I said I would likely keep doing some garden posts, and so I am. I like to go back and see how things change. This year's big change is that Mr. Ferdzy has put up insect-proof cloth over 3 beds. These 2 beds have the cabbages, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflowers. There are also some rutabagas, from them having gone to seed in this area last fall. They have been providing some truly excellent greens. The cloth has made a huge difference. The brassicas have never looked so good.
On the right, melons. On the left, peppers. Both looking pretty sad. The mild weather that has made the brassicas quite happy does not suit either of these sets of plants. We'll see what harvest, if any, we actually manage to get.
About 5 Brussels sprouts overwintered, but only one survived long enough to flower. There seems to be a bunch of seed forming; we'll have to wait to see how it does.
The other bed we covered were the squash and zucchini. They too, look quite amazing. We have to open them up every second day or so and fertilize them with a paint brush, but we have already picked our first 3 zucchini. Squash have not actually started flowering yet. It may get very busy in the early morning once they do.
Garlic started to look a little ratty from the now endemic leek moth, but a dose of diatomaceous earth seems to have improved things a lot.
As usual, random lettuce is going to seed.
Also as usual, carrots were absolute bastards to get started. Second planting took much better. We were more careful about keeping them covered with a cloth... yes, I'm detecting a theme here. Onions are looking very good.
We left some rutabagas out to go to seed; instead they have been badly damaged by Swede midges. They seem to be resprouting. This is not them in the photo above - those are kohlrabi, and they are looking very good and untouched by bugs in spite of not being covered. It is inexplicable, given that they are plainly in the garden. I know they like kohlrabi just fine because they did a number on them last year. Well, there's still plenty of time I suppose.
Potatoes have much less virus damage than last year and are growing well and flowering profusely. The bad news is that they (almost all seedlings but for a few Russet Burbanks) seem to be quite infertile. I'm not seeing any seed balls forming as the flowers finish.
There's trouble in the peas and beans. About 2/3 of the Lima beans simply did not come up. We've replanted with a couple of the quicker growing varieties of common beans, but that's annoying. It's not the worst, though. The worst is the squirrels and chipmunks. We've probably lost 1/4 of the fresh shelling peas to them so far. Traps are set and this means war.
Sweet potatoes are slow; potatoes look good. It's been oddly cool this year in spite of the occasional very hot day. I feel like things are really quite behind - I will have to look at some late June/early July posts from previous years to see if that is true.
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