Flowers and bees

Leer en español.

The last few months have flown by. In my previous post back in March I wrote about the seedbeds that I was preparing to sow outside as soon as the weather would allow it... and all of the sudden it is late July! This summer has been a bit different: we've had some nice days but also quite a few rainy ones. We've also had fewer of the really hot days that one tends to associate with July and August, and the spread between day and night temperatures has remained wide. In summer, very hot days are usually accompanied by hot nights; however this has not been the case this year: at night temperatures fall to 15 Celsius or below -  which is nice to sleep but (I guess) weird for the plants. 

While on the one hand the rain has made everything grow like crazy, on the other hand the lack of sun has delayed the development of flowers and fruits. Just yesterday I harvested my first zucchini, while in previous years the plants were producing already in June. In addition, the humidity caused my tomato plants to be attacked by fungus (I'm still trying to save the biggest ones, but without much hope). But besides this "dramatic" case, I've has a good harvest of spinach, carrots, and beans ("good harvest" being relative given the reduced space available).

Purple beans starting to grow.

The pumpkins, for their part, seem to be happy and growing quite well. This corner, where I have 3-4 pumpkin plants and the same number of corn plants, is starting to look like a jungle, with a few little pumpkins already growing. 

My Mesoamerican corner.

This year I also decided to experiment by planting "uchuvas" or cape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana), a fruit that I love and that contains a lot of vitamins. While (as the scientific name indicates) it is not exactly native to Europe and it might suffer in cold temperatures, I sowed the plants in pots and will move them to the greenhouse or in the house if winter comes early. I'm glad to see the first fruits taking shape. 

One of the first cape gooseberries.

Another reason for joy this summer is that the neighbors a few houses down the street put a couple of beehive boxes in their garden. While I find beekeeping fascinating (and even took a course a few years ago), I don't really want to take on the commitment of caring for a hive (my two dogs are enough for me as pets). So the beehives in the neighboring house caught my attention, and only recently did I go 2+2=4 and understood why there are so many bees in my garden this year. I'm very grateful to the neighbors for this abundance of pollinators (I also recall my Microeconomics 3 university classes and the topic of "positive externalities", but that's for another blog...), and who knows, if I have a good harvest I might even bring them a little pumpkin. 

The bees pollinating a pumpkin flower.