Last week, in the back garden. (June 27)
This morning, in the garden.
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Last week, in the front garden. (June 27)
This morning, in the front garden.
A grey day out there for taking pictures. The garden looks so pretty in the morning when the sun peeks out over the tree tops, but we haven't seen too much of that lately. I wanted to be a little more creative with my garden pics today and show you much more up close detail of things but the feasting mosquitoes and my dying camera battery had me moving pretty swiftly out there. I'll try to slow down a little more next week.
But... things are still growing! So far we've been relatively pest free with the exception of spotted cucumber beetles (they love the red kuri squash leaves) and a small presence of cabbage worms on the kale and collard greens. Two or three times a day I do a pass through of the squash and cucumber plants and hand pick the beetles. I think so far I'm staying on top of it as the plants still look really good and I'm only removing two or three beetles at a time. I know if I let them be their friends would come and together they'd destroy the plants - I had that happen last year.
As for the cabbage worms, we have four rows of kale and collards, two of which we put row covers on last week (taking the time to hand pick leaves with any signs of worms or larvae first). Hopefully today we can cover the other two rows. Fingers crossed that this works because otherwise I just don't think I'll be successful at growing kale here. Well, maybe in the very early spring but that's it. Some people have good luck "sharing" a bit of their crop with pests, but I haven't found the critters around here to be so generous. They seem to want it all for themselves!
Purslane grows abundantly and voluntarily in one of our gardens. Right now it is quite the under growth for our shallots and cucumbers. I'm letting it get just a little bigger before I harvest it for our salad bowl, trying to time it just right so we can enjoy this nutrient rich "weed" while protecting the happy and healthy growth of our shallots and cucumbers.
We are in the last few days of lettuce it seems which means a nice little section of the garden is in transition. Hmm... what to plant, what to plant.
I wish I planted three times the amount of peas. Next year.
Tomatoes are now staked and looking nice and bushy. You may be able to notice in my pictures that there is quite a bit of spacing between tomato plants in my garden - after suffering through late blight last summer we are taking every precautionary measure we can think of and have been taught to take.
- We are not planting any tomatoes in the garden where we had blight last year. Tomatoes are now quite a distance from the soil of that garden.
- Plenty of spacing between plants.
- Plenty of mulch to protect the plant from dirt splashing up in the rain or during watering. Speaking of watering - only water the earth/base of the plant, not the leaves.
- Finally, and I'm told most importantly, we're removing about 12 inches of foliage at the base of each plant. This is for air circulation as well as keeping dirt from splashing up and making contact with the leaves.
In general we have given our plants plenty of space this year and I think that is paying off right now because the weather has been so rainy and humid. I'm not sure the garden would be holding up as well as it seems to be if things were closer together.
To sum it up - things are good! Wet, hot, humid, and with a small dose of pests... but overall it's looking good out there!
This week we are harvesting:
- lettuce
- swiss chard
- peas
- strawberries
- blueberries (!!!)
- fresh herbs
What's happening in your garden? Feel free to share a few thoughts (or a blog link).
