A typical June here is rather wet and on the cool side, possibly with a few fairly warm days scattered throughout the month. That describes this month quite well, so far, but warmer, drier days are now in the forecast.
Thanks, no doubt, to the cooler weather, the little plants I started from seed are not growing very rapidly out in the garden. Plants I obtained elsewhere were larger to begin with, and are doing much better.
On June 6, some young, energetic friends brought some wood pallets to my house and built three nice raised beds in my garden. All they asked for in return was my homemade potato salad for the ensuing wiener roast. I also made a big pan of rhubarb crisp, which was well-received.
They put newspaper in the bottom of the raised beds, then some thin rounds my husband had cut off sections of logs so they were the length he prefers, followed by assorted twigs, pinecones, lilac trimmings, and rhubarb leaves that were nearby. My husband had been saving sawdust from his firewood cutting project, and I had a partial bag of peat moss in the shed, so all of that got dumped in as well. And still the raised beds were barely half full!
Then I planted the two tomato plants and two nasturtium plants Ms. W. had given me. This was somewhat of an experiment to see how it worked out. For the other two beds, I obtained a bale of old straw from someone in the neighborhood, broke it up into smaller sections, and spread it out over the other organic materials in the raised beds. I also added bark and wood shavings from the ongoing firewood project. And I topped it all off with two more bags of the potting soil in each raised bed.
The very generous Ms.W. gave me 72 little flower and vegetable plants she had started at her house, including the butternut squash and the marigolds in the above photo.
She also gave me the kale, pepper, and basil in the above photo.
The broccoli starts came from a local greenhouse a few weeks ago. They are growing well in last year's raised bed, which is actually a stock tank.
This is as much of the garden as I am using this year. Except for the butternut squash plants, all the other vining crops are planted in slits in the landscaping cloth, plus a few marigolds.
The remainder of the garden is now a clover field, except for the raspberry patch at the far end. The clover is flourishing as a cover crop, and it might just stay there for as long as I live here; as I have said before, I no longer have what it takes to tend the entire garden by myself.
So far, all I have harvested from the garden is the garlic scapes and a vast quantity of rhubarb. I have made a double batch of Rhubarb Barbecue Sauce, two rhubarb crisps, and some rhubarb cookies. Today I gave a big bag of rhubarb to Ms. J, and have another big bag in the fridge to make something with. Now I just need to find the time to do that!
All photos taken on my Android phone.
