June Garden

With the lack of rain each of the past two growing seasons, especially the 2023 drought, gardening has recently been a challenge. While the weather has also brought challenges this year, with a dry spring and cooler spring temperatures, June ended up being a rainy month. I am not sure we reached the average monthly rainfall total, but rain has come at the right time.

I pulled a ladder out of the garage tonight to get a bird's-eye view of the garden after some weeding in the 90 degree heat. This is the point of the season when the weeds can out-compete the plants we are trying to grow. With the exception of the strawberry patch, we have been able to keep up with the weeds and get things off to a good start. The summer and winter squash are finally big enough to start casting shade over the surrounding soil, and beans and cucumbers are starting to grow up their trellises to get more sun.

We have moved our harvesting from asparagus to radishes and lettuce, and have had lunch salads nearly daily for the past 3 weeks. We planted some extra romaine in an area where we had extra room, which will hopefully extend salad season. We gathered a pound of wild raspberries this weekend for the freezer, in an effort to accumulate enough for jam. It has not been a perfect season; the cold, dry spring kept kale and spinach from germinating, and the peas and peppers got off to a slow start. While we did get a small crop of cherries, there are few apples in the orchard as we had few spring blooms on the trees. The plum tree, however, has numerous immature plums. If they make it to maturity this would be the first year we will have plums. At this point all we can do is keep weeding and wait for more rain.

The garden can look postcard-perfect by the end of June. By the end of July, the plants will be growing outside their beds in a riot of production. or at least, that is the plan.