[berries, strawberries, aps]

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For me, berries are the essence of summer. So summer has officially begun: Just before the end of June I began eating blueberries and blackcurrants, and now there are plenty. Blueberries are familiar, blackcurrants are not, but deserve to be better known. With a strong, distinctive flavor and not a whole lot of sweetness, blackcurrants are a fruit that only some of us enjoy fresh. Apply a little heat and some sweetener, perhaps a pastry shell (or not), or just squeeze the berries to make juice, sweetened or mixed with other juices, and you have a fruit that just about everyone enjoys.…
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[bean beetles, seed sowing for fall]

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A reader wrote asking if I had any suggestions for thwarting Mexican bean beetle, a voracious pest of beans that resembles a ladybug except for being larger and yellow, rather than red, with black spots? The reader “tried ignoring them” (doesn’t work well) and then resorted to a spray made from pipe tobacco “tea” with a few drops of dish detergent added. She wrote that it “may have helped a little, but the bean plants eventually succumbed. It did smell good though.” First off, nix on tobacco tea sprays. Tobacco tea sprays, like their commercially available pesticide counterpart,…
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[mockorange, watering can, poppies]

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Up until last week, every time I looked at my mockorange, I wondered why I would have planted such a bush so prominently right next to the greenhouse door. The bush looked like nothing more than a blob of greenery, a not especially graceful blob of greenery. This week I did an about-face on my mockorange; I’m enthralled with it as it sits there draped in large, lily-white, semi-double flowers. And if those flowers weren’t enough just to look at, they fill the air with a most delicious, fresh scent that is vaguely reminiscent of orange blossoms. Mine is not just any old mockorange. It’s…
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[broccoli, interplanting]

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Looks like I’ve already failed with broccoli this spring. And this was the year that I was going to grow it really well so that, parting ways with broccoli-hating, ex-president Bush (the better Bush), I might actually enjoy eating this vegetable. The plants are making buds already, too soon and too small, not surprising considering that the plants are only about 8 inches high. This runting out occurred in spite of my starting seeds on time, transplanting the seedlings into extra large containers, and moving the seedlings out into the garden at the end of April into ground made richer with extra…
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