Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Pumpkin failure, berry success

In March I started Fairytale Pumpkin seeds. So far, I have lengthy vines, lots of flowers, but no fruit set. Boohoo.

Thankfully, the berries have been incredibly productive. The two blueberry plants have given me about 2 pints of delicious berries, and the second harvest is coming in now. Check out these radioactively large berries:

blueberries 
Giant berries, dwarfing normal-sized berries

Here’s a pic from really early in the season. Strawberries, a few cherry tomatoes, blackberries, a lone boysenberry, and blueberries.

first harvest

The boysenberry plant’s second set of blossoms are fading now. Hopefully the second harvest will be more prolific. I had never eaten a fresh boysenberry before – they’re delicious. I love boysenberry treats during my annual trips to Knott’s Haunt (link), but fresh are so much better. Fresh boysenberries are so fragile that the few berries that have matured have broken in my fingers as I attempted to pull them off of the prickly vines. So far they’re delicious and worth the effort.

2 comments:

  1. Is it one of those plants that you have to prune to get to flower?

    ReplyDelete
  2. do you mean pumpkins need to be pruned to flower? i don't know!

    berry plants generally should not be pruned. i read that only the old growth should be pruned because blossoms/fruit grow on new growth.

    ReplyDelete