This is one of our Peach Passion Sunflowers. It's a sunflower plant less than 3 feet tall that is pollenless. They were bred to be cut flowers that don't drop pollen all over your house. That all sounds fine and dandy but when I went out to cut a few, I saw several bumblebees on them. I thought "I can't take away their flowers!". Then that thought turned to horror when I remembered that these were supposed to be "pollenless". I thought those poor buzzy bees were trying in vain to get pollen from the sunflowers! I set out to do some research on this, and it was difficult to find information, but I finally did. On the Organic Gardening Magazine website, I found an article that references pollenless sunflowers. I discovered that even though there isn't pollen (i guess maybe there could be a little, I'm not real clear on that), there is still "abundant nectar" which the bees like. Phew! I feel much better now!
On to other news, we harvested potatoes yesterday before a rainstorm came and soaked the ground again. Here is our dog Bandit being bored while we harvest.
Here is Ben digging the potato box with a fork. We have mosquito torches because the mosquitoes have been SO bad lately. Behind the brush there is a spring which I'm sure helps breed them.
One of the few bucketfuls of potatoes. I think there are Red Barn, Russet, and Kennebecs in there.
Icebox watermelons are still growing. I can't wait until we can pick one!
This is one of our squashes. Hooray!
Cluster of San Marzano Italian sauce tomatoes.
One of our two eggplants. Just two we got, but that's better than none. I'm not sure how you know when an eggplant is ripe. I've never grown or eaten one... but I'm looking forward to Ben making Eggplant Lasagna!
I harvested my culinary poppies. It was so cool. I shook the seed pods into paper sacks and watched all the poppy seeds spill out. After I harvested them, I replanted the area with sunny yellow mums for the fall.
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