Backyard Garden

Garden update July 12. We have had more rain and sunny days mixed so that makes for less watering needed which is good. We are seeing some pests but nothing we can't manage for the time being. Flea beetles, cabbage moths, cucumber beetles, and slugs are the main culprits right now. The garden in it's crazy glory. A shot of the rows that have gherkin cucumbers, green beans, dwarf variety zucchini, patty pan squash, storage cabbages, napa cabbages, onions, peas, nasturtiums, marigolds, some stray tomatoes and basil. The nasturtiums have flowers finally! Gherkin cucumbers, so excited to see how this works out. Patty pan... Tiny zucchinis are forming. Scarlet runner beans and pickling cucumbers climbing and flowering. Red flowers and baby beans. Yellow flowers and tiny cucumbers forming. Ginger is sprouting slowly, we may have to bring it inside but we are hoping it will keep going long enough for a harvest before it gets too cold. Marigolds and tomato plants. Brandywines are start

Garden update July 5th. Lots of work in the garden as summer moves along. We had a long stretch of heat and no rain then days of rain, lots of growth and changes. I planted the empty row with our second round of lettuces, kales, chard, and more onions.We plan on one more set of planting in late July (before August but close to August) for early fall harvesting. It's hard to decide to pull plants from the garden but our lettuces had gotten very bitter, and the spinach was not producing anything. We had had a good run of eating lettuce everyday and then they started bolting.  The lettuce is a very tender variety and not great for cooking, if you have bitter lettuce you can soak it in cold water spin the water out and then cook it to get one last harvest. I let the sturdy and delicious asian greens go to seed (and they have such pretty flowers) to collect the seeds and try planting them.  We had out first harvest of lavender and mint to dry and store. Ginger growing in a tub. Caged to

Yesterday was the first day of Summer, and most of the garden is doing well. It has been providing us with salad greens for the past couple of weeks, along with fresh kale. The early salads were and Asian mix, and if I had the seed packet, I would tell you what was in it, but I don't. It was spicier lettuces that showed up early and began flowering recently. One day it wasn't, then it looked like it might and them boom! Flowers. Jen is leaving them around for the bees while we plot where we are going to plant the next round of lettuce.  Aside from the Asian mix, we have some buttery soft lettuces, and again I don't know what the names are. I'm sure Jen could tell you but I can't. Those are not flowering and seem to be a never-ending source of fresh salad greens. Its been pretty great and we'll be planing more of those.  Greens are easy though they grow early, and you eat them. What's really cool is the salad turnips were ready, and we ate some already. Look

The garden is doing well. We've been eating the salad greens and many of the herbs. The oregano and the sage came back from last year. The sage is just about flowering, so that's good for the bees. The Chives came back, and we finally gave them a permanent place in the herb garden. Jen's parents brought some rhubarb from their garden up in Sumner. We planted that in between the Pear and the Japanese maple. Next summer we should have our own. We have one row that we have not planted anything in yet. Likely we will use it to rotate out some greens. The rest of the garden is dotted with plants and flowers. At least it will be dotted with plants and flowers as soon as they grow. Now the battle for the garden begins. We had turned up out lawn, and this is our first year with the new garden, so the grass is coming back. It seems to like the new soil as much as we hoped our garden plants would. Along with the grass and weeds, we have a number of volunteers from where we added

Garden update from June 12th. Lavender bed Lettuce (asian greens mix) gone to flower already in the background and the salad we were eating in the foreground. Kale! The herb garden and the beautiful sage flowers. Napa cabbage. Tomato plants and marigolds in the large tubs, we grow them on the south side of the house by the driveway and they do very well there! Plus they don't crowd out the other plants...they get very large. Flowering chives int he herb garden. Storage cabbage. Beets coming up. Daikon radish coming up. White turnips ready to eat. More lettuce... Scarlet runner beans and pickling cukes in half barrels.