The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

Strawberries are ready for picking! I always get a big kick out of picking that first strawberry out of my garden.

I have a major problem with moldy berries this year. Botrytis, also known as gray mold, has infected a fairly large percentage of my crop. It’s called gray mold because of the fuzzy gray appearance of the fungus covering the berries.

Like most molds, botrytis needs a damp environment to get a foothold. The regular rains we’ve had during this early ripening period has kept the plants damp encouraging the mold.

A healthy strawberry will easily become infected with gray mold when touching an infected berry.

Selecting a good planting site will eliminate a lion’s share of the mold problem.  A large part of my problem is the location of the strawberry patch. It’s near the side of a building and is partially shaded by a couple of trees that grew since I started my strawberry patch, that is a recipe for disaster. If my strawberries were growing in full sun where there would have been plenty of air movement to allow the plants to dry off quickly, the mold problem would have been drastically reduced.

Strawberries touching the soil will also become infected with botrytis more easily. Strawberry farmers use straw as a mulch to help keep the berries away from direct contact with the soil.

Sanitation will  help control gray mold. So, I’m picking off moldy berries as I come across them. If I don’t, they will release more spores and infect the other fruit.

It’s critical to refrigerate newly picked berries as soon as possible. Strawberries can look fine but still be infected with the mold. You’ve probably seen this in berries that have already been picked but left out in a warm spot, they quickly get moldy.

This will be the last season for my strawberries in that damp location. I’ve already picked out a nice sunny spot for my next strawberry patch.

Bob

I have a young crab apple tree in our wildlife area that I’ve been watching for the past few years. It came up on its own several years ago and this is the first year it produced fruit.

To my surprise, the little apples on this tree are very tasty — plenty of apple flavor with a hint of almond after-taste. I’ve tasted other crab apples in the past and many of them were either flavorless or downright inedible.

They are about two or three times the size of the typical flowering crab apple fruit you see in people’s front yard but, they’re still too small to do much with. Fortunately the apple core is so small I can eat the whole fruit without really noticing the seeds. However, you can only eat so many crap apples before you lose your taste for them.

Since I have so many of them, I decided to try to make a type of rumtopf , a concoction made with fruit, sugar and rum. With their long stems and deep red color, they look a lot like cherries. So I just washed them, picked off the blossom ends and dropped them into alcohol and sugar. Instead of rum, I used brandy because that’s all I had on hand.

I’m really not sure how my rumtopf will turn out but I know it won’t go to waste even if it’s not perfect.

Meanwhile, there are still loads of crab apples left on the tree. The frosty temperatures have mellowed out their flavor even more and they’re still nice and crisp.

As for the rest of the crab apples, I think my next project is crab apple fruit leather.

Bob

Strawberry picking is over in our area, but that doesn’t mean all the work is done. Now’s the time to get your strawberry patch in shape for a big harvest next year.

Strawberry plants if left on their own will produce good yields and quality fruit for two years or so. With your help, they’ll stay strong for four or five years.

It may seem illogical, but mowing strawberries right after picking is the best thing you can do for them. Mowing removes diseased leaves and reduces harmful insect populations.

Mowing is best done right after harvesting, before too many new leaves begin to grow.  This means in extreme southern Michigan, it must be finished soon, more northern areas have some time yet.

Use a lawn-mower and set it so that the cutting height is about one and one-half  inches above the crown,  then go at it. Rake out the clippings and dispose of them, then sprinkle a light application of garden fertilizer.

Since strawberry plants produce more berries on the edges of a row, reduce the width of the row to somewhere around 12 to 18 inches. A rototiller works great, but you can hoe them out if necessary.

For best results, finish mowing your strawberries very soon.

Through the rest of the season, water the plants during dry periods. And, just like the rest of the garden, weed the area when needed.

Later you can add mulch, but that is a topic for another time.

Bob

Picking apples, for most people, is thought as something you do in the fall along with drinking cider and eating fresh donuts. That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

My two summer apple trees have fruit on them that are ripening right now. As a matter of fact, I’ve been picking a dozen apples every day from them for the past week.

These are a couple of heirloom trees I planted about ten years ago. I couldn’t find my planting notes on time for this blog, but I think they’re a variety called “Early Harvest”.

They have smallish apples that are crisp and a bit tart, especially if they’re picked before they are fully ripe. Once they ripen all the way, they lose their texture and

complex flavor.

The apples are about 2- 1/2 to 3- 1/2 inches in diameter. They develop a red blush as the start to ripen.

My grandmother Rose – a Polish immigrant -was an excellent gardener, she had a summer apple tree in her garden. I remember my brother and I climbing that tree to find the very best apple to pick.

My trees are dwarf, which means they don’t take up much space.  One tree grows in a circle seven feet in diameter while the other is a bit more vigorous and has a nine foot diameter and have them planted about 12 feet apart. I keep them pruned to a height of eight feet, which means I don’t need a ladder to pick.

Their small foot-print and early maturity would make them an ideal candidate for use in an urban agriculture situation.

Summer apples will never replace our wonderful traditional fall apples, especially considering all of the other types of  fruit ripening right now. However, they might make some nice memories for children or visiting grandchildren!

I’m always amazed by how little time it takes for a watermelon to grow from a tiny little fruit to full size-melon. They grow so fast that every morning the melons are visually bigger than the day before.

The moment of truth comes at harvest time. I always get a little nervous when deciding when to pick since you can’t look through a watermelon rind to see what’s inside. On the other hand, experienced melon growers and pickers need only a quick look at the rind to tell if a watermelon is ready to go. The rest of us need to rely on clues the plant give us.

The first thing everyone likes to do is take their knuckle and thump the watermelon to see how it sounds. If you thump an unripe melon and compare it with one ready to pick, you can hear a distinct difference in the sound. The green melons have a more ringing sound compared to a ripe melon. Thumping, while fun to do, is not always reliable because some varieties are ready to go before they change sound. A dull thump may mean your melon is over-ripe.

The appearance of the melon and vine can tell us a lot. As a watermelon starts to ripen, the underside, where it rests on the ground, will turn color from white to pale yellow. Also, the curly tendrils growing near the melon turn color too, from green to brown.

After checking the underside of your melon, gently roll it back into place to keep the light colored ground spot from being scalded by the sun.

A few years back I was watching a watermelon grow all season. It was one of the smaller round varieties.  I decided it needed one more day to ripen before picking. The next morning I went out to pick my melon. Everything looked fine until I picked it up — it was completely hollow. During the night a raccoon made a small, round hole in the side of my melon and reached in with its paw to scoop out the whole inside leaving just a shell. He must have been checking that melon every day too.

This year, there are plenty more watermelons in the garden that will ripen later in the season. We’ll have melons now until the end of the season.

Bob