June Garden Tour

 

It's June and the garden is in full swing. I've spent a lot of time out there over the past couple months, so I decided to finally post an small garden tour to show how things are growing. Also, I'd like to prove that the reason I'm not blogging more is because I'm out there getting dirt under my nails.

 

 

Ah, here we have a nice row of Buttercrunch lettuce sandwiched between a row of swiss chard and pathetically growing kale. Lets, not focus on the kale... Lettuce, ah yes, I try planting several kinds of lettuce to have a variety for salads. Buttercrunch has proven to be a good variety for my garden and I'm very pleased with my lettuce production overall. For the first time in many years my lettuce is not only vigorously growing, but as far as I know the humans are the only ones eating it! Yay! Everything in this bed was sown the second week of April.

 

I have all my squash transplanted, except cucumbers. I'm only growing zucchini, butternut squash and acorn squash (and cucumber) this year. Here is a zucchini plant I transplanted about a week ago, they all seem to be pretty happy so far. In the background you see snap peas growing up some string I'm training them on. A pest preventive measure I have deployed this year is the interplanting of a lot of marigolds throughout the garden.

 

Transplanted the second week of April is some Tuscan/Dinosaur Kale. I've been having a big problem with flea beetles this year so this is the only very nice representative of all my cole crops so far. Maybe this variety of kale is slightly more resistant to flea beetles?

 

There are always so many volunteer plants in my garden from the previous year. Here are sunflowers that mother nature is growing in my garden. The volunteers (ones that plant themselves and grow on their own) are always the most vigorous and healthy plants one could ever hope for, if you find that your sunflowers from the year before have graced your garden with offspring - let them be. Don't move them. Work around them. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

 

Here is a row of red lettuce and leeks. There are some Brussels sprout transplants in the background, but again, this doesn't seem to be my year with the cole crops.

 

This is another row of zucchini, yes I planted two rows (10 plants in all) for good measure. You can see more peas climbing high. And marigolds! I tried interplanting radishes in all my squash rows, I've read to do that in a few gardening books with something to do with pest control. However... flea beetles yet again have put a damper on things. Aw well.

 

Broadleaf sage. Almost all the sage in the garden are several years old now. I LOVE LOVE LOVE sage, I use it in the kitchen constantly. I encourage anyone who has a garden to plant a perennial herb like sage or thyme... it's one of the best returns on investment that you can get from your garden.

 

Tomatoes! Well, flowers... which are potential future tomatoes! The good news is that ALL of my tomato plants survived that killer frost after all. This particular variety is Black Krim (which I bought from a local plant fair as insurance after I thought several plants were goners from that frost last month). All my tomatoes this year are heirloom varieties: Italian Roma, San Marzano, Brandywine, Amana and Black Krim. Oh and I have cherry tomatoes growing in buckets by the house. Anyway, I can't wait!

 

This is a row of Brandywine tomatoes. The first two are ones that were very damaged from the killer frost last month, but they bounced right back! To put it in perspective though, the one farthest away that is in the shade a little bit... was not damaged at all... and it is already getting so huge. If the other plants had not been set back, I'd soon have a tomato jungle on my hands.

 

Pole beans. These are beans I saved from last years plants. I can't even remember what generation of beans these are now for me, but it never ceases to feel fantastic about how you can grown your own food from your own seeds - year after year after year!

I just wanted to share this, because it can't be something you see in most gardens. What kind of plant do you suppose this flower comes from?

 

It's SALSIFY! I grew salsify for the first time, last year from seed, but somehow forgot to eat them. They survived the winter (very cold hardy!) and now it looks like I'll have plenty of seeds for the future. It's very interesting to see what happens to some plants if you just let nature take it's course.

 

Finally, and because I didn't want to overwhelm everyone with every single veggie in the garden, are the beets. One of two beds of beets, actually. I love beets, but I have a hard time convincing others of the near perfection of this root veggie. Therefore, I've decided that from now on I'm giving part of my beet harvest to my mom (whose soil doesn't seem to favor beet growing)... she gave me a crap load of pie pumpkins (which for some reason I have a hard time growing) last year- how's that for a produce trade? I think her pumpkins far outweighed my beets though... Anyway, you see all that green stuff everywhere in this bed? That is DILL. I have dill growing EVERYWHERE this year. Insanity! But that is a topic for another post.

 

Hope you enjoyed the tour!