Well, the weather has been a real bear this year, starting with a late summer, and then mixing hot and mild days. Lots of plants are bolting. I’ve hardly gotten any broccoli off the plants because they bolt faster than I can pick it. Lettuce and spinach have bolted, as have some of the herbs. I’m planning to clear out the extra lettuce this week and compost it, and prepare the bare parts of the garden for the winter garden – cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and kale – which I have started in little peat pots on the back porch and will be ready to transplant in another week.

One thing that has definitely worked this year is planting the plants right in the ground, not in containers or raised beds. The plants are big and healthy, and I’ve had to do some pruning to the tomatoes. I’d like them to quit growing and start ripening, but I don’t know if that’s just a problem with the weather this year.

We’re getting good squash production, and the beans have headed up the trellis, so hopefully we’ll still have time to get some beans. Cukes have not been doing much. Onions have been a big success, as have the lettuce, beets, chard, and the herbs (though I haven’t used as many as I would have liked).

Today I’m hoping to find some windows for my cold frames, and the next project will be to build cold frames for winter greens. I’ve selected a spot just outside the garden fence in the main yard that will be the first place to get sun in the mornings all winter, so I think it will have the best chance of success.

We were certainly off to a rough start this year, with continual rain, hail, and wind until well after when we should have expected to have our gardens in and thriving. Then we’ve had a few hot days, and a few gloomy, cool days. It’s just been a weird summer. Time to look at how the garden grows…

Lettuce and spinach have been loving this weather. I was able to pick all my baby beets and pickle them, and we’ve been having fresh lettuce for salad so often that Dave is sick of it. I’ve also had lots of chard for stir frys, and fresh baby onions too.  So this section has been a big success.

The tomatoes are not getting the heat they want, and they have a lot of flowers on, but no tomatoes, except a few here and there. Hopefully the summer holds out long enough for some to ripen.

Beans are coming along, and the pole beans are stretching out tendrils to climb up the trellis. The cukes in the back in the raised bed aren’t up to much yet. I think they like heat too. There are a couple pepper plants scattered in there, but they were a real gamble this year.

The potato row is looking good. I haven’t dug in there to see what’s going on under the straw yet. I’ll wait a bit longer. The tops look healthy.

The zucchini is starting to produce, which is nice, because if I couldn’t grow zucchini it would be time to give up and go buy a condo!

The spaghetti squash plant is going nuts, spreading off like it’s going to cover the whole end of the garden!

Hidden under the leaves are some good size squash. I hope we get plenty of them that grow to full size!

So that’s my garden so far. I have also planted carrots in the raised bed, but that was just last week, so they haven’t even sprouted yet. I also just received my shipment of seeds for my winter garden, so I need to start figuring out where my cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and tough leafy greens are going to go, and build cold frames for my winter lettuce crops so we can continue eating salad all winter. That’s the plan anyway, as I’ve seen already, the weather does not always cooperate with garden plans! Winter greens need to go in by mid-July so they can get all their growth in before the frost comes back. I’d better get busy!

Last night we were out in the garden until after dark putting up trellises. It was rediculously hot yesterday, so we couldn’t get working on the project until the sun was almost down. It seems to unfair to have gone from record cold and constant rain, to ‘too hot’ in a day!

I had been researching different trellising methods, looking for sturdy tomato cages, considering building some myself, trying to reuse leftover fencing, just feeling out the project. The final solution appeared when I found a roll of 50′ of heavy plastic garden netting at the hardware store, and they marked it down from $50 to $20. Combined with a few t-posts and some trellises I already had on hand, we managed to cover all our bases.

 Two long walls of netting for the tomatoes to climb up. Just in time, too. The little tomato cages I used to protect them while they were growing under covers were getting to be a tight fit. Much longer and I wouldn’t have been able to get the tomatoes out.

A wall for the beans, and the one nearest the camera, on the raised bed, is for the cukes. Now that it’s sunny hopefully everything will start growing, and the trellises are all ready for them.

I just got the new Territorial Seed catalog for winter gardening. Looks like if I want to have winter greens it’s almost time to plant them! For Pete’s sake, our summer garden is barely started! I’d better get to work on figuring out where the winter stuff is going to go!

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Today I went to the store to buy some T posts for building a trellis for my tomatoes and beans, and instead bought some pepper starts, cucumbers, and pickle cucumbers! Problem is the cukes need to be trellised too, and I still didn’t get any trellis supplies! I was going to buy 8 ft T posts to pound into the ground and attach a length of fence to for the beans to climb, and discovered the 8 footers were $10 each!!! Ouch, can’t do that. I’m going to have to find some T posts around here to reuse, or think of something else to do. Today was a mild day, only sprinkled a little. As soon as mother nature turns the heat back on, I know I’m going to need to start tying up my plants somehow.

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Today I weeded, planted another plot of lettuce (we’ve been having dinner salads from the first planting and the second planting is about 4 inches high), planted more onions, removed the straw mulch from around the tomatoes because it was attracting slugs and bugs, and put it on top of the potato mounds. Lots done, lots to do, but it’s still under control. The beans are all about an inch tall, so I have a little time, but putting up a piece of fence for them to climb on is my next concern. Oh, and I saw a flower on one of the squash plants – go squash!

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I’ll have to get some pictures tomorrow. Today the sun came out! Miracle of miracles! I spent two solid hours working outside while the weather was nice. I sprayed blackberry bushes that were out of control around the side of the house, cut down the bamboo stumps by the pond with a sawzall so everything is flat to the ground (more of my efforts to beat out the invasive bamboo I’ve been fighting the last couple years).

I spent some time in the garden weeding, and I have to say the weeding is going very well considering the area was a paddock just a couple months ago. There are some persistent sticker weeds of the type that they are all coming from a massive underground system, so it keeps sending up new shoots. As soon as I see their prickly little heads I pull them up, and they come easily, usually dragging a long white root behind that is all curled around from it’s efforts to come up through all that cardboard I laid down.

Once everything was weeded I smoothed out the last garden bed and planted Blue Lake pole beans down one side of it. I would like to get yellow beans to plant down the other side, so maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the feed store and see if I can find a packet.

Everything is growing well in the garden. The tomatoes look a little sad, but it has been cold and cloudy. The lettuce is loving it, as is the beets, chard, and herbs. The squash had a little setback when I transplanted them, but they seem to be recovering and putting on new leaves. There’s some bug damage, but not too bad. The potatoes are just starting to peek up through the straw I piled on top of them, so I need to go check my book and see what to do next. Pile more straw on them, if I recall correctly.

Update: I saw a notice on CL this afternoon that the local exhibition garden had leftovers from their fundraiser tree sale, and were closing out trees for just three hours at the extension office – including $3 bare-root apple trees! I closed the store and ran right over and got ten baby apple trees. I researched them before I went and picked a couple interesting but unusual varieties – Snow Famuse and Haralson – five of each. Great, now I have to go dig ten holes! Time to plant a little orchard 🙂