June 28, 2022

Garden Notes: June 2022

Oh my. The month has flown by. I need to get my June garden post up before July gets here!
 
June rainfall
  •  3rd: 0.25"
  •  9th: 0.5"
  • 16th: 1.125"
  • 27th: 0.25"
  • 29th: 0.125"
  • Total: 2.25"
Temperature
  • nighttime range: 58-80°F (14.4-26.6°C)
  • daytime range: 80-100°F (26.6-37.7°C)

Tasks

Things I'm trying to get done before picking and preserving take all my time. 

Tying up tomato plants.

We must have 50+ cherry tomato volunteer plants. 

Mulching. I have a pretty good routine for this.

Afternoons are mulch gathering time because I can do it n the shade.

Early the following morning. I work on mulching my garden beds.

Ideally, I think mulching should be done right after a rain, to prevent the moisture from quickly evaporating out of the ground. With no rain, I water the bed thoroughly before putting down mulch.

After I finish with the beds, I need to re-do the wood chip mulch in the aisles, if I have time.

Harvesting, Preserving, and Eating

Strawberries, red raspberries, and mulberries

Mulberry pancakes

Multiplier onions

Garlic

Potatoes

Volunteer lamb's quarter

Lamb's quarter

Lamb's quarter

The lettuce started to bolt earlier this month, but I
find that Jericho doesn't get terribly bitter, even then.

Landrace cucumbers and Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes.

What are landrace cucumbers? They are my experiment to develop a locally adapted yet genetically diverse variety of cucumber for my garden.

So far, the cucumbers are growing very well and producing tasty cucumbers.

Lots of flowers hopefully means lots of cukes. That's
good, because I need to can pickles & relish this year.


100% homegrown salad, even the salad dressing! (Recipe here.)

Seed saving

So far, I've collected seed from:
  • Collards
  • Kale
  • Edible pod peas
  • Garlic (bulbils)
One thing I don't want to cross-pollinate, is my lettuce. I have three types of lettuce growing: Jericho Romaine,  a ruffly loose leaf type, and wild lettuce. 

The loose leaf lettuce bolted in early June.
Jericho didn't start until a few weeks later.

As mentioned above, the variety I grow is Jericho, which is the most heat tolerant variety I've tried. I don't want it cross-pollinating because I don't want to lose that. According to Joseph Lofthouse in his Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination, lettuce doesn't easily cross-pollinate. It still can, however, so to keep my strain pure, I took measures to prevent it.

Jericho lettuce. Flower heads covered to prevent cross-pollination.

I covered the flowering heads with the mesh bags I got to keep the birds from eating all my elderberries. Time will tell if this works!

Growing

Georgia Jet sweet potato vines and flower

Slicing tomatoes. Dan got four plants from a flea market.

Chicory

Moonglow pears. 

Sweet potato winter squash in the foreground (speckled leaves).

Late planting (replanting/transplanting). 

Ordinarily, I try to have all my planting done by now. Summer for us is a season where the days are hot and rain can be elusive. The sooner I can get my plants established and mulched, the less watering I have to do. We did have to replant some things that made a poor showing: melons, corn, and sunflowers. I made a second planting of summer squash and cucumbers as well.

Also, I was late on getting my homegrown sweet potato slips in the ground. I finally finished that the other day. These were planted in the African keyhole garden.

I had two types to plant. My trusty Vardamans and some from
a purple sweet potato that I originally got from Misfits Market.

The kale is a lone survivor of our cold winter.

I wanted to protect the newly planted slips from wilting, so
I watered and covered with shade cloth. That helped a lot!

Okay, that was long. But I had a lot I wanted to make note of. How about you? How does your garden grow?

13 comments:

Rosalea said...

Great tour Leigh. So nice to see what I can expect to see in the next month or so! My cucs have just put out their first big leaf, but tomatoes are blooming and there is the odd small green guy showing up, but I start them indoors way sooner than most, and they were starting to bloom when they were planted out. You are so far ahead of us! That sweet potato flower is just lovely. How long do you have daylight at this time of year? Daylight at 5AM and on til after 9PM here at the solstice, more or less. Just curious. Love that keyhole garden. Dan did such a great job on it.

Ed said...

We had another abnormally wet and this year cold spring so our garden is way behind, especially those of you to the south. But it is starting to come along and hopefully with a mild and long fall like we had last year, it will still be bountiful. I have pictures of it scheduled for a post tomorrow.

Leigh said...

Rosalea, daylight here is currently from about 6 a.m. to about 9:15 p.m. Of course, we warm up more quickly than you, so I don't always do early starts for my seeds. If I lived farther north, I'd start them indoors too!

Thanks about the keyhole garden. It especially looks nice when it's overflowing with growing goodness. :)

Ed, I'll look forward to your post!

Goatldi said...

Wowzers Lady!

Could you have packed more into a post? :-)

I learn so much from you and I also for odd reason after your blog post I almost always end up craving some wonderful dish I can't make. Today that would be Mulberry Pancakes lol. What makes it even more bittersweet is that I have a fairly young Mulberry tree by the chicken coop. It was one of the reasons the coop went there. However the folks that put it in the ground bought a Fruitless Mulberry. Was their motivation not wanting the "mess" or did they not know there is more than one variety of Mulberry trees and just took what they were sold?

We will never know but those cakes looked sooo good! Good work as usual!

Jenn Jilks said...

What an amazing life you lead!

Nancy In Boise said...

Wow we're so far behind you! Oh well nature is what it is weather-wise. What's your mulberries taste like?

Leigh said...

Goatldi, a fruitless mulberry???? I've never heard of such a thing. And how can yummy mulberries be a mess?!? It's amazing to me how many folks prefer ornamentals to fruit and nut producing plants. I'm delighted that we grow most of our own fruit!

Jenn, thank you! We like it. :)

Nancy, and when you're producing I'll be complaining of the heat, lol.

kathyinozarks said...

Good evening, I enjoyed your garden notes and photos. I agree mulching is really important especially during hot summers-really makes a big difference.

Leigh said...

Kathy, it really makes a huge difference, doesn't it? Not only in retaining moisture, but in keeping soil temperature down too.

Kathy said...

Hi Leigh! Noting your tomato ties are baling twine. I did that a few years ago & had some plant damage after a few weeks of daily afternoon breeze caused rubbing. Switched to fabric ties. Old t-shirt cut into 1-1/2" strips works well. If you grab both ends of the strip and gently pull, it rolls into a tube that's easy to tie around plants. Then the baling twine can be looped through it and tied to the support. Whatever works! Can also be hand washed & re-used the next year.
Thanks for sharing your garden progress! Mine was planted late & some dug up (repeatedly) by raccoons, but some is doing well. Looking forward to harvesting. Nothing like eating what you've grown yourself, especially from seeds.

Leigh said...

Kathy, good tip about the old t-shirts for tying up tomatoes. I've used baling twine for a number of years now, but never noticed any damage.

Sorry to hear about your raccoons! Critters can be such a challenge in the garden.

Jean Ellen said...

Wow, you have an amazing garlic harvest. I just can't seem to find the secret for getting mine to grow large. I have already canned 4 pints of pickles - my stash was getting low this year as well. You have a real green thumb. I do enjoy reading your blog.

Leigh said...

Jean Ellen, thank you! Truth be told, my green thumb is pretty elusive. Some things are doing well, some things barely germinated!