JUNE food growing mamas!

[ms.shell]

Hi, mamas!
I guess Cathy must be busy with moving, so i am starting the thread.
How is it going? We have had tons and tons of rain.
I just got digitized and i haven't figured out how to take good pictures yet, but here are a few of my garden:
tomatoes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/50665261@N07/4684945909/

herbs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/5066526...n/photostream/

todays harvest:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/5066526...n/photostream/

i just now remembered dreaming of gigantic hornworms last night so i think i better go out there and patrol!
I hope everyone has an amazing day today!

[Alyantavid]

Wow, I'm jealous! My garden looks pitiful compared to that.

Everything's popped up and just needs to grow now. It's been so rainy and chilly this spring that I think my plants just need some sun!

[sunnysandiegan]

We have a small space. Here's my photo journal I began two weeks ago (plus a few days). I didn't think about photographing the broccoli harvest. There were five large stalks with multiple florets on each.

I harvest the bay leaves whenever I want a leaf (or a neighbor requests a few). I just got the parsley back to green. When the parsley was thriving earlier in the year, I would cut off about a fistful for each bone broth and soup I made. DD (age 8 then) would harvest the lettuces (3 different varieties) every evening before dinner when we wanted a salad. It bolted when we were on vacation in mid-April. We found out the hard way that it doesn't taste very good at that point.

[HeatherAtHome]

I just got everything planted, how's that for being late? Actually, I still have the tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos to transplant. Last frost date of June 1st and I was still putting up the fence as of Monday. I chose quicker growing varieties, so hopefully we'll be ok. My tomato plants are pretty small (hoping they'll get their groove on when planted in the garden) and DH's farmer friend is always bugging me about them.

I can't believe how busy I am between the garden, our yard and the house. It's our first spring in our house/not renting. I feel like I'm been doing stuff all day long. I just came in from mowing the front lawn. The back can wait until whenever. I don't care.

So, I have planted:

• yellow cucumbers, zucchini
• carrots, rutabagas, parsnip, beets
• romanesca, spaghetti squash, buttercup and pumpkin
• yellow and green beans, 2 types of peas, 2 types of potatoes.
• Misc flowers. Actually I sort of used flowers as markers for rows/separation and I have to say I'm loving the look. Adds some colour and pizazz before everything grows.

My back is killing me and I have a ginormous blister on my hand. And I still love it! So much nicer doing all this than living in a big apt block with nothing to do all day. Not to mention I finally got my hammock up so I'd dig a couple rows for potatoes then rest in hammock. Dig, rest in hammock. I love my hammock.

[ms.shell]

oh, i love your bay, sunnysandiegan
that is the one culinary herb i really want but i haven't been able to find one yet.

well, the baby can't eat tomatoes (he is 14 months). i gave him just one (cherry) in the garden and he ate less than half but his butt broke out like it burned him as fire coming out

[JamieCatheryn]

I don't usually post here since I'm still small scale gardening but now that we're eating something we harvest daily I feel like I count a little.

My 6 tomato plants are thriving this year, growing their first few tomatoes now, all of them doing well for the first time ever. The pole beans grew up fast and now we're eating green beans, the summer squash are doing great and we've had a few of those. Tomatillo leaves are covered in holes but the plants are going strong, beginning to set fruit. Blackberries every day with breakfast from our little planting. I just thinned the carrot patch and we snacked on spicy little carrots. Wondering if my watermelon plants are going to do their thing, still tiny for now.

It makes me so happy to see progress every day and pick and eat things, lame as mine seems compared to some of your little farms. I started weighing everything that comes in and keeping a spreadsheet of my harvest so I'll really know what I got by the end of the season. I'll keep track of what it was worth, I'd love to prove I broke even or better after gardening costs, maybe justify putting that money saved into next year's garden when I'll triple the size of it.

ms shell, poor baby hope he recovered quickly. I avoided tomatoes with my LO a while, but he's so insistent about eating things at 12 months I pretty much let him have a little of everything now. I have to cook some of it like the carrots since no molars. He doesn't digest it all but no tummy upsets or rashes anymore now.

[PrettyBird]

I don't know if I count. This is my first year attempting a garden. I have 26 tomato plants that I bought as starter plants (Rutgers and Roma for canning, and 4 varieties of Heirloom plus one cherry tomato plant), 18 bell pepper plants, 10 assorted hot pepper plants, as well as cucumbers, squash, pumpkin, kale, green, wax, and lima beans started from seed. So far the stuff I stared from seed is doing great but my tomato transplants got off to a very slow start. I also started late, about a month after our last frost. Oh I also have some lettuce that I planted awhile ago and it is doing pretty good still.

ETA ms.shell your bean trellis looks awesome! I need to make something like that.

[SAHMinHawaii]

Garden
Here is my garden. I started everything from seed except the strawberries and the 3 cucumber plants.
23 Tomato plants
10 pepper plants
3 yellow squash
8 okra plants
2 watermelon
9 corn plants
8 green bean
3 sunflowers
5 strawberry
1 eggplant
4 cucumbers

[lmonter]

I'm pitiful and still here. Barely. Hanging on to my sanity by a thread, and nothing has happened out in the yard except buckets and buckets of rain and lots and lots of weeds. If anybody wants to come over to my yard/garden and make it look pretty, just PM me.

[ms.shell]

oh, lmonter, i am sorry you are so overwhelmed. i remember seeing pix of your beautiful garden last year and i have been feeling bad for you hearing about your troubles this year.

i came in here to tell ya'll about our dinner last night. my harvest yesterday included a yellow squash, 2 red onions, and of course we have lots and lots of tomatoes. i was making a roast. i put it in the dutch oven and then put in the onions cut up, a whole lot of grape and cherry tomatoes whole, the squash sliced, and even the handful of purple beans i had harvested. then i harvested and chopped up a lot of thyme, oregano, and some rosemary. i sprinkled on a few drops of worchestershire sauce and then i was going to add a little water but on a whim used some apple juice instead. OMG! I wasn't sure about cooking the squash in with the roast but it was incredibly yummy. BUT the grape tomatoes OMG definitely try cooking grape or cherry tomatoes in with a roast! They were like little explosions of deliciousness and even tho i put in a WHOLE lot of them, we were arguing over the last ones in the dish before we left the table. That was without a doubt the best roast dinner i have ever cooked or eaten.

it looks like its going to be a pretty day here, but hot and humid (hopefully we wont smell oil today; yesterday i did)...so i need to get out there and tie up the yellow pears and weed. i hope everyone has an amazing day today!

[lmonter]

Well hey, if anybody's looking for a great house in a sorta small town atmosphere here in the pacific northwest, let me know. Comes with wood stoves, fabulous heavy duty pantry shelves, new windows, new floors, fruit trees, 1200sf of current garden space, lots of perennial goodies outside, etc.

[ms.shell]

that sounds so lovely, lmonter. If I was in that part of the country, I would love to come help you; and it sounds like just the kind of place I would love to buy.

Hey, do ya'll think I should cut the bean plants off at the top of the trellis? I thought I should, but dp disagreed, so I haven't. And they are growing long over the top and falling back down and it sure looks messy. But of course there are now lots of bean flowers on those parts, and so I hate to cut off those potential beans; guess I missed my chance to cut them back.
I planted some asparagus beans this year and we harvested the first ones today. HOLY MOLY are those beans long. I think I recall the package said a foot long but we had some that were at least 18 inches long! They are much thinner than the other pole beans we harvested....I think they were not really ready yet, tho, but dp wanted them in the pot, so we pulled a few. If they fatten up like regular beans then they will really be amazing.

I think I am going to pull my squash plants all out tomorrow and claim that space which I could sure use; the vine borers are here and they are not looking great and not producing. We ate all of ONE squash this year! i find it so odd that we have success with so many vegetables, but squash, which is reported to be so easy and abundant, has been a total flop for us all three years so far. Next year, I am planting them even earlier, on March 1, and if we do not eat lots of zucchini then I am not going to waste our space on them anymore!
I need to weed badly but our heat index has been over a hundred all week (i thought i heard a radio dj say 110 today), so I have watered and harvested but otherwise stayed largely indoors. Hoping to get out and do a lot of things in the morning tomorrow.
Hope ya'll are all smiling and well!

[GardenStream]

I'm having some bug issues this year. It's a daily battle with the flea beetles. I planted 120 peppers this year and they are trying their best to destroy them. I've managed to hang on to about 90 of them.

The tomatoes, squash, peas and lettuce is doing very well. I should have some peas by the end of the week.

The beans are decimated. I'll try to replant those.

[emnic77]

So jealous of those of you in zones that you're harvesting tomatoes and such!! We're drowning in lettuce.

Our tomatoes are loving the heat we had last week and starting to flower. We're in for another 80-90 degree stretch so as much as *I* hate the heat, I know the plants will love it.
WE had some serious wind (a tornado watch in MA!) last week and it snapped a lot of our potatoes, so we were worried about them but they *seem* to be okay. We built a removable double bed for them to set on top of the regular bed, so we could hill them to the extreme...they look so amazing, I will cry great heaving sobs if we go to dig them up and that bin is empty.
Our radishes were our first real fail. WE need to be more aggressive thinners, period. Succession crop #2 is going in today, with a new motto: "kill kill kill." I hate thinning but clearly we need to be merciless.

Corn, beans, squash, cukes, herbs are all chugging along. Cabbages are heading up, broccoli is weak. Peas are growing, but I think we put them in a couple weeks too late. Strawberries and raspberries look great - we've eaten some strawberries off our first year plants, and our first year canes have raspberry flowers. Should we be pinching those off?

[Alyantavid]

Everything in my garden is up (except my carrots. still) and it's not growing. Nothing is growing at all right now. I'm guessing it's the weather, but I'm so impatient! It's been much cooler this year, I think the highest we've gotten so far is 75, so I hope when we finally do get some heat, everything will go crazy.

[sunnysandiegan]

So far, so good... all our plants are thriving since I have been watering every single day. Our weather isn't even particularly hot, yet. Mostly in the high 60s and low 70s with a few spikes into the high 70s. The watermelon looks like it is going to topple the trellis already. The peppers are getting really bushy, as is the "compact" heirloom tomato plant. My parsley is fully revived and looks downright gorgeous. I hardly want to harvest any.

Small Space Garden Photo Journal
I've been photographing every Monday (different times of day on purpose to note sun exposure) and it is amazing how much growth is occurring in less than one week now. This is FUN!

[ms.shell]

i love your photo journal, sunny.

here's what we harvested today. DP just popped up in that picture when I wasn't expecting him, to be silly. I measured one of those asparagus beans and it was just over 19" long. I had to cut the basil heavily today, as it wants to flower already!
Hope ya'll are having a nice day today.

[CherryBomb]

So jealous of those who are already harvesting! We just planted the middle of May, so we've got a bit to go. Our garden is about 650sq feet, we've got 3 rows of tomatos, corn, green beans, cucumbers, jalepenos, and banana peppers. I've also got canteloupe, watermelon, and herbs in planters.

The corn and beans are lagging behind some, we had to replant both. They're doing good now, though! I finally bought a pressure canner, so I'm really looking forward to canning them (I hate freezing veggies).

[JamieCatheryn]

Blackberries are over already they were nice while they lasted. I wish I had lettuce in my garden, if I had that I believe we'd do fine without any buying veggies all summer long. So happy with our green beans, squash, and carrots. The tomatoes are slow to ripen, but there are lots of fruit. Watch them all ripen when I have to go away next month for a week and give any produce harvesting over to the neighbors. Humph.

[SAHMinHawaii]

[QUOTE=ms.shell;15539684]

Fabulous harvest!