Late June Update

Strange heat wave here.  Never seen anything like it.  But most things are growing well.

Onions:  Doing well.  Close spacing and leaf mulch helped keep weeds to a minimum and moisture levels even.  Watering every second morning with water wand.

Strawberries: My Lovely Wife's picking has finished.  35.5 lbs from 44 plants in one 50 square foot bed.  Now the new runners have been guided into the 50 elevated pots and those will be the start of a new bed once the early potatoes are finished.

Potatoes:  Doing well.  Decided not to cut off the flowers after reading about diseases entering through leaf and stem wounds.  If I can get another extra week or two before the viruses hit, I should be able to more than make up any loss to fruited flowers.  We’ve been buying spuds for one month.  Probably will start stealing my own earlies in a few weeks.

Corn and Squashes:  Doing well.  It will take much work to keep the trash pandas out of the corn.  I’m currently trying to get them to really enjoy mini marshmallows.  They like them but won’t fully enter the live trap yet.  I have hopes.  I harvest a zucchini every other day.

Lettuces and Garlic:  Coming along nicely.  Pre dug our first garlic bulb.  Our old stuff was very mushy.  The different leaf lettuces have been providing all spring.

Peas and Beans:  Peas are late and today tips were stressing to heat.  Beans are starting to climb the poles.  Germination from my home grown old and new seed was very good.  Watering daily with watering wand is needed with close plantings.

Cantaloupes are doing very well.  Watermelons, not so much.  Some leaf loss, not sure why.  Will search out disease resistant watermelon variety for next year.

Root Crops:  So sad.  Germination was so poor.  It was all my fault.  I didn’t place the usual burlap sheets over the bed to ensure even moisture.  The rows in the shade of the greenhouse did fine.  The rest will need to be reseeded soon.  Will lose poundage this year.  Always learning or reinforcing past knowledge.

Cucumbers:  Doing great.  Already picked 11 slicers from the Socrates plant.  The Marketmore plant is progressing well.

Tomatoes and Peppers:  Progressing nicely.  Nothing to eat yet.  Some plants are already six feet tall.  Trained up twine to the ceiling of the greenhouse with plastic clips.  Running three leaders for each tomato plant.  Experimenting with two and three leaders on the peppers.  Have no clue if it will work but that is still to be determined.  The idea was to get the crop ripening more gradually over a longer period of time.  Always learning.

Cabbages:  Looking good.  They like the weed free black plastic mulch and so do I.  One side shoot broccoli plant should produce a good long time.  

Saw a small rabbit in the next door neighbour’s front yard.  And he skipped through her fence with ease.  Never seen bunnies in the subdivision before.  Another reason to have the backyard fully fenced with solid boards and a concrete curb.  I hope to be working on the last long section soon.  At least I bought myself a new saw.

Happy Gardening.