It is the beginning of June and the garden suddenly has fruit and veggies to bring in. The citrus row along the driveway is providing my morning orange juice as well as lemons and limes for lemonade or limeade for months to come.
The Flavorosa pluot is always first of the stone fruits to be ready. While I don’t expect as much from the apricots this year as last year, so far we are getting plenty of them. A plumcot which had never done anything but grow leaves must have heard me threatening to cut it back and graft on peaches as it actually produced a small number of apricot like plum tasting fruit. I hope it will do even better in future years. The early peaches and nectarines are not doing well — there was still too much peach leaf curl.
Although the blackberries did not get much care over the past year, a couple varieties are still providing plenty of berries. Hopefully next year they will be relocated to a better spot where I can deal with them properly and harvest the berries with less bloodshed on my part.
The snow peas and lettuce were the first veggies ready for the kitchen. Now zucchini and beans are starting. We had to build a bird net cover for the raised bed to protect corn seedlings from birds who uprooted about a third of the first planting to get to the sprouted kernels. It will probably be another month before corn, tomatoes or winter squash are ready — if all goes well. Weather and critters in past years have managed to destroy a promising crop. And given the kind of year 2020 has been, it seems almost anything might happen.
