Mid-June Garden Goings On
First let me say: how the heck did it get to be mid-June already! My grandmother always said time sped up “when you get older.” I thought she meant 80’s — not 40’s! The speeding up of time though, is making me choose what I spend my time on much more carefully than ever… Gardening ALWAYS passes the where-to-spend-this-speeding-time test! There’s a lot of good garden eating going on around here as seen in the pic above. I love beets. Now that I figured out how to use a juicer I really wish I’d planted more – they are delicious with carrot and apples.
While the amazing amount of rain has been disastrous for the yellow squash, the kale is still going strong. I haven’t been quite bold enough to juice kale, but I hear you can..
Here’s Larrapin’s golf-ball sized watermelon. It’s a variety called “Blacktail Mountain” is is supposed to be very early. I’ll say! Hope it does better in the damp than the squash have — which went from lovely to covered-in-mildew literally overnight. Eeek. I’m planning to replant rather than try to save it I think (and hope for more sun, less dampness.)
The zuchinni are currently surviving….
Aren’t borage blooms amazing. I plant them to keep the tomatoes company and the bees love the blooms too.
And I’ve got stuff to plant that I don’t have space for! Sigh. Garden is never big enough. 🙂
Bush beans going strong. The little fence is enough to keep the bunnies at bay during that irresistable 2-6inche stage, which these have gotten past. If we get some good sunshine, we’ll have beans before we know it.
The dill has managed to attract a celebration of swallowtail caterpillars. It’s nice to be able to walk by and say words of encouragement and praise to a future butterfly.
So I was standing back admiring the garden, thinking what a beautiful place I have the privilege to learn from, when who should fly down from her nest in that tree at the end of the garden path but…
One of the roadrunners. This may be the female and maybe that nest is more serious than the usual piles of sticks in trees (and in the garage) that we call their “hunting blinds.” She stood all puffed out in the sun, drying out for a moment in between rain showers.
Thanks for taking a mid-June walk around Larrapin!
Read MoreGood Eatin At Larrapin This Week!
These pics are from May 28th – Spring stuff to eat! The strawberries are Ozark Beauty. It’s a great variety, but with all the pouring rain we had, they were a bit watered down… Strawberries like everything *just right* to be their best..
Broccoli and Oregon Sugar Pod peas. Sugar snap peas, our favorites, are so persnickity that I went with a different kind this year – and wow are they productive. It was nice that they were only about 2 foot high at max and just draped over a tiny garden fence instead of requiring real trellis.
Nice group portrait! You know you love your garden when you photograph your food!
Pak Choi (Joy Choi is the variety) grew so fast a lot of it went to the chickens b/c we couldn’t eat it fast enough. I’ll have to work out a more gradual planting on this. It was SO much faster than traditional cabbage and delicious in stir fry.
A little tribute to the garden on my way off to work…
Read MorePost Garden-Tour Recovery!
Whew!! I was one tired gardener after weeks of prep for a charity garden tour that took place June 7th. The Omni Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology has a fundraiser every year that features gardens in the Peace Garden Network. It’s a fun day and we had upwards of 50 visitors over the day. Many were our old friends who came to hang out and socialize — what a great day!
However, most other projects in my life were on hold during these weeks, as you can tell from the lack of posts on my part! So I’m back again to share glimpses of Larrapin Garden over the summer season, which is just getting started. We’ve had so much rain — I think we’re nearly 20 inches ahead of normal rainfall for the year — that everything is lush, green and happy. A beautiful time to be out in the beauty!
Read MoreGarden Walk – May 27th
I was blog-visitng over at My Wildlife Sanctuary and enjoyed how the writer described her daily photo walk in her garden. Thus inspired, I waited for a break in the rain (I think we’re about 16 or so inches ahead of normal so far this year with total rainfall usually averaging only 46 inches!) to go out for a photo stroll in the yarden. These are some veggie garden snapshots:
Above, the Blue Lake bush beans are just at the stage the rabbits like them. (Got to get that little rabbit fencing up for them…)
This is the Kale & Snow Peas bed. The kales are Blue Curled Scottish and Ragged Jack (Red Russian – in top right of pic). Ragged Jack is a lot sweeter and next year it’s my choice. We stir fry/saute our kale with just a bit of olive oil and garlic and it is so very delicious that way – and so wonderfully green. We’ve eaten bundles and bundles out of this bed already and it’s still full.
The peas are Oregon Sugar Pods. Very productive! Not as sweet, nor as finicky as our favorites, Sugar Snaps.
Here’s the former Pea & Spinach bed, cleared yesterday of the bolting spinach. The peas are still going strong. I’ll put bush beans in now, since I have the handy leftover stick fence for rabbits…
I love beets! I never plant enough. These are in bad need of thinning & eating the thinnings!
This bed of broccoli (underplanted with a small romaine lettuce) is nearly done. It was so lovely. There are a few red cabbages in there, but they are looking a little puny. I need to whip up a tonic for them…
And in the midst of our bounty, here’s a future bounty for butterflies, more of the Tropical Milkweed I so adored last year and wrote several posts about under the Butterfly label.
This bed has Swiss Chard (also in need of thinning — Hello, my name is Leigh and I’m an over-planter….but wait, we almost always get to eat the thinnings too…or if we don’t the chickens get to…) on the end, Chinese cabbage (Joy Choi) in the middle and some more broccoli toward the right. The Joy Choi is amazingly productive and quick to reach eating size. We had a big one last night stir fried with mushrooms and it was YUMMY. I may go chinese on my cabbage choices from now on…
My tater row. Or one of them. This one was planted late b/c the other row got hit hard by a late frost. But then the frost-hit row regrew — or about every other one anyway, so the row has big empty places. Hmm, what could I plant there?
Thanks for joining me in the garden walkabout in late May. My garden is a bit behind a lot of my neighbors b/c I’m always slow to figure out when and where I want to plant things. But wow, we are doing some good eating out of this garden. More about that next post!
Read MoreBees in the Comfrey Flowers
One thing I’ve learned from my baby-steps study of permaculture concepts is the idea of planting “guilds.” That is, grouping plants that benefit each other by being in proximity. A classic example seems to be grouping a tree with smaller plants such as nutrient accumulators/mulch producers like comfrey, then some plants that attract beneficial insects etc. So last year I planted this comfrey at the base of the Prarie Fire Crabapple, a tree I treasure for the spring blooms, but mostly for it’s bird-food value. (Permaculture is much more oriented toward people-feeding trees, but I’m getting to those this year…) It also has some Sedum (attracts beneficials) at its base.
And by golly, both the tree and the comfrey look remarkably happy! Comfrey is one of those great multi-functional plants that accumulates nutrients from deep in the soil, is self-mulching and weed suppressing and pollinators LOVE it. (And of course it’s medicinal.) Just don’t let comfrey loose in rich garden soil, or you’ll soon have a comfrey farm…
The bumble bees are busy adoring every pink bloom on the comfrey. There are loads of bees this spring (bumblebees — but I’m seeing very very few wild honeybees) and they are loving the comfrey!
Bees are hard to photograph. They are, after all, very busy.
And very beautiful in their yellow and black velvet coats.
And he’s off to another flower!
So, after this experience, I’m putting a start of comfrey at the base of every new tree I plant. (Don’t worry, not even comfrey can become invasive in our natural clay/gravel…) I’ll let you know how it goes.
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