Around the longest day of the year

The longest day of the year was a couple days ago. Not that the days are too short plus/minus a month or two from it either. Summer is a bit of a fickle thing in June. Sometimes the weather is great, sometimes the rain is great and sometimes the thunderstorms are great. 

Last weekend I was in mid-Finland at my ex-inlaws' summer place with a bunch of teens. The evening there was absolutely beautiful. Sun had already vanished behind the trees when we got there around nine but it was light outside for three more hours. The darkest point of the night here now is between one and three am. 

It's Midsummer's Eve here today. Our apple trees are growing a lot of apples, we have started a little box garden after my husband built a couple of boxes - we have tomatoes in one and basil, chives, parsley and dill in the other one - and I made some "vihdat" a while ago for the sauna in the evening. Summer is summer even when it's rainy.

Tomatoes

As I have stated a few times already, the poor June sort of spoiled the gardening season for us. So I hadn't even given our tomato plants a second glance, thinking that they were a lost cause. Today, however, my husband asked me if I had noticed all those tomatoes growing an little flowers on the two plants. I hadn't, but when I went to look, sure enough there were dozens of green plum tomatoes and even more flowers there! One of the plants had grown quite big, leaving the other one with less sunlight. The warm weeks had indeed boosted our tomtaoes into action. Now we just hope that the nights won't get too cold again before we can harvest our own plum tomatoes :)

 

Cold cold summer

Our summer so far has really not been a warm one. Rain, and temperatures between +10 and +15C in the day time making our summer only a few degrees warmer than last winter was! Night temperatures have been below +10C constantly for 2-3 weeks already, killing nearly everything in our garden. The only thing prospering despite the cold are the strawberries, native to our stark country.

 

 

Tomatoes and cucumbers

Despite the warmer winter and that short span of summer-like weather, and the nature responding to that, the spring now seems to be colder than last year. We did get some additions to our garden today, though, some small plants that can easily be kept indoors for a few more weeks. We left the medina chilis still in the greenhouse, but got us a couple of tomatoes and cucumbers. There they are now, on our sunny window together with the stuff we planted when it still was warm.

 

Garden in late August

Even though most days still are quite warm - after that autumn spell a week ago - the nights have turned quite cold. Cold enought to put the tomatoes into a non-productive safe-mode and most of the other plants into slower motion as well. There were still three cucumbers, fully grown, that I picked today, as well as a zucchini in the zucchini plant, which actually has still put out a couple new flowers!

But the tomatoes are not growing anymore, and not ripening anymore. So I picked the rest of the tomatoes to ripen in our house. Hopefully they do!

 

The bhut jolokia seems unweilding to the cool nights, is making new flowers and growing its purple chilis rapidly! Soon we can make some fiercely hot purple jolokia chili ;)

 

We pulled the rest of our red onions out of the ground; they didn't do quite as well as we had hoped, but definately we can use at least some of them, too.

 

We also trimmed the basil again, making another 1 liter batch of pesto out of it. There's still plenty left to grow, we'll see how well it does with the autumn coming on here. Oregano still awaits picking and drying.

 

Garden in late July

I was away for a mere week. Yet, so much had happened in our garden in that short time! The medina chilis had started to turn red, as had the first cherry tomatoes. The green pepper and naga jolokia had started to grow their first fruits. Cucumber, aubergine and zucchini were hanging heavy with ripe fruits. Beans and sugar peas were ready to be harvested.

 

We harvested quite a lot of the stuff yesterday evening.

 

Beans we made into a side dish by boiling them and then adding oil and crushed garlic. Zucchinis we grilled, and the aubergine I peeled, sliced and deepfried. We also have more rucola than we can possibly eat, so we had some if that at the dinner table too. At least a small effort ;)

 

The sunny wall got hit by some hard winds, knocking the tomatoes and some other pots over. The plants are a bit leaning on each other now, but still they seem to be happy enough!

 

First cucumbers

The first cucumbers were ready to be picked yesterday. Every other day there's a new ripe tomato. Sugar peas are ready to be harvested.

 

Zucchini keeps making flowers, and fruits too.

 

Salads and rocket are pretty perfect.

 

Oh, and there a tiny 1-2cm long baby beans on the bean bushes!

 

Harvesting

We went to visit my sister for some grilling and such and took with us some zucchinis, eggplants, zucchini flowers (stuffed with feta cheese), the first ripe tomato, basil and and salads - a little bit of harvesting of our garden :)

 

The sugar peas are full of ripe peas, while the beans have just started to produce flowers. Strawberries, every day there's a few new ripe delicious ones!

 

Garden update

Both green pepper and the bhut jolokia have been growing a lot lately. Jolokia has a whole lot of flowers, green pepper is getting ready to bloom too. Cucumber plants have grown very tall, our bamboo poles aren't even tall enough for them anymore! And little cucumbers are growing on both plants.

Salad, rucola and spring onions continue to prosper on the hilltop, despite the continuous invasion of red clover (which I weeded out again today, after taking the picture). Rucola in the pot has gone wild, and parsley is growing nicely.

Only sad ones on our sunny wall are those chives, for some reason or other.

 

Zucchinis are growing by the day, soon we'll be having our first grilled ones! And the first tomato is starting to turn red.

It also seems that our funny scarecrow is actully keeping the birds away, for now for the first time I have seen the strawberries stay intact while ripening.

 

 

Going on in the garden

A lot of stuff going on. We hung the sugar peas on the wooden fence - hope their feelers find their way to the fence and grab on!

I hung a red christmas ball both on the big tomato and chili plants to keep the birda away, for they had been messing around in the plant boxes.

Oregano was transplanted in a bigger box and found its place between the basil boxes.

We got some bamboo poles and wire and built some supports for the beans that had started to fall over.

The eggplant and cherry tomatoes and other tomatoes are growing by the day. Cucumber plant has the first little starts of cucumbers now too!

That first zucchini flower is really big and growing right before our eyes. It more or less doubled its size only today! There's a whole lot of those zucchini flowers already, but that first one out is really showing the way for the others.

We also started today to build a drip irrigation system for our garden. Its somewhat complicated...

Our huge tomato plant

Our tomato plant has really grown big already, and continues to grow even though the weather has coolled down a bit here for the time being.

Fruits of our Garden

Tomatoes are growing bigger, as is the first aubergine. Strawberries are producing a lot of fruit, though none of them are ripe yet. The zucchinis are preparing to put out flowers, the plants already being quite big.

Our garden in early June

A heatwave has been caressing our garden these past days. Eggplant has its first flower, several tomatoes are growing, there's 14 chilis on the medina, and everything is growing right before our eyes.

Eggplant, tomatoes and the medina

Basil, oregano, spinach and dill

Zucchini, cucumber, peas and beans

Our bhut jolokia seems to be a bit tiny and is not growing taller all that fast, but it does have some flower buds already too!

First little tomato

Our tomato plant is producing its first tomato :)

Update on our garden

Onions are growing, basil seeds have sprouted, as have the first zuccinis. Medina chili is already producing its first chili pepper, and the tomato has its first flowers. Strawberries are growing at the edge of the salad, spring onion and garlic bed (where so far only garlics have their heads out of the ground).

Onions, tomato and chili blossoms, strawberries

The newest addition to our little garden is a green pepper plant.

Green pepper

Herb garden is doing good

Our (herb) garden has got several additions in the past days: a pepper mint, a bhut (naga) jolokia, a patch of different salads and spring onions and garlic.

Green on the trees

Today was so far the warmest day of this spring. I noticed small leaves starting to sprout in birches and other trees.

We planted some tomatoes, an eggplant and a medina chili plant. We also got some violets and marigilds for our patio.