sweet potatoes

I finally got around to digging the sweet potatoes. This year was the first year I planted sweet potatoes; I started with a little plant from a neighbor. I tried this plant off in a corner of the yard and tended it with benign neglect. Only grew one sweet potato from the plant, and it's delicious.

sweet potato - Ipomoea batatas - just dug

sweet potato - cooked and mashed

Satsuma mandarins

The satsuma mandarins have been good - not super sweet but still very good. There have been aphids on the new leaves, but the tree has still borne fruit. This spring I'll try more ladybugs.

satsuma mandarin

sanditas are still producing

Last season I planted a sandita vine (Melothria scabra) as an experiment to see how this little fruit tastes. The word "sandita" means "little watermelon" in Spanish, and the plant has been grown in Mexico since before the arrival of the Spaniards. The vine seems very hardy; the taste of the fruit is much like a cucumber.

Melothria scabra

worm in the compost

I took this video with a simple compound light microscope at 400x magnification. The first few seconds of the video are probably the most fascinating, but I found the rest interesting too. It's much better to watch in "full screen mode." Hit the little rectangle in the lower right of the video.  Hit "esc" to get back to regular mode. If anyone can reliably identify the species of nematode, let me know.

pineapple guavas make great quickbread!

The little pineapple guava bush has been producing well. Very low maintenance. We've been having delicious pineapple guava quickbread. Yum!

pineapple guavas and an orange from the yard

squash from the back yard

The squash vines take up more space than I expected, but the squash are well worth the effort.

cooked squash

caught in the act!

The figeater beatle, Cotinis mutabilis, is said to eat figs. When I see these huge members of the scarab beetle family, they are usually buzzing around the yard in their slow, lumbering way. Today, though, I caught one in the act of eating a dried fig. Though these beetles are destructive, I find their green iridescent green exoskeletons quite beautiful.

figeater beetle - Cotinis mutabilis