garden report

above ground

Tomatoes: Sungolds have started ripening, and one Stupice. Black Cherry is slower.

Ground cherries, Physalis pruinosa: interesting! No way I'm ever going to accumulate the two cups of berries called for in a ground-cherry pie, which is too bad. People have said they taste like: pineapple, tomato, strawberry, coffee, starfruit, hazelnut.

"Sunberry", Solanum burbankii: dickens of a time germinating it. The plants are just carrying green berries now. I think they'll ripen before the end of summer.

Snap peas, 'Cascadia': delicious. It's trying another round of pods now, racing against vine death.

Runner beans: growing well, but flowers wither without making beans. Too hot for it?

Amaranth, 'popping': pretty red-streaked leaves and flowerheads. When does it set seeds?

Lettuce, miscellaneous: tasty.

"Wild arugula", Rucola selvatica: pungent enough that you don't get to taste much of the nice nutty arugula taste. If I wanted horseradish I'd do horseradish.

Salsola komarovii: crunchy, doesn't taste like anything. Okay.

Purslane: tasty, and I wish I could get more of it to grow. Isn't it supposed to be a weed?

Orach: tastes like plant leaves, haven't bothered with eating it much.

Not counting the herbs. Or perennials, or trees.

under ground

Scorzonera: grew nicely, but is it supposed to taste like anything? Joy of Cooking commented that the flavor's in the skin, but the skin is full only of gritty fiber IMO.

Root parsley: this was interesting, tasted somewhere between carrot / celery / parsley. Then I let the rest of the crop sit in the ground too long and it got spongy.

Carrots: no bigger than pinkie fingers. I let one go to flower, and that's luxuriant. Great flower-to-root efficiency ratio!

Garlic: may reach break-even from planting to harvest after I dig the rest up. So planting it is a fine way to store garlic for a year? Coolest part: the way the dirty outer layer just magically skins off, leaving the clove clean and white.

Yacon: isn't growing very tall. We'll see what it's doing underground.

Oca: I don't know if it will produce tubers successfully, but it's a nice plant -- vigorous bushy succulent-stemmed oxalis.