Hello all. As much as we enjoyed taking pictures for and writing our emailed newsletters, gardening events and projects have taken up all our time for the past couple of months. So again, here is another catch-up edition!

The amount of rain we have received so far this year is astounding. In June alone we had 8.8 inches, compared to the average 3.6. That’s over 5 inches extra! But this is a good news/bad news scenario. In gardening, you can never have all plants doing well at the same time. So this has been a banner cucumber year:

The cucumber wall

A morning’s harvest

But then you get this

Pole bean seedlings, succession planted after the peas, swimming in their raised rows.

 The peppers are doing great, they like high humidity.

 Banana Peppers

And although our 100 lbs of seed potatoes didn’t rot in the early spring in all that snow, the standing water has done in some of the mature tubers now. Fortunately we have lots! And wasn’t that some great zucchini and summer squash? Until the plants turned fuzzy overnight. We didn’t even get a chance to worry about squash borers, the plants never lasted long enough. But another succession of plants is already growing. This latest round of heat will make them mature quickly!
 

And the eggplant grew so fast that the flea beetles now can’t reach the top leaves. Also, we really stayed on top of the flea beetle repellant, making up a fresh hot pepper, garlic, and basil spray daily and dousing the plants in between rain drops. It paid off.

See the eggplant hiding in the bottom right corner?

The tomatoes, however, are not doing well. They do not like high rain amounts and humidity. Although we do not think the late blight has arrived yet (although according to various agricultural agencies it has already arrived in other states), we probably have one of the other tomato “issues”. We have picked off all the bottom leaves that were showing signs of problems, trying to prevent it from spreading to the entire plant. So far it appears to be working, but it makes the tomatoes look like palm trees!

And you may ask where are all the tomatoes from the bottom of the plant? We’d like to know too. Some varmint (groundhog likely) is getting through the electric fence and eating all the low lying fruit. And those that were not eaten had one or two bites taken out of them and left to rot on the vine. Open season on groundhogs will soon commence!

We learned our lesson last year with the beans. This year, almost as soon as the 1^st planting had sprouted we started another batch. That way when the bean beetles inevitably destroyed the 1^st planting (and they did) we would have more coming along as replacements.

2^nd succession planting of beans

The third succession planting has already sprouted and we are debating another. Will the pole beans be ready to take over in time or should we start that fourth succession? Decisions, decisions!

We hear thunder in the background, but steadily coming closer. You know what that means, more rain! Time to close up the barn and lock up the chickens.

Until next time,

Jeff and Sandra