes wool into pink and when it is exposed to the sun, the color changes to blue. http://mycopigments.com/lichen-dyes/ I added water and ammonia 1:1 in the jar, shake it daily and it will be ready to dye after a couple months.

[emioopdxbp]

My husband had looked for a fire pit for four years. He ended up buying the washing machine drum on Craigslist as a fire pit! It works excellent - the size is big enough, the rim helps to prevent small burned stuff pop out, flames look beautiful through the punched metal sheet „,. Last night he burned almost all pruned apple branches.

[emioopdxbp]

Trillium in my front yard

[emioopdxbp]

Our old and diseased apple tree has pruned and multi-grafted with variety of apples (more than ten, for cider and eating, American and Japanese). It will take a couple years to get fruits though, I can't wait to see all kinds of apples from a tree. 樹齢が経ってる上に病害があり、ウィルスを広げないために毎年全てのりんごと落ち葉集めに一苦労してたりんごの木。大胆に剪定されて10種類以上のりんごの接ぎ木をしました。木を育てるって、一朝一夕では何にもならないもの。一つの木からいろんな種類のりんごが成ってるのを見られるのは、何年後になるかな。

[emioopdxbp]

3.20.2015 All bees got out from the tubes!

[emioopdxbp]

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.

モーニンググローリーといっても日本でいう可愛らしい一年草の朝顔ではなく、多年草で侵略種、浅く張った根っこでどんどん増える困った植物が庭の隅っこに雑草化していて、それを絶滅させるのに年月かけてるところです。単に根っこを引っこ抜けるだけ引っこ抜き、廃材のシートメタルを敷いてみても、今日の春めいた気温でまた芽が出てるのを見つけてしまいました。しかも今日見つけたこれ、僅か2cmほどの根から芽が出てる生命力にむしろ驚愕。恐ろしい子…！ 面白い話で、パンプキンを周りに植えるとその酵素でモーニンググローリーが退治できるらしい。物は試しなので、今夏実験してみます。

[emioopdxbp]

3.18.2015

Here is my instant green house! Now my sewing table is occupied by seedling pots. I started more butterhead lettuce, onions, kohlrabi, purple broccoli, garlic chives, basil (I know it’s too early so just a try) sunflower, and two kinds of tobacco (by my husband). Today I heard that white flowers, alyssum attracts aphids so I got the seeds and sowed around outside beds.