With all the sun and water these plants are getting , they are growing fast! And the great garden soil Matt bought to fill the Birdie bins helps with that. The Lakota and butternut squash are spilling over into the grass- turns out square foot growing does require thinning out of PERFECTLY GREAT plants and I didn’t do that. So many plants! So many giant leaves!
As much as eating squash disgusts me, they are truly fun plants to grow! Cherie and Eric convinced us to try Patty pan squash and they are truly hilarious to watch develop. The plant is just like a zucchini or yellow squash but with such cute little squash forms! Our first harvest was a zucchini and yellow squash but the patty pans are close behind. Apparently you MUST harvest them small and then they cook just like the other summer squashes. Matt swore he could eat them all, but we will have to see. There are quite a few developing right now! I feel like I spend 3-4 hours a week just chopping back squash leaves to get them away from the other plants! Trying to make them go upwards is quite the joke! But I persevere!
The other thing ready for harvest are the blueberries from the permanent garden. I tried one off the bush and it was sweeter than I think they normally are. Not a great fan of blueberries except for cooking, which is unfortunate since they are pretty low glycemic and fully of antioxidants and anthocyanins. The blackberries are also coming along – 2 whole fruit this season but next year should be great. Another great fruit for diabetes! Yeah me! The huckleberries, raspberries and boysenberry should all be full harvest next year so that will be a great supplement for our diets.
Also doing well in the permanent garden are the artichokes and the kiwi. Matt and Dave are working on getting sunshades up- since these are all new vines we need to protect them from the Late June, July and August direct sun. Hopefully this year will be better than last but who knows? Matt also planted a pollinator flower garden and it looks really good too. My herbs are growing at home and I’m just waiting for the herb boxes to get built to plant those. Then all that will be left for next year are the strawberries.
The seasonal garden beds are finally filled in- I got pepper seeds big enough to hopefully make it out there. I planted sweet peppers, jalapeño and Poblano. I also planted a couple tomatillo plants so hopefully they will also do fine. I need to get out there and add compost and straw mulch for them before it gets much hotter
The tomato and green bean plants are going to town but not too much production yet. A few green Roma tomatoes but that’s it. The water melon got its first flower and the cucumbers are also flowering. So all continues to go out in those bins! I can’t wait until I live there and can just go out in the early morning and work in the garden!
Finally, the orchard is also just plugging along. Most of the flowering is over and now the fruits are growing. There will be tons of apricots and plum- I’ve removed more than 50 small ones of each. The Meyer lemons are tiny little things but growing as are the apples. And the pomegranate tree has a couple little poms growing. They are kinda cute. Just got to keep up with the feeding and straying there – I’ve definitely fallen behind. I also need to help Jenny deadhead roses because there are so many of those too!
So the “half” seasonal garden is keeping me very busy. Dave and Matt are working on keeping the permanent garden free of weeds (going to be a lot of work this year!) and the orchard a is keeping us all busy. So much fun!