Late June Garden Report

Oh shoot. Didn't I leave a garden around here somewhere? I could've sworn it was right here a couple of weeks ago...

Hmm, like around those sticks over there -

oooh, let's see...


Yay! I think I found it!

A large number of minutes and many, many mosquito bites later, there it is!


We'd been getting plenty of rain for a while up until last weekend, and I've been busy with work & running around with TQ, so I'd just trusted the garden to fend for itself. Saturday, when we went to sail, I finally got a good look at it for the first time in a while. Egads. If I was after a hay crop, it was fixin' to be a bumper. Anything else - not so good! I'd fully planned to weed on Sunday, but then I ended up feeling a bit under the weather & skipping the club. Finally made it out tonight, was terribly terribly tempted to go sit on the dock & hang out with my friends who were there running the Wednesday night open paddle, but I managed to discipline myself. I'd come to weed and weed I did. There is a certain type of "weed", lamb's-quarters, that I usually hold aside to take home & cook, makes a nice green sauteed or steamed - but with limited light left in the day, I didn't have time for distinctions like that - I just wanted to get my garden back!

Underneath the mess, everything's coming along more or less OK. I may have lost the beet crop - the grass roots were so tangled and the beets were so choked that even though I was being very, very careful not to get beet tops in with the handfuls of weeds, the beets would come along as part of the mass of roots that would get pulled out of the soil. I stuck them all back in but I don't know it they'll make it through that kind of brutality or not. If they don't I guess I'll replant, beets are fine going into the fall.

Everything else was battling away much more successfully and I'm hoping that with all the competition sent to the dumpster, there'll be some good energetic growth.

Might pick up a few more basil seedlings if I can find any - didn't do any from seed this year because I got started late & had never been sure if they'd done much or if it had been the seedlings I would always plant after getting impatient with the slow growth from the seeds. The seedlings I did plant are growing nicely, I feel like I had more plants in there last year. Pesto & the green leafy bits of caprese salad are very important crops, you know!

Under cover of the grass, the cucumbers had launched a stealth strangulation attack on the tomatoes. I broke that up & the cucumber is now being encouraged to climb the trellis instead of the neighbors. The tomatoes appeared to be unphased by all of it - there are blossoms on some and although they don't quite need staking yet, I should do that before much longer. As I cleared out the underbrush, I even another determined little volunteer fighting it's way up towards the light. It's got lots of breathing space now - grow grow grow!

The onions are doing fine, as is the bucket of herbs - those both survive winters and are in their 3rd and 4th years respectively & are thick enough that the weeds just can't get in there and get going the way they can among the new growth.

Mission accomplished - garden retrieved. Must try not to let it get that way again!