Hello everyone. If you have plants in your garden there is always some work to be done. Beside the greenhouse that takes daily care with opening, closing and watering regularly there are other plants in our garden. One part has more tree fruits and other is mix with fruits and vegetables. Many plants are ready to collect and eat and other are getting there. Now we got watermelons, melons, blackberries, early plums, zucchinis that we consume and choke berries, late plums and figs that are close to ripe. Beside these plants mentioned there are other plants around the garden as well.
Melons are among top fruits this year in our garden. Our region is known for melons growing. We have special type that is a bit dry while eating but very sweet. Also there are standard ones that can be bought at market as well.
Also important part with melons is that they crack when they are ripe. Those are best and sweetest. You can collect them without cracking of course but we prefer to pick them when there is crack on the melon. Crack like you can see on this photo.
Like I mentioned place where we live is famous for melon. Our neighbour brought us this melon. I think they use and store seeds so this melon type seeds are stored for 40 or 50 years. Taste is super. Each year when melons start they brought us some. And it is very big. 33 centimeters in leght.
3.8 kilograms. They know how to grow melons.
This year watermelons are looking good. We already picked several of them and they are very good. Sizes vary from 4kg to 6-7kg. They are smaller but taste good.
Blackberries are doing well. We started collecting them around 3 weeks ago. Now there is less and less of them as time pass by.
After they form good base and start growing strong blackberries are easy to take care of. We did not do any additional care except removing the ones that gave fruits last year and some trimming. Despite hot days past weeks they gave so delicious fruits.
Daily you could easily get around 4 kilograms of blackberries. After they start giving fruits as I remember for around one month you can collect good amounts. This two bucket is standard find daily.
On the days when they give most fruits you can collect around 8 kilograms. And you may wonder what do we do with them. We eat some fresh and store some in the freezer for later use. And other way to eat them is to mix them with yoghurt.
You add a bit sugar to the blackberries and leave them to cook some time to make them release juices and be more homogeneous. . You may use blender after you cook them.
Add blackberry mixture into yoghurt and enjoy your smoothie.
While we are at blackberries there is one thing to mention. Wasp spiders or Argiope bruennichi every year find their place among blackberry branches. For me they are lovely spiders with lovely colors and web design.
This year I noticed more of them then usual.
Here you can see two of them near each other.
Somehow wasp spiders and blackberries go together. They hunt with their nests and we collect blackberries.
Other insects appearing while collecting blackberries as well.
Can you see me?
We collected onions. This year generally people did not have onions as usually.
Garlic is doing good. Behind this garlic scape you can see garlic. Stems are dry or almost dry and we started yesterday to collect them.
Here at one place there are pole beans, carrots and bush beans.
Carrots are green and healthy. Due to hot weather pole beans still are not ready to collect.
Bush beans are other story.
These are first green beans this year and green bean stew was super. Only green beans and other veggies as peppers and onions in the stew.
We harvest Zucchinis for some time now.
Add these together and you have delicious meal.
Other option is Zucchini fritters. You need Zucchinis, eggs and flour.
Cut Zucchinis, use grater, add eggs and flour. Mix it and roast it.
And voila, Zucchini fritters.
Outside peppers. At the moment we consume peppers from the greenhouse. These peppers grow steadily and they got decent size. We had some space here so it was on peppers to fill it. Good decision so far. They are between greenhouse and blackberries.
Chokeberries or Aronia berries are almost ripe. We have around 10 bushes of chokeberries. We store it and use it as tea or addition to jam. This year we may go for a juice from chokeberries or some mix with other fruits such apples.
They look good and these days we may collect them. A bit rain will benefit them. Healthy snack in our garden.
Dry weather was not best working for the potatoes. They are a bit smaller at the moment. Still time to grow. Stems are green so they can grow in size.
When stems dry out then it is time to take them out. We also have more potatoes on other place. Those are doing very well despite dry weather. There was rain these days so potatoes have time to get bigger.
This is early plum tree. Interesting that past years there was period where plums did not give that much fruit and no fruits at all. But 2 or 3 years back plums are back.
We ate them fresh as we collect them. Early plums are quite tasty.
Since we are talking about plums we had storm approximately week ago. One of the branches snapped. It was big and to carry it out we had to cut it into three pieces.
The plums can be eaten at this point so we collected ones that are soft from the branch. Plums from the tree can be eaten but we will not collect them yet. They need more time to get bigger and sweeter. Then jam would be nice project if there is enough of plums.
Fig tree is lovely this year. It grew even bigger and figs are everywhere. Beside big tree we have three smaller trees that are doing well as well.
We tasted some that did not fell of from the first wave. To expand on that figs grow in waves or cycles (I dont know which word to use so wave it is). Since it is cold here in Bosnia the first figs fall of. And this is second wave. As I am familiar there is third wave as well. Some of the figs did not fall of so we were able to collect some. Tasty and delicious. Now we still wait for the these ones to grow. I think we planted fig three around 4 years ago an it was excellent addition to our garden.
Banana tree grows strong. We did not protect it during winter so it grew from start again. Before colds this winter we need to do more protecting. For now it looks nice.
Star of the front garden is trumpet wine. Beautiful orange flowers get all views. It grows nicely and have a lots of flowers. Wine is still not woody as it can be so u need some structure to climb. We have three more in the garden. Also they spread so fast so you have to have that in mind if you want to have one. A lot of new wines starts to pop around.
There were wooden stairs for it to climb but it covered it over. So we need to make new support. Nice idea for new garden project.
All in all garden is doing good. Some fruits and vegetables are here and others are almost ready. We got some rain these days so it will be nice for flowers, bushes and other plants. And yes more weed to cut.
Photos by @sammy00.