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.

• This blog post explains what landrace gardening is.
• This blog post tells how to do it.
• Details about my cucumber experiment are at the bottom of this post.

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?

Garden Notes: June 2022 © June 2022

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Spring Planting & Growing: Late Edition

Spring's last anticipated frost date divides my planting season into early and late. If the weather turns warm early, I'm always tempted to take a chance and plant early. Last year I did that and we had a late frost. This year I waited. I'm glad I did because we had another late frost this year! We're on the other side of that now, so we're busy planting and transplanting warm weather veggies and crops.

Warm season seeds planted so far:

• cantaloupe (Hales' Best)
• cowpeas (Ozark Razorback)
• okra (Clemson spineless)
• peanuts (a Virginia type, I think)
• my landrace cucumbers (F1)
• calendula
• sunflowers
• corn (Painted Mountain)
• winter squash (Sweet Potato)
• summer squash (White Scallop)
• Swiss chard
• Fordhook
• Rugy
• Rainbow blend
• sunflowers (Russian Mammoth)
• dill
• marigolds
• scarlet runner beans
  

Plants planted or transplanted:

• asparagus roots
• sweet potato slips (Georgia Jet)
• tomato plants
• Matt's Wild Cherry (volunteers)
• Better Boy
• table grape (green seedless)
• olive tree (Arbequina, supposedly okay for my growing zone)
• redbud seedlings

Working on:

• pasture

Still to plant:

• green beans (Cornfield, when the corn is about 6" tall)
• more summer squash & cukes (for extended harvesting)
• more herbs (hopefully)
• purple sweet potato slips
  

Purple sweet potato sprouts for slips

 I got the purple sweet potatoes from Misfits Market. They were excellent keepers and very tasty, so I saved one to sprout for slips. It's been slow, I reckon because it's been a fairly cool spring. Eventually I'll get them in the ground to grow my own.

Harvesting:

Snowpeas

Asparagus

Garlic

Lettuce

Strawberries

Red raspberry leaves to dry for tea

Mizuna

Peppermint for tea

Oregano for seasoning

Waiting to harvest:

Potatoes

Wheat

Multiplier onions

And of course, we're waiting on everything else! The challenge, now, is getting enough rain. We had a very rainy spring but no rain since our last frost, except for an occasional drizzle. Without moisture, things don't germinate or grow, so I'm doing a lot of watering of transplants and baby plants. We're really enjoying the lettuce and snow peas, and I'm hoping with plenty of watering they'll continue to produce. But I hesitate to water newly planted seeds, wondering if it isn't better to wait until it rains for nature to take it's course.

The transition from rainy to not-so-much rain pretty much marks our transition from spring to summer. That, and the days are getting hot. Those days are upon us, so it's definitely time to finish planting and shift seasonal gears.

Spring Planting & Growing: Late Edition © May 2022

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Spring Planting & Growing: Early Edition

"All spring, I try to plant something every day "

Carla Emery, Encyclopedia of Country Living

I love that quote by Carla Emery, but I confess I haven't faithfully applied it this year. We've had a lot of rain, so some days it's too muddy to work in the garden. I managed to get my cool weather crops in, and now look forward to our last potential frost date. That date falls in the middle of our spring planting months, and so divides my planting season into early and late.

Planted so far:

• turnips
• kale
• carrots
• parsnips
• mangels
• sprouted pantry potatoes
• beets
• lettuce
• snow peas
• salsify
• pink dandelion
• cultivated burdock
• mizuna
• bloody dock

Of the root crops, only the mangels and burdock have emerged so far. You'll see them with the other spring garden photos below.

I only had a few plants survive winter; the rest succumbed to the cold.

These collard plants are several years old. I don't get huge
leaves from them anymore, but the small ones are tasty too.

One of just a few fall planted kale plants that made it.

Fall planted garlic, multiplier onions, and volunteer potato
plant (the sprouted pantry potatoes haven't emerged yet.)

More garlic

The one that concerns me is our wheat. It's yellowing.

Our fall planted wheat. Yellow from ???

There are a number of things that can cause this: nitrogen deficiency, iron deficiency, sulfur deficiency, fertilizer burn, herbicide injury, moisture stress, plus disease or insect damage. Apparently it's common enough that there are scores of articles written about it and speculating as to its cause. 

We don't use fertilizer, herbicides, or pesticides, so those are out as causes. Nutrient deficiency perhaps. Dan side dressed the rows with compost to see if it helps. Moisture stress is a possibility. Not from too little rain, but because we've had so much. At any rate, it looks like we'll still get a harvest.

It's still going to seed.

Saving for next year's seed will be the priority. We can always adjust our diet to whatever's left over if we need to.

Next are the early spring planted veggies.

Snow peas. No flowers yet!

Lettuce and volunteer dandelion; both salad favorites.

Mangels. These make great livestock feed (both leaves and roots).

Mizuna and violets (of which the flowers are edible)

Now that the swale is in and working well, I'm hoping my hoop house will be more useful in summer. Its raised beds dry out quickly in summer, so that I tend to plant there as a last resort. What I've decided to use them for is perennials, where the raised bordered beds can keep them under control.

Cultivated burdock and volunteer chickweed.

The other thing I planted this spring was the garden swale berm.

Swale berm planted with herbs and edibles.

I made a seed mix of all my old herb, flower, greens, and root crop seeds plus clover. Then I covered it with compost. Because the berm is sloped, much of the seed has washed down a bit, but hopefully enough has stayed put to help anchor the soil. It will be fun to see what grows.

Seed mix sprouting on the swale berm.

Then there are the perennials.

My few asparagus plants were taken over by
blackberries and daffodils, so I liberated them.

I actually gave up on asparagus a long time ago, because the wiregrass kept choking it out. But I have four or five plants that have hung in there over the years. We only get a few stalks at a time and enjoy them greatly, so I think it's time to invest in more.

Strawberries are thriving. My competition for those is slugs, birds, and chipmunks.

Red raspberries are leafing out.

Horseradish. Young leaves are good in a steamed greens mix.

Pear tree, garlic, & comfrey; swale berm in the background.

Pear blossoms. Pears seem to be our most reliable tree fruit.

Cherry blossoms. If I can beat the birds to them, I might get some!

Our last expected frost date is right around the corner. Then we can get to work planting our warm weather favorites. Like every other gardener on the planet, I'm looking forward to that.

How about you? How does your garden grow?

Spring Planting & Growing: Early Edition 

© April 2022 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com