I took a picture of my harvest each day in June and here you can see what I got a lot of.
If you’re looking for volume with very little maintenance and you live in Portland, plant raspberries. This is from one stand. I used to have three, but couldn’t keep up.
They are weeds, those briars. And their fruit is so delicious.
The peas have been delicious too.
OSU sent me free seeds! I’m particularly excited about the Alpine Strawberries.
Also, I caught another glimpse of the bunny who has started appearing in the yard.
An update from the future: that was the last time I saw the bunny. And the Alpine Strawberries didn’t grow, alas.
My view from my desk. You can see the peas are doing their best and that I planted a few pole varieties that have grown past their supports. The raspberry bush (middle on the right) is producing and the contorted quince (front right) continues its poky journey.
From the other edge of the yard you can see the parsley that has gone to see (left front), my seed beds, a bit of the tree collards (left back) and some bits of green that are spinach and lettuce.
Over in Leo’s yard I have the supports in the ground for the pole beans and those white bits are eggshells around squash and collards that the slugs want to eat all of.
From another angle you can see better the pole beans.
This all feels like a very slow start.
In other news, this fella showed up. I’d not seen any rabbits in my yard before and was first quite excited and enchanted. Then I remembered all my lovely green starts and chased him off.
They are doing construction at the motel and I wonder if there was some bunny displacement.
My Aunt Pat happens to have a good stand of bamboo on her property so I drove over and did some harvesting. Then, we still had some fencing left from the Catio so I cut that down to size.
Some zip ties brought everything together.
Et voila! Home made pole bean supports!
I had a bunch of leftover peas and I’ve been planting them since mid-March. The first round is ready to harvest.
I do love fresh peas!
The tree collard starts I received in the fall have been transplanted and seem to like their new space. I’ve got stakes up so I can keep them from flopping when they get bigger.
And the peas I planted in early March have made an appearance! I love fresh peas, so this is a very exciting development. I’ve been planting every two weeks or so in hopes of having a long harvest.
I haven’t gardened in the neighbors’ back yard for a couple of years now. But the neighbors have moved out, the new neighbors haven’t yet moved in and the collards I planted years ago have reseeded themselves and produced some gorgeous greens.
I harvested some. They were delicious.
I went to check on the zucchini, having somewhat forgotten about it, and discovered a very large tromboncino specimen. I also was reminded I had planted some green beans. And that’s great, because I love fresh green beans.
Aside from the fact the raspberries are producing already, I also found a few volunteer potatoes in the compost pile. They were all delicious!
I can’t remember when I planted the hardy kiwi, but perhaps fall of 2009 or spring of 2010. As I mentioned in this post, I was hoping for some kiwi, but mostly wanted green growth on the pergola. I’ve gotten what I mostly wanted, for sure. The kiwi looks great on the pergola and I love the way the front porch looks in general.
This is the first year I’ve seen it flower! Both female plants put out a few flowers. The male plant (the one in the middle) produced nothing. So I’m guessing pollination is a no-go until that happens, if ever.
In looking at the photos from 2009, I’m surprised at how much the flowering plum tree has grown. The porch was always shaded for most of the day, but now it’s shaded for much more of the day, which doesn’t bode well for kiwi production, even hardy kiwi production that doesn’t need as much sun. Oh well. The greenery is great!
