Last week, in the garden. (June 20)
This morning, in the garden.
(If you're keeping garden notes and photographs and want to share it with the rest of us, do leave a comment with a link so that we may visit your garden too!)
Ah, so much happening in the garden this week! There's been a great deal of rain, which is a blessing in many regards and a challenge in others. One particular storm that rolled through was quite hard on the plants, knocking many things over and breaking a few stems and branches. Most of those things seem to be bouncing back okay, with a little bit of propping and encouragement. The rain also brought with it some most unwelcome company in the form of potato leaf hoppers, a new visitor to my garden. We caught them very early, we hope, and treated with neem oil and pyganic (per the recommend of our pest report at MOFGA). I'm holding out a lot of hope for that thirty pounds of potatoes we planted!
Elsewhere, I am putting a lot of hope in the nasturtiums and marigolds and borage that I've planted throughout the garden in the interest of deterring other kinds of pests. I whisper a little encouragement and extra love their way whenever I walk by them in the garden. You never know.
The tomatoes are just tall enough now that the t-shirt tying has begun! I've tried a few different ways of staking and caging tomatoes in our gardens in the past, and this really is my favorite for the amount of tomato plants we grow (forty-four plants this year). Simple grade stakes, heavy pruning, and strips of retired t-shirt jersey to tie the plant to the stake as it grows up.
The most exciting garden news this week is that we are eating so much from the garden now! Salads every night, scapes incorporated into everything, radishes for breakfast lunch and dinner, kale in our smoothies, spinach and chard, and peas (peas!) just beginning now too. A most exciting moment was reached earlier in the week when I realized it was time to get out the harvest basket because the loot at the end of the day was more than what fit in my hands. Instead now, a basket full. Blooming and harvesting and enjoying...so much in the garden this week!
