Enterprise apples ripening up nicely.
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We planted s bunch of okra, from seeds from a friend of my Mom’s in OK. There are about 25 plants that have come up and have taken off. Our first year of getting a crop.
I picked about a dozen yesterday, and last night my wife fried them along with a few pickle slices (also from the garden). That was a side dish to some stuffed home grown bell peppers with ground turkey, rice, and tomato sauce. In addition to that we had some fresh Honey Select corn our neighbor gave us. Very good supper.
What variety of okra do you have? We planted some purple type. It actually doesn’t taste that bad raw. We are going to try to pickle some when it starts to produce more. It grows very well back home, and we ate lots of it, mostly fried or pickled.
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I went with the crimson spineless? I think that’s the name. If not it’s very close to that. I’ve found out that you get an even better crop if you prune everything out from the bottom. The way ido is if it doesn’t have a bloom bud on it I cut it out. My plants have grown much taller and have a TON of okra coming. Tough plant to. I eat mine raw or with a veggie medley-, fried, pickled…very good very versatile plant. I’ll definitely do more next year.
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I started a couple of years back planting mine 3-4 feet apart. They grow like little trees then with multiple branches and make a lot more okra. I’ve always liked the Clemson spineless but I’ve been on a lot of forums that trash it. I guess there are okra snobs just like everything else and I think the Clemson spineless is supposed to be a “common” variety carrying very little excitement but it’s been a good producer and a good eater for me.
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Here are some pics of the okra patch.
As I said, getting quite large
Some close up pix of the plants, definitely purple. Almost looks like a taller version of rhubarb
Some pods on the plants
An okra bloom, very attractive
Some that I just picked. We’re trying to pick it before it gets no more than 5" or so.
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My neighbor down the road showed me a secrete spot on state land to pick blackberries. There is about three acres worth growing and spreading throughout the area. Some bittersweet vines mixed in some areas made it hard to pick with the thorns of the blackberries too. They were plentiful and we got a lot of them. I have been making malts with them and freezing them too. These aren’t wild. They were planted in a garden and spreaded to state land over forty years.
The bottom picture is second pickings.
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Wow, they look great for foraged berries! Big, and a big haul! That’s a lot of acres of berries. A bears dream.
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Fantastic!
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Got some nice ripe LSU purple Figs today. Couldn’t help myself and had dessert before dinner! So juicy and sweet. I absolutely love figs!
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my first time experiment big bottle gourd grows very well. It hands on the fence, should I give it some support underneath?
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Looks more like Hardy Chicago than LSU Purple, which should have an amber interior instead of red. They look really tasty.
First RdB today was amazing looking, with purple from the skin bleeding into the fig, wasn’t as good as the half dozen Floreas I’ve had so far though, and not half as productive either.
Edible?
These are pretty productive. This is a second crop this year and it’s only a second year tree. I have four fig trees and only one was unidentified. I got it at a nursery and it wasn’t marked. This tree and 2 others though I got from Stark Bros. And they all were marked LSU purple. God only knows though I am not able to identify one from the other. Still don’t know what my unidentified is…lol
They are awesome dehydrated, like candy, I think you hit the mislabeling lottery 
yes，taste pretty good too. better than grocery bought
Picked a Castleton plum today. 20 brix. Very good. This one originally had a PC sting that I cut out with an x-acto knife. Probably only had 10-20% success with that method this year. I have a “Charlie Brown Christmas Tree”-looking Superior plum tree that I should have thinned. Superior was the only plum that really escaped PC damage this year, possibly because the foliage was so sparse compared to every other lush plum tree I had. It set heavy and I kept expecting them to slowly fall off but only a few did. I might have stunted it but it has looked stunted the past two years without settting fruit. Anyway, I finally got to try one when I knocked it off while netting the tree. I was very happy with the flavor. Juicy with a nice plummy/fruity taste even at 14 brix. I want to stop planting additional trees, but I might get one more of these since this one’s health seems iffy and I really liked the fruit.
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I almost forgot about that. I’ll be dehydrating the next bunch for sure. Wonder how long I should leave them in?
Those look great! I’m waiting for my VdB figs to ripen!
Your Superior plum looked like a persimmon tree except for the red fruit 
Ohio must be really hot in the summer. Your Castleton ripens a month before mine. I picked mine last year between Sept 5-10. I like to let it hang a long time until skin shrivel a bit. It tasted very sweet and plummy. So good. It is what I think a plum should taste like.
Before it fruited last year, I did not know how good the fruit tasted. I grafted a few other varieties on it. After I tasted it, I really like this plum, I stopped grafting more varieties on it. I love to have as many Castleton plums as it could produce.
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