Sunday, June 17, 2012

May Veggie Garden

Well I realize it is mid June but I wanted to share the progress of our May veggie garden.  Because our garden is next to the creek and has clay soil, we plant early spring vegetables in raised beds. These dry out early in the spring so we can plant early crops.  The main garden takes a while to dry out enough to plant if the weather has been wet in April but it holds moisture well during the summer.

 By early May most of our spring veggies planted in raised beds were well on their way.  We always have a variety of lettuce ready to eat by late April and Don usually has cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from our small greenhouse ready  too for some yummy spring salads. Broccoli, peas, onions and beets were up and growing well early in the month.

Lettuce - both heading and leaf ready to pick.

Young broccoli.


By late May the Broccoli was harvested and the peas were ready for picking.  We had also been enjoying frequent harvests of asparagus.
Broccoli ready for harvest.














Sugar snap peas.


















By the end of the month, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers and corn were starting to take hold.  We generally grow too many of several varieties of tomatoes including both heirloom and hybrid.  All those young starts in the greenhouse have to go somewhere and it is usually in our garden.  As a result, we usually end up eating canned tomatoes from years past.  I think we've made it up to 2008 vintage tomatoes this year.  We also have bell, Italian and mildly hot peppers.  We usually dry and freeze peppers for winter and this is the year to replenish our supply.  The tomatoes and peppers were started in the green house and transplanted.  The sweet potatoes were a gift from a friend.  I planted our corn late in a wet patch of heavily mulched soil so it got off to a slow start.  Although I consider Don the main gardener, I always manage to have my experimental patch, mostly involving some labor saving theme.  This year is is no-hoe corn in a bed of goat-poop mulch.

Young tomatoes. 


















Young pepper.














Corn planted in heavy mulch.















Overview of May garden.

6 comments:

  1. My spring harvest via Miss Landers and Uncle Billy has done well also. We have eaten lettuce, spinach, asparagus, peas, strawberries, blueberries, and cabbage. It's useful to be related to someone who likes to garden but doesn't like vegetables that well.

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  2. The Wild Ramp market is a place to consider to sell some of those past years of canning products!!!

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  3. Your garden look marvelous! It's so healthy and green. It's also organized, mulched and well cared for! (Nothing at all like mine! LOL!)Beautiful!

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    1. It's still early in the year :-) My plan is to mulch mulch mulch this year and try to minimize weeding. I have lots of goat bedding. Hopefully the June Garden pictures will be as tidy.

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  4. We're using 2009 canned tomatoes now and used the last of our frozen peppers. I love that picture of your garden taken from up above.
    Thanks for the comment on my blog today. You really DO need a radio where you milk.

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  5. How could I NOT comment on THAT post :-)

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