Our garden is slowly recovering from the epic heat wave of July and early August. Currently, temperatures have cooled dramatically from the record high levels in July. There is even a chance of precipitation by Friday!
Most of our food crops went through the heat wave well with only a drop in fruit set. For example, our Hidatsa Shield Figure shell – dry beans, Phaseolus vulgaris, set no beans during the heat wave. Now that the weather has cooled bean set is excellent. We will have an excellent late crop of shellies for succotash (An American food dish), and dry beans for winter use.
We are completely revaluating the ornamental plants we grow in our garden. We wish to grow highly resilient varieties that we like and preform well in our garden. Part of our system is to develop and evaluate the best-of-the-best of each species of our liking. In this photograph are some of our best new Eriogonum species ( Eriogonum ursinum var. ursinum RMB 1014, E. prattenianum var. prattenianum, low growing form, RMB 919, E. incanum RMB 1051, and E. umbellatum F1 hybrids) that we are evaluating for use in our garden. Also pictured is a new selection of Acotinium columbianum ssp. viviparum (RMB 1031) that preformed extremely well through the heat wave despite the plants being small seedlings. We will continue to evaluate all these seedlings.
In this year’s Upland Rice trials Kanto Wase Upland Rice, Oryza sativa, is setting a fine crop of rice. This variety is much easier to hull than Duborskian Upland Rice and is reported to taste better. This is a highly subjective evaluation. We will have our evaluation after the harvest ends this autumn.
In this year’s watermelon trials New Orchid F1 Watermelon continues to be our favorite orange-fleshed watermelon. The 7 to 9 lb. watermelons receive top scores from us in flavor, texture, and sugar content. In addition, the plants are disease resistant and very vigorous under various weather conditions.
