Some quick news from the garden:
I think there might be patty pan squashes in my future! Yum. I love these squashes. For a start, they look like little spaceships when they’re done. They also taste wonderful, which is quite a generous bonus, given the spaceship angle.
I’m always fascinated by the way in which those lovely yellow-orange flowers gradually get eaten up by the growing squash…. and how fast it seems to happen too! You can see it in progress in the photograph.
-cvj
Clifford, here are koi eggs about to hatch. The most visible thing is the eyes, after that, you can see the backbone (or notochord I suppose), particularly in the egg at the top left. Some of the eggs have little fish swimming in them, so some have undoubtedly hatched. God, I love summer.
I don’t know what the little dots are. They are alive. I guess I’ll get out the microscope and find out. The rope is 3/8″ nylon, I think. And of course the camera is a Digital Elph SD450.
Squash blossoms (I have tried them from zucchini) are delicious dipped in buttermilk. then cornmeal and shallow fried in butter or olive oil.
I understood. I was just being playful with the culinary motif.
I’ve a friend setting up house in the Seattle area. I shall ask her if she wants some koi.
-cvj
For critters that mess around in your garden, try a paintball gun. You don’t actually have to hit them. And you’ll find the experience very satisfying.
Maybe I should write “koi babies” instead of “koi fry“, which gives a completely wrong impression. Seriously, anyone in the Seattle area that wants a lot of koi babies to stock their pond can look me up. A one-pound female lays 25 to 50,000 eggs, and we’ve got a half dozen fish that are 2 to 3 feet long. I should get a photo of the eggs a day from now, just before they hatch, when they should have eyes visible.
Live in an almost-desert, such as LA! Very dry. Such creatures are relatively rare for my garden. It does not get very wet, and the usual excessive sprinkler use that compensates for that in gardens around here does not happen. I have drip system that delivers the water to precisely where it is needed. As a result, no snails or slugs. Well, occasionally I see snail shells in part of the front garden, but not near the grub.
On the other hand, it only takes one curious and hungry skunk to find its way into the garden and wreak havoc. They love to dig. Guess where? Just about where there’s some moisture – the roots of the plants of course! So they can dig up entire plants and thus destroy them.
My solution for those? Fixing holes in fencing when I spot them. Adopting a mutually assured destruction policy if I see them in the garden. (They have nuclear weapons, after all.) This involves throwing things and turning a stream of water onto them to try to discourage visits. I can’t bring myself to hurt them for real… once you forget their smell for a moment…. they are sooooo cuuuute!
-cvj
I’m envious of the apparent lack of slugs/snails which are devouring the leaves of all the vegetables we are attempting to grow, despite our best efforts. Do you have a secret form of pest control?!!!
Well not these particular ones, but yes, there are related flowers that I’ve had that are very tasty. Will have to look into how generally edible they are. Not sure I’d be able to eat some of mine though, since I’d so want to wait for them to turn into squashes!
-cvj
Do you ever eat the flowers? I haven’t cooked them myself, but I’ve had flor de calabaza in Mexico. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be from a certain kind of squash, however.
Hi… Thanks for the thoughts. Butternuts are maybe my favourties. Hard to say.
Wow! Are the Koi good with a bit of butter too?
-cvj
The thing I miss about not being in the US South is wide variety of fresh vegetables. For squash, I like the crook necked variety best. Fried in just a tablespoon of real butter, of course.
By the way, squash are one of the fruit that require insect pollination. I would suspect that the incredible proliferation of insects has solved the bee deficit problem that existed at the beginning of the year. If not your squash will likely be deformed. You can pollinate them yourself.
Anyone who wants Koi fry can give me a holler because I’ll have many thousands this year. They have just spawned.