Garden

The garden has been producing lots of veggies. I have frozen lots of green beans already and am continually challenged to find ways to use the zucchini. This year I planted several types of melons and am pleasantly surprised that they are ripening in our cool coastal climate. This one, “Sweet ‘n Early” from Burpee’s, is small — perfect for our situation where there are only two of us to enjoy the harvest.

These are an assortment of the colors the Rainbow assortment of carrots produced. For the most part, there seems to be little difference in taste. And the purple one is typical orange when peeled. But they do add a bit of interesting color to the salads.

Another thing tried for the first time is celery. It is hard to appreciate how much larger than the trimmed ones in the grocery stores. They are on a 4 foot diameter table in the photo to provide a reference for size. And just for fun, I tried a red stemmed variety as well as the sort we always see in the store. Again, it adds a little extra color to the salads. But the outer stems have more pronounced ribs and a bit tougher.

We got the weather station set up in the garden last week. At first the local birds were intimidated by the movement in the wind. But within a day we noticed one perched briefly on the rain gauge at the top of the post.

We had more mulch delivered to finish covering the bare ground. All the bare ground is now covered.

The stakes in the hillside are marking holes that were dug out in preparation for next year’s bare root planting.

Well, the corn did not make it for dinner for the Forth of July festivities. But it did get to just starting to put out tassels.

Unlike the corn, the green beans were ready. This is the same variety as I planted last year. Actually, the seeds are from the same packet. The germination was still good and the plants are prolific.

I tried a few other interesting winter squash varieties. Since we like acorn squash, I found other varieties of it — this one is “Cream of the Crop”, a white variety.

Here is another of the acorn squash, “Celebration”, that I am also trying this year.

Most of the beds have filled in. Getting between and around some of them is getting difficult.

The fruit trees were all trimmed back a couple weeks ago. The idea is to prune in the summer to control the size of the tree. We want to keep the trees small enough to work without ladders. It seemed very drastic at the time, but the trees responded by putting out buds where they were cut. We are going to end up with much bushier trees after one year than if we had just waited for winter to prune.

More mulch delivered. This time a bit nicer type, “walk-on mulch”, to spread around the raised beds. The weed barrier cloth might work by itself in other situations but here the wind was getting under it in some spots and it was a tripping hazard.

The trees in the orchard are finally starting to look like trees instead of sticks with a few leaves. Even the pears are finally getting into the act.

Peas are about ready for picking. Or maybe they already are. An obvious mistake now, but planting shell peas, snap peas and snow peas next to each other seemed like a reasonable idea for care. Unfortunately, it is a bit hard to tell one from the other once they started growing into each other in a tangled mass.

Nasturtiums that were planted between the tomatoes along the edge of the beds are blooming. Supposedly the flowers are edible. It makes the garden a bit prettier to have the additional color.

he bed with the corn now has the fourth planting just emerging.

A small cantaloupe is starting to grow.