Patriot blueberry

With the first blush of blueberries, the summer fruit crops are announcing their arrival. Everywhere I looked in the garden this morning, there was either new fruit forming or something in need of picking. The next few months will be the busy season in our garden because we’ll have the dual tasks of harvesting and preverving (and also eating of course!) our crops. We have 24 blueberry plants in the ground (at varying stages of maturity) and I just purchased another dozen young blueberry plants, which I need to plant soon. As some point, I will have WAY more blueberries than we can eat. I’m hoping that by the time the plants mature, Lily and Andrew will be interested in have a blueberry business in their teen years, selling at our local food co-op. If they don’t, maybe I will. Alternately, I could have enough to trade crops with other fruit/veggie growers. Now, I’ll run through a quick series of photos showing some of the fruit/berry progress in the garden.

Lapin cherries

We only have three cherry trees in the garden. All are young trees and all have ripe fruit. I’m going to pick everything that’s ripe today because the birds are already plucking this fruit.

Native huckleberry bushes

The rain has made the native huckleberries especially fat this year. We have a number of plants growing on our property, especially near the wooded area of the yard.

Jostaberries

I planted two Jostaberry bushes last year and I’m getting some first fruit this year. A Jostaberry is a complex cross between a black currant and a gooseberry.

Sungold tomato

I harvested the first ripe Sungold tomato today. Yum! I think we’ll have a lot of Sungold tomatoes this year and it just occurred to me that these would probably make a very good tomato jam.

Baby kiwi fruit

And I’ll end with a photo of the thing I’m most excited about right now. After a five-year wait, I think our kiwi vine is finally going to produce fruit this year. The vine appears to have pollinated well (it is a self-fertile female vine) and a lot of baby fruit is forming. Unless something goes wrong and the fruit aborts, we should have kiwi this year!

Also, at the begining stage: Our serious investigation of solar power. Yesterday, Derek and I went to NW SolarFest. We met with a number of home energy audit experts, solar manufacturers and solar installers. We’re going to have the home energy audit done in the next few months to set the stage for eventual solar installation, hopefully using materials developed in Washington state.

Sandy