karly gardens: june 2, 2014

Ingredients for creamy pasta with parmesan

Massive romanesco plant, still no hea

Chard

Green onions

Lettuce

Bell pepper plant

Happy tomatoes!

Tomato flowers!!

Bush beans

Peas

Beets

Carrot jungle

Cucumber sprouts, planted as an afterthought when butterhead lettuce failed to grow

So many peas

The back garden

Pumpkin plants

Cucumber, squash and zucchini plants

Strawberries 

One day's pea harvest!

Beautiful, fragrant peony

This should have been posted on June 1, but I didn't take the photos until the morning of June 2, and have been busy working on other photos and unpacking from our camping trip (more on that later) and working and taking care of all other basic life duties so here we are…the evening of June 4.  I guess that's not a terrible delay, right?

May is a long month, and since I took the mid-month photos a day early and am a few days late sharing the next installment, the change seems extra dramatic.  The sunflowers have grown maybe a foot since my last post (but I didn't photograph them because the bed is full of weeds), bean plants have sprouted and shot up since mid-May, the peonies have already come and gone, and we've eaten many, many peas (and the plants are still producing many more).  I've picked many handfuls of strawberries from the plants that were here when we moved in (but never enough all at once to make a dessert) and had a few tasty salads.

Yesterday I discovered our first baby tomato, along with many new tomato blossoms.  Last year, our first tomato didn't appear until mid-July and it wasn't until August that we ate the first fruit.  It seems that this year will be different!  On the other hand, I started all of my cucumbers, zucchini, and squash from seed, and the growth has been slow.  Last year we bought plants and were harvesting loads of zucchini and squash in June.  I am still hopeful that the vines will take off soon…at least, the comparison between this week's photos and those from the middle of May is promising.  

Spring was glorious and although it isn't officially summer until the 20th or 21st of the month, I am already welcoming the new season.  The days are long and the garden is becoming lush and I am loving (nearly) every minute of it (I could do without the ticks).  My plan for 2014 is to try to get everything out of the growing season that I possibly can--from starting peas on March 9 (and being rewarded with abundance now) to planting in every empty space that appears all the way through the fall (yes, I've already started to think about what I will plant for fall harvest).  Stretching the season should help make the winter a little bit more bearable!

And once again…a few iPhone snaps of harvests over the past weeks…