Garden in Early June

 

The garden is starting to show some color now, not just the monotone colors of mud and mulch. The Golden Sweet snow peas are climbing the trellis and starting to flower. The buds are a beautiful custard yellow and the blossoms are lavender and tend to come in pairs.

 

 

 

The Soloist Napa cabbages are starting to form heads. The trick is to keep the debris out while the head forms. Particularly irritating are the little maple whirligigs I get pelted with every time a breeze blows. That should be over soon.

 

 

The beets gave been thinned and are doing well. So far no leaf miners on them. That’s Touchstone golden beet on the left and Shiraz red beet on the right.

 

 

Some of the lettuces are starting to head up. This is Marshall, a red romaine lettuce. You can see the yellow pollen grains on some of the horizontal leaves.

 

 

The Copra onions from Dixondale are doing great, much better than the Red Zeppelin. The Zeppelins were larger transplants but a lot of them did not break dormancy and just rotted.

 

 

The Rossa Lunga di Tropea onions are also growing well and size-wise are as large as the Copra right now. A lot of them will be pulled for fresh onions when they start to size up and not grown to maturity, since they aren’t great storage onions.

 

 

Most of the radishes are ready, but not Boro King. It is putting up a lot of attractive foliage with a purple rib, but will take a little longer to form its long, purple roots. It is a great radish with good eating qualities, so I am willing to wait.

 

 

Last Sunday I planted a row of tomatoes in light rain before the rain heavy started, which was good. Unfortunately, the rain came with some really cold nights in the 40s. After 3 days of cold, rainy weather, here’s that row of tomatoes, looking a little waterlogged.

 

 

This is a close-up of one of the tomatoes in that row, looking very stressed. The purplish cast to the leaves is a sign of cold stress.

 

 

Later last week I was able to finish planting the rest of the tomatoes in the raised beds. For them, the rain helped rehydrate the soil in the beds which had considerably dried out during the drought (remember, I have to pump and carry water to my plot, so I was not keen to water unplanted portions of the beds), so I was able to plant. Here is a view of those beds, with the tomatoes planted on the edges where they can be trained up trellis ropes.

 

 

A close-up of a Juliet tomato in the raised beds shows healthy green foliage.

 

 

Three hills of summer squash have been planted and seedlings are emerging from two of them. Still to be planted are the cold-sensitive crops, cucumbers, peppers, and squash. Temperatures below 50 can permanently set them back so there is no rush to get them in, but I will probably do that next week. Once those are in, most of the major tasks will be done. Having two plots is definitely more work than one.