This morning, I decided to harvest one of the first butternut squashes to start growing.
First butternut squash harvested. Bananas for scale.
Might be a bit on the early side, but it looked pretty ready. It’s a pretty decent size and weight. This one came out on the oblong side and not very butternut squash shaped. The other ones still in the garden are much more butternut squashed shape, although on the skinnier side.
There are a few more that look like they might be ready for harvesting too, but I think I’ll leave them for a few more weeks.
Looking forward to seeing how this one has turned out.
The leaves on the butternut squashes have been thinning out and aren’t nearly as dense as they were a few weeks ago. It looks like a few of the butternut squashes will be ready to harvest soon too.
The jalapeno plants (pretty sure that’s what they are anyway) have sprouted a few flowers. Maybe I’ll be seeing some peppers growing in a month or two.
The rest of the garden seems to be doing fairly well. The raspberry plants are getting eaten up pretty badly by the Japanese beetles. The blueberries have stopped blueberrying, but the blackberry plants still have a bunch of clusters in various stages of ripening. The two fig plants put on a pretty big growth spurt over the past few weeks, but no signs of any fruiting. They seem green and happy though.
Looking forward to seeing how the butternut squashes turn out. I think the first ones should be ready to pick in a few more weeks.
In the past month, the butternut squash plants have grown and are practically taking over the bed. I’ve actually had to trim them back a bit because it was starting to send stems out of the bed and into the lawn.
There are also a number of butternut squashes growing now!
Some latecomers to the bed are these plants, which I think are the jalapenos I planted. They’re in about the same area I threw some jalapeno seeds into the ground at any rate. I had given up on them every sprouting until I saw these sprout up a couple weeks ago. I’ll see in a while what they turn out to be.
The potato plants got off to a good start, but they’re looking pretty sad these days. One of the things I learned is that potatoes like acidic soil, so I think that could be part of the problem. I might pull the plug on the potato experiment and let the butternut squash take over the bed.
One of the blueberry bushes had a bunch of these small aphid-like bugs and egg sacs on one of the branches. I don’t know what they are, but they were interesting to watch. I ended up cutting the branch off and tossing it out.
Lots of blackberry clusters on the blackberry bush. I think it’ll be another week or two before they’re ready for harvesting. The one early bird blackberry I harvested was pretty tasty.
