The “May Gray” weather gave way to enough sunshine that I was able to make a lot of progress in taking the garden back from the weeds. But now we appear to be in for a spell of “June Gloom”. Yesterday the fog was thick enough to register .02 inches on the rain gauge.
The cool weather crops seem to be doing well. I have been harvesting peas and lettuce as well as berries. This is the first year I have tried broccoli and it appears it may soon be ready for the dinner table.
The first crop of corn is starting to put out tassels and silks — but it is not very tall.
It looked as if we might finally have a bunch of cherries. (Getting the pollinators in sync has not been working well.) But before they were really ripe enough to harvest, the red house finches found them so I was only able to pick about six that had not been bird food. They are also feasting on the blueberries as they ripen. We need to make a frame for a bird net cover as well as trimming the cherry tree down so we can net that next spring. It is about time to cover the stone fruit with individual net bags. I tried that last year and it was really nice to be able to have peaches, plums and pluots which had not had huge spots pecked away. I don’t mind sharing, but birds tend to take it all.
Another new item this year is a short day onion. In the past years I have had day neutral varieties and they are very slow at producing bulbs and often are still growing as the holiday season approaches. I was surprised to see bulbs already forming.
Hopefully sunny days will be returning soon.