A Few Good Picks

Well, talk about some string beans!

Oodles of lettuce!

The year’s first update in pictures

Hard to believe that it’s almost time to close out June, but time flies when you’re having fun…in the garden! Not sure if we’d call this season “fun” yet, but it hasn’t been that bad. In fact, it’s been pretty okay. So let’s take a trip around the yard to see how things have been doing here at the official start (belatedly) of the summer.

Ringing in Spring

Despite some cooler nights, warmer, sunnier days have been a real treat, of late. It’s always nice when it’s truly time to put away the heavy sweaters and blankets for some lighter fare. The garden is definitely waking up from winter, too.

The Year’s First Harvests!

Despite everything that’s happened, or not happened in the garden this year, we’ve managed to get a few successful harvests over the past weekend. And now that the weather has evened out some, things are looking better and better, even just since our last post. Only a week out, and we already have beans, squash, and cucumbers coming in. We’ve also finally put out some tomato seedlings, though we have a bunch of “reserves” just in case. And, as we said, we’ve been harvesting!

So first up, June means strawberries, right? Well, in our neck of the woods it does, and boy, do we have strawberries!

It may not look like much, and we’ve picked many more since taking this picture, but it’s taken us a good three years to get a decent strawberry harvest! Now, we even have a small surplus!  (That’s dwindling, y’know, because strawberries are darn tasty!) On the downside, we’ve noticed an uptick in slugs this year, which stinks for the strawberries. Between them and the critters, we’ve already lost a good handful, and a few more tend to go each day. But we’re doing what we can to remain vigilant, even if it means having to pick the strawberries a little early and then have them ripen indoors.

Moving on, not long ago we mentioned that it looked like our radishes were doing pretty good. Indeed, in order to make room for the ground cherries and huckleberries that we planted in the same planters, we had to harvest all the radishes. While many were just stalks (we really have to better abut thinning out our plants! Or, maybe, not planting a many seeds.), many were not!

We came away with a good several dozen mixed Saxa II (red-pink), Hailstone (white), and Malaga (purple). We didn’t get a single Round Black Spanish radish, and we’ll keep that in mind next year. Our radishes never get very large or long, so we’ll probably stick with round, small varieties in the future. Anyway, we’re we’re looking into pickling this bunch in order to help them keep awhile longer. We like radishes well enough, but it’s not like we go through them like candy! Though generally mild going in, all these radishes leave a hefty aftertaste. You definitely  know you’ve had a radish after eating one!

And finally, we picked a lovely mix of greens and lettuces.

We mentioned awhile back that rabbits had somehow gotten into our peas. We’ll, we soon discovered that they had also made their ways into the lettuce and greens raised beds. Ugh. (This year the rabbits got smart and chewed through our net cages. Stupid smart rabbits.) After investing in some Liquid Fence, we’ve had a better time keeping the greens and such going. So in this harvest was arugula, New Fire Red Lettuce, Garnet Rose lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, and Rocky Top mixed lettuce. It made for an utterly delicious salad! From the looks of things outside, we’ll certainly have more greens to come — as long as the rabbits stay far, far away, that is!

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So we’ll round things out here with a quick update on our grass “trenches.”

If you recall from our last post, our intention with this experiment was to try to keep the areas around our squash and melon (and pole bean) hills relatively moist and free from weeds. Well, we can happily report that, after surviving through a particularly strong storm this past weekend, the trenches are holding! They are keeping the soil right around the hills from getting too dry, and they’ve really helped kept down the weeds in the bed generally. And as the seedlings have come up, they’re also free from pests and mold. Whether or not this is a result of the grass circles remains to be seen, but we’re very pleased with the results so far.

 

The Year’s First Update in Pictures

As much as we’ve been hemming and hawing about the lack of “spring” in this year’s Spring, not everything has gone sour. In fact, if anything, this year is turning out to be late and slow, which isn’t all bad. Though it seems like the un-sunny and un-warm weather has put a kink in things, maybe we’ll luck out and have a sunny and warm Fall, which would help extend the growing season past our usual ending in October. Or maybe we’ll have a great summer that’ll kick things into overdrive! All we can do is wait and see. In the meantime, indoors, we’re still caring for tomato seedlings, putting them outside when the sun comes out. Maybe they’ll get in the ground before the end of the month. We also, finally, have some pepper seedlings! They are still so tiny at this point, but a good dozen or so of the full tray that we planted have been steadily growing. It better than nothing.

How are things outdoors? So glad you asked! Because we’re about to get on with our first of out monthly updates in pictures. Let the gallery commence!

So first, we’ve got the bed of greens – arugula, kale, spinach, endive, and cabbage. Things are still a little small at this point, but everything looks healthy. What’s really taking off at the moment is the arugula, endive, and cabbage. Maybe the cooler weather will prevent everything from bolting to seed!

Next is…well…this is actually the cucumber bed. But seeing as how it’s been much too cool for in-ground planting, we decided to stick some random lettuce seedlings in the middle of the bed. (You can barely see them, but they’re there!) If they take, great! And we’ll eventually get the cucumbers planted around the perimeter. If not, then we’ll still have plenty of space for cucumbers.

In this planter we decided to place a few of our huckleberry seedlings. Hopefully they’ll take. So far, so good.

Next is the lettuce bed, which remains very quiet for now. A few sprigs have popped up. Hopefully more will show as it gets warmer.

This is a close-up shot of some lettuce sprigs that came up in another planter. Very glad to see them!

So many peas! We’re happy that our good luck with peas continues — they seem to do well each year no matter what.

And here we have a barrel of radishes. Too many radishes probably. Have got to get to thinning out the herd!

More radishes in the second barrel planter.

Out back we stashed our herb planters. Since it’s been too cold for basil, etc., we decided to stick a few more lettuce seedlings in to see if any would take. They look a little wilty at the moment.

The strawberries are looking good! They’ve spread a little since last year, and now have so many flowers. The fruit is just starting to show, and now we really need to sun to help with the growing and ripening!

So last year we had a ton of volunteer tomatoes. This year, for whatever reason, we have some volunteer carrots! We’ve had some success with carrots in the past, but our soil isn’t great for them. (Someday we’ll plan a nice sandy soil bed just for them.)

And speaking of volunteer plants, squash anyone? This is the first of two little plots where squash of some variety (probably zucchini here) has popped up unexpectedly.

And this is the second spot of squash seedlings. This could be zucchini as well. We’ll just have to wait and see!

And finally, though the sky may not say Spring, our lilacs do! It has been a joy watching this little (now big) plant grow. and we love it when it blooms each year. The smell is amazing!

Thanks for joining us for this first trip around our 2016 garden. Hopefully things will just get better from here on out!