June Garden Journal 2017

My first sunflower! It showed up July 1st. Hello, summer!!!

Above left you mainly see sunflowers. They will hopefully be supporting some sakata melon vines. In front of them are watermelon vines, and there is a close-up of a tennis ball sized watermelon we haven't managed to kill yet. The calendula, as promised, self-seeded. 

The sunflowers in this picture are hopefully going to support apple melons. Swiss chard is planted along the left edge. The front box is freshly planted with bush beans, malabar spinach, lettuces, carrots, beets, Egyptian walking onion, lemongrass, and a tiny little butternut squash plant. All the nasturtiums are volunteers.

This bed is supposed to be all squash and peppers, but there is a broccoli plant from last fall that magically came back to life and I interplanted some Romaine lettuce which has done really well in that spot.

Mixed results in the bed above. I should've added more amendments from the beginning, but it's improving. The Japanese cucumbers I started from seed did far better than the bush cucumbers I sowed directly in the bed. The eggplants finally look healthy, and the peppers and tomatoes are looking a little healthier. 

The corn (Blue Hopi) looks taller every day, and much healthier than last year. The green beans to the right might not be getting enough sun now, I'm not sure. They look healthy for now.

Most of my snap peas died. I thought I had some horrible pest at first, but I'm 85% certain the pest is my 7 year old daughter who checks for snow peas every day and probably uproots the plants as she picks. There are worse problems to have, and I planted a mix of peas and beans which may come up quickly. You can see the sprouts in the picture above, right. Wrong season for peas, I guess, so we'll see. There is kale and spinach in the middle. The left side of the box has watermelons, one charentais melon, and yarrow. The melons aren't doing as well in this spot as in the warmer part of the garden. 

The bed to the right of the dying peas had a bunch of volunteer potatoes and one tomato plant. I ignored them completely and dug up an accidental 13 pounds of potatoes! That stuff doesn't usually happen to me in the garden, so YAY!

Above left is a "Missouri Bill's Soup Bean" drying out. They were delicious green, and it was nearly impossible to get my daughter to stop picking them. On the right are pumpkins. I think they'll be ready soon. They stopped growing and they've been getting darker every day.

I decided to pick from the garden only once a week if possible and to take pictures. It was easier than weighing it all since I'm getting such small amounts, and at least I have some kind of record now. I try to pick EVERYTHING that's ready, because otherwise some strange hoarding instinct takes over and it stays in the garden and goes bad. This way I'm always clearing room for new things and nothing goes to waste. I try to cook it all right away. I notice that I'm using more herbs now that I'm picking them ahead of time, and I never find rotting things in my refrigerator. I started using more parsley and oregano, and I'm making mint tea regularly. I'm getting 8-12 eggs a day in addition to the vegetables. So far, so good. 

​Happy fourth of July!