A Slow Day

[bluesgarden]

The Ring of Fire sunflowers are in bloom and making the pollinators very happy!


So I 'killed' the Kentucky Colonel mint a week or so ago (or, rather, the heat and a lack of water did), but I wasn't too worried. You can see why it has a reputation as a resilient plant.


The potatoes are hanging on but I'm getting closer to just harvesting them.


So gorgeous! This is one of the volunteers from last year.


Not so gorgeous! Depending on your location, this is either a delicacy or a fungus. It is corn smut growing at the top of an immature ear of Supai Red corn and around here it is considered a fungus so it was lopped off and disposed of before it could spread.


From the same plant, some corn smut growing in the tassel... which I did not know it could do. You learn something new every day.


Of the non-smutified ears (which would be all of them except that one), some have gorgeous red silks.


The frakkin' Purslane is attempting another take over.


Flea beetle damage, complete with flea beetles, and the reason I'll need to use a floating row cover over the fall kohlrabi. These are wee little radish sprouts.


The Mandan Red corn has red tassels instead of silks.


Then there's the sweet corn. D keeps yapping on about the weeds and, okay, maybe he has a point for this section.


The Fairytale pumpkins are maturing beautifully and making good use of the shade provided by those broad leaves.


Here we have two tomatoes from those reject plants that I tried to throw away this past spring. They've produced at least half a dozen tomatoes all with the same issue - severe cracking.


These ones are already starting to show minor cracking will probably go the same route.


In the more successful tomato category, one of the Sweet 100 tomatoes has fruit beginning to ripen. What's really amusing is that it's marked as a Roma tomato. I actually have about 6 from the adoptee plants (the homeless group from the spring) that are mis-labeled and I'm pretty sure that two of those are my fault, but not the other four!


For comparison, these are actual Romas, with the elongated shape of paste tomatoes.


In the process of picture taking, I spotted this guy. Kind of remarkable he made it to this large without doing more damage, actually, but here we have him enjoying a last meal before a tragic accident with a pair of garden snips.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch...