Fruit and veggies starting to come in

It has been a wet few weeks (rained 21 of 26 days so far this month). I'm happy for the rain but a day of sunshine is welcomed to get some gardening tasks done. I was snooping about battle weeds and noticed the apples trees were bearing at least 14 apples this year (more than the last 5 summers combined!).

The pepper plants were also coming along nicely. These are a hot pepper that I plan to dry once they ripen and turn a nice brown shade. The peppers in the foreground are between four and five inches long.

The shell peas are still climbing the trellis (about 2.5 feet). There are a lot of blossoms as well as a few pods forming (dead centre in photo, hidden a bit).

The pumpkin plant has also started to flower. I always find squash slow to start as they develop roots and then suddenly they come on rapidly in August.

The strawberry patch yielded its first strawberry of the season. A bit late (not enough sun) but delicious!

Turning around, I caught the sunlight on the asparagus crowns I planted this spring, These are purple asparagus and we'd let them go to seed to help the crowns get established. I think we put in 8 or 10 crowns and there were a bunch of these fellows waving in the wind. This bodes well for 2015.

The "death bed" where nothing edible will grow is putting on a nice flower show. Some daisies have volunteered in the front and the irises are just finishing up behind them. The daylilies in the middle have just put up flower stalks and should bloom in the next week to carry the bed through summer. In behind, you can see some Grand Rapids lettuce peaking over the top of one of the raised beds. The other bed has been a write off this year--the weeds grow but no luck with turnips or chard.

Behind the garage, the sugar beets jumped up in the rain and have tops almost a foot high. I will clip a few of these and freeze them for risotto in the winter. The beets themselves are small (about an inch in diameter) but that they are growing in encouraging. I am going to try and overwinter some of these to see if I can get them to seed.

Finally, out back, the mock orange is blooming. It smells wonderful and gives a dark corner a pretty spring show. The bees love it.

Now time to get off the computer and mow the lawn (which I remind myself is free fertilizer and thus worth doing).