How does your garden grow?

[hudebnik]

The green bean plants started blooming about a week ago, and the squash plants about three days ago. Last weekend I climbed out the bedroom window onto the roof to trim the tops of the quince trees: there's some evidence of fruit moths, but not much. And we had a grocery-store onion that sprouted a lush bunch of green shoots before we could get around to eating it, so I stuck it in the front yard in a bare patch where the squash seeds don't seem to have germinated.

The front-yard "vegetable patch" is shaded by quince trees until about 2 PM, so the plants there (some green bean and some squash) aren't exactly thriving, but they're alive and blooming. The back yard is concrete, so the green-bean and squash plants there are in planters, which means the soil in them dries out more quickly, so we have to water them almost every day. At least the squash -- the beans don't seem to be having this problem, perhaps because a LOT of squash seeds germinated in the planter and they're probably closer together than they should be.

The back yard also has raspberry bushes, which have started producing in the past week or two and are now producing probably a dozen berries a day. Historically, at the peak of the season, these bushes have produced at least a cup a day, so we have that to look forward to. Perhaps I'll have to make raspberry jam, using some quince puree that's been in the freezer since last fall as a pectin source. And I think last year we made raspberry ice cream. And there was a raspberry-chipotle sauce we pour over chicken pieces.

The latest batch of sourdough bread did not turn out well. The sponge seemed to be rising decently, but after I shaped it into a loaf, it didn't do much at all, and the resulting loaf of bread is quite dense. Edible, but not what I was aiming for. No idea why this went so differently from the previous dozen batches.

ETA: I replaced the pheromone-baited sticky trap and the tab of parasitic wasp eggs in the quinces. There were a few dozen corpses in the trap.

Comments

[hlinspjalda]

I remember years ago you had ornamental quince bushes, the kind with the little quinces. Did you get trees? Or is it that the bushes grew up and became trees?

[ilaine]

I'm finding temperature is important. The very best sourdough loaf I have made ever was on our anniversary and I was making duck for dinner. The dough was basking in the warmth escaping the oven from the vent all day, and the final baked loaf was so fluffy I wanted to die. Rising on warm days is better, air conditioning does not improve things. I'm considering building a proofing box.

[hudebnik]

No, they always were trees (albeit "dwarf"). The fruits are fist-sized when they're healthy, but some years they're infested with Oriental Fruit Moth larvae, which make them small, misshapen, and full of worm-dirt.

[hudebnik]

Yes, temperature definitely makes a difference, as does humidity. I noticed many years ago that my best batches of bread were made on rainy days.

But I think both the temperature and the humidity of the kitchen for this batch were within the range of variation of the previous dozen batches, so that doesn't explain this one failing to rise after shaping.

[hlinspjalda]

Ah, I see. I hope you get proper big quinces this year!

[hlinspjalda]

I've thought about a proofing box too, but now that incandescent bulbs are so rare, what would you use for heat?

[ilaine]

They aren't rare yet on this coast, but I'd probably get a lizard tank heating pad.

[hlinspjalda]

Great idea!