Phasing to Summer
Now is time for our summer garden to take over the vegetable patch. Earlier this week I pulled out our very sad sugar snap peas. They were beginning to weep to the ground leaving the teepees useless. It made for easy harvesting. I simply yanked them out of the ground and pulled off the pea pods. This method is certainly messier. I should have caught those peas earlier. Some are well past the ideal sweetness stage. No worries. We'll shell them and toss them into some salads or even saute them with other vegetables.
The broccoli has been doing well. We missed harvesting a few crowns they have since gone to flower. Our mistake has made several pollinators quite happy. We really expected the crowns to get larger but they are not trending that direction. These are just going to be small and less full. So as to not miss anymore crowns I decided to go ahead and clip off those looking peak. About half of our plants were harvested and subsequently removed. I'll let the other half grow another week before they will be pulled out entirely. We'll need the space to grow some beans.
Another bunch of spring onions need to be pulled out. I'm thrilled these onions finally grew so well for us. We've had numerous crops fail. It's very upsetting seeing them wither away. This year we tried a different variety and I think we hit a winner. I'll be sure to get to these hardy delights this weekend when we'll be enjoying some big salad suppers. Those onions might last another two weeks so long as the heat does not get the best of them. By then I'll have my second wave of bell peppers to plant in that location. These bell peppers would be great to eat but they may very well end up being the decoys for those pesky deer. Often the intense late July causes the deer to get desperate for vegetation. So long as they lay off our tomatoes we'll be fine.
I had plans to get back in that vegetable patch to tidy up the weeds situation. Unfortunately these afternoon rain storms have gotten in the way of my garden time. I wanted to get that section where the peas had been cleared up and prepped for weekend planting. Now it is looking like my weekend will be busier than imagined. Once the weeds are pulled I need to turn the soil then add some compost to liven it up for the tomatoes. My heirloom black cherry tomato plants grown from seed are ready to get growing. These plants will be my second wave of tomatoes. Our first wave has had a good month start making us very eager for those green beauts to ripen up to a perfect bright red. I can't believe it. Garden tomatoes on my plate so very soon!
The broccoli has been doing well. We missed harvesting a few crowns they have since gone to flower. Our mistake has made several pollinators quite happy. We really expected the crowns to get larger but they are not trending that direction. These are just going to be small and less full. So as to not miss anymore crowns I decided to go ahead and clip off those looking peak. About half of our plants were harvested and subsequently removed. I'll let the other half grow another week before they will be pulled out entirely. We'll need the space to grow some beans.
Another bunch of spring onions need to be pulled out. I'm thrilled these onions finally grew so well for us. We've had numerous crops fail. It's very upsetting seeing them wither away. This year we tried a different variety and I think we hit a winner. I'll be sure to get to these hardy delights this weekend when we'll be enjoying some big salad suppers. Those onions might last another two weeks so long as the heat does not get the best of them. By then I'll have my second wave of bell peppers to plant in that location. These bell peppers would be great to eat but they may very well end up being the decoys for those pesky deer. Often the intense late July causes the deer to get desperate for vegetation. So long as they lay off our tomatoes we'll be fine.
I had plans to get back in that vegetable patch to tidy up the weeds situation. Unfortunately these afternoon rain storms have gotten in the way of my garden time. I wanted to get that section where the peas had been cleared up and prepped for weekend planting. Now it is looking like my weekend will be busier than imagined. Once the weeds are pulled I need to turn the soil then add some compost to liven it up for the tomatoes. My heirloom black cherry tomato plants grown from seed are ready to get growing. These plants will be my second wave of tomatoes. Our first wave has had a good month start making us very eager for those green beauts to ripen up to a perfect bright red. I can't believe it. Garden tomatoes on my plate so very soon!
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