There is so much beauty all around me these days, I sometimes become overwhelmed and look down at the ground for relief. Does this bring me some rest from the onslaught of gorgeousness? No indeed it does not. Even that which is most overlooked, the ground under our feet, can be gobsmackingly lovely.
June in the northeastern US means the last frost has passed (unless...) and we can finally put the seedlings that we have tended so carefully into the ground. As hard as it is to choose where to begin on a June garden post, I'm starting with the seedlings.
Just look at all these I have to put in!
I chose the cucumbers, four seedlings of Chicago Picklers, to put in today, mostly because they were transplanted into larger pots a couple weeks ago, and have been hardening off outside for a good week. These seedlings were ready to go in; they told me so themselves.
Once upon a time, I was a professional pastry chef. You might be surprised to learn that bakers use a great deal of geometry. We are very good at cutting rolled out croissant dough into perfect triangles of equal size by hand. We can cut any size cake into equal size portions with a few simple circles and circle segments. Today, I found myself using the techniques I once used to get the most cookies I could onto a cookie sheet, all spaced correctly so that no cookie touched another cookie as they spread and 'ripened' in the oven, while planning the layout of this year's cucumber bed. I mused about this - when we've learned something really well, the knowledge will come in handy in unexpected places. So don't ever shirk! Do everything with love, intelligence and passion! When you're my age, you'll be glad you did.
This year's cucumbers will be semi-trellised. I have never been successful at trellising cukes right from their start, but last year I fortuitously discovered that they grew up the fencing bordering the garden. For a few feet the vines grew on the ground, then once well-established, began growing up the fences. The fruits were very easy to find and harvest, so I'm going to try to recreate, and improve upon, last year's serendipitous success.
I have one section of the fence up in the shot below on the west side of the bed, and will put some kind of low trellises along the white lines (which were made with a calcium/magnesium blend) and along the right side of the bed. This should both save me some ground space and give the cukes room to spread before having to climb. I hope you can visualize this.
For the first time ever, I'm going to mulch my all my high-summer veggie beds. I learned my lesson already this year when I mulched the raspberries in the back left of the photos above and below to protect the raspberries from a frost the night after they were planted. Whereas all the other unmulched beds are always dry as a bone two days after I water them deeply, my well-mulched raspberries have only needed to be watered once in the week since I planted them. To reduce water usage, and probably keep down weeds, a good 2 to 3 inches of straw mulch seems to be the way to go. We'll see.
Below is the final product of a good hour of my time: four seedlings planted, watered, mulched and looking very good! It's a darn good thing I didn't have to plant forty!
I plan to put poblano peppers in the part of the bed that is still unmulched. This year, I'm not crowding my plants! I also removed a silver maple, the stump now crowned with a pot of struggling sweet potatoes in the back there, so that the entire veggie patch gets hours more of full sun. Hours!
The bag in the front of all is potatoes. I caught my cat peeing in it today, so I've rigged up a barrier on top of it, in case you're wondering.
This concludes the main portion of my gardening post for the month. Now, on to the minor acts.
When my sweet potatos arrived, they looked dead dead dead. But the instructions pretty much said 'these will look dead, but they are not. plant them with confidence' which I did. I hoped that planter in the back there would be spectacular by the end of July, a show stopper. But the show stopped there, seemingly. Those things proceded to look even deader over the next ten days. Just yesterday, I saw tiny bits of new and robust growth on each of the seedlings, so my hopes for a spectacular garden feature have returned.
Tomatoes have ruined the sun on the rest of my veggie patches for three years in a row; I always underestimate how big they will get, so this year, they are going in along the northern fence, where they won't shade anything but the fence. I put some calcium down there today just so I don't forget the stuff when it comes time to plant.
For years, I only planted perennial flowering plants. I am in my fourth year of trying to grow veggies, or is it the fifth? But my love of flowers persists. This house was chock-a-block with hosta and heuchera, both of which I love for their foliage. I've rearranged some of those, and added more conspicuous flowers among them. As I said above, this will be the year of mulch, and my flower beds have been covered with a lovely dark brown bark mulch that sets off the foliage and flowers beautifully.
Now, a word about compost. I've tried a bunch of methods over the years, and can say that the tumbler below is by far the best method for a little old lady. It turns easily, and makes great compost in a few months. The compost is also very easy to get out of the bin, which was a big problem with the other composters I've tried. I was surprised by how much I got, too! I'm going to get another of these, and for anyone interested, I got it from Gardener's Supply. It's pricey, but worth it just for the ease in turning.
There's still so much I haven't shown you! My shell peas are 15 inches or more high, and look fantastic! I've never been successful with any kind of pea before. My blueberry bushes survived a season of zero sun (tomatoes), and a winter of my dog's chewing them down, and although they won't produce a lot of berries, the bushes look better than I expected them too. My peach tree might not produce any fruit this year, because of a very late and very hard frost while it was blooming.
The 'hoop house' in which I planted carrots, beets, daikon, and arugula very early, has done very well for me. My beets may still be smaller than golf balls, but they are definitely globes. The carrots are definitely carrot-y. The arugula has made its way into salads and soups many times. I've had a number of radishes too. Mustard greens, beet greens, lettuce, and let's not forget the star of my spring show - spring onions! I saute them up with garlic, olive oil and shiitakes, and yum yum yum. I love eating food I grew myself!!!
Saving the biggest and best for last, here's a shot of my new garden arbor and gate. Everything but the wooden planter is easily moveable, so that when December comes, I'll just move the arbor and wire fencing and trellises to the left so that I can get my car into the garage. I had a huge expanse of asphalt when I moved in, a waste of space if you ask me. But now I'm really excited about what to do with my increased garden space, a veritable and large patio. Garden parties are in my future! And everyone will walk through an elegant gate to join in.
That is the official conclusion to this month's garden journal. I have no idea where I found the time to produce this post. I probably let the bee balm a friend gave me today die. I pray my seedling didn't fry in today's sun and heat. And I hope you enjoyed my post!
This is my entry to Hive Garden Community's monthly garden challenge for June. Thank you so very much for reading it!
All images are mine.