The June Garden

The June garden can be quite overwhelming. There is a lot to seed still, a lot to rip out, a lot to build, a lot to maintain,  a lot to harvest, and a lot to clear and get ready for the next crop. We plant continuously here at Laughing Duck gardens, and try to put something in as soon as we rip something out.

Lets see… We have harvesting mustard greens (still. again!), strawberries, Swiss chard, beets, zucchini & summer squash, all kinds of herbs, and green beans. We are seeing the last of the kale (there was not much to start with anyway). We just finished harvesting  the last of the shelling peas and, all the currants. And I have picked the last of the asparagus for this year ( I am now letting the fern grow).

The picture above shows one of the weekly subscription garden baskets this past week. The basket does reflect what the garden is currently producing. It also reflects what it should be producing and is not: cherry tomatoes (I got a case of tomato hubris this past winter and it really bit hard. Yep, due to lack of time in transplanting in a timely manner, the harvest should start in mid-to-late July… not in mid-June as I was boasting).  I should also be harvesting garlic (crop failure),  kolhrabi (were never transplanted), broccoli (were transplanted way too late – not sure if they’ll head or not at this point) and carrots (never sowed them). On the other hands, the raspberry batch looks incredibly promising (I have already eaten a few), cabbages are coming (oh the fun of handpicking cabbage-eating caterpillars!), and the early peppers are swelling. Corn isn’t looking bad either… So, there… every year some tings are really good, and every year some things fail – sometimes it’s the gardeners’ fault, sometimes it’s not. Well, not really.

But am I discouraged? no… as a matter of fact, I am supposed to be planting more.  Such as? such as  cucumber, the last of the winter squash, a zucchini or two (for the late harvest), a short row or two of beans, lettuce, okra, carrots & beets. What I have actually sown in the last few days are lettuce (to be harvested as baby lettuce – they don’t grow well since  it’s so hot now, but with some shade they still provide some salad greens), cucumber ( 4 kinds of cucumbers were seeded on the trellis where the shelling peas used to grow), and winter squash (fairly quick growing butternut – one that’s also fairly small and therefore good for the garden basket.

We continue to transplant peppers and basil.

I won’t mention weeding. I’ve done my best to eat my weeds, purslane and pigweed among them, but some are just not edible. And they are growing like out-of-control monsters – which is really what they are. Sigh… It’s so much more pleasant to be tying the tomatoes to the trellis or watch the new chicklets!

Or make currant jelly.

Aren’t red currants absolutely gorgeous?With the wet snow-laden winter (which they loved) and the hot spring (which neither them – I think – nor I liked), they ripened earlier than usual this year – and the already short season lasted even less than in prior years. I picked all the currants by the summer solstice this year. Some years, I can stretch the harvest until the last day of June, so I can serve fresh currants in red-white-and blue dessert for July 4th. Not this year… still, a goodly amount  jelly was made.

Next: blackberries and red raspberries (black caps are currently fruiting)!

Yep, the June garden can be almost overwhelming!