~* June Food Growing Mamas*~

[FarmerCathy]

Can you believe its June already.  I need to get some more pics of the garden, its growing fast.

How is June so far for everyone else?

[SpuglyRoo]

The garden is getting bigger but so far we've only harvested some lettuce.  Yesterday I spotted the first flower on one of the tomato plants!  I know it will be a while before they really all start coming in but I still excited!  Something has been feasting on all the greenery in the garden.  So far only the melons and one of my marigolds seem to have been attacked.  One melon didn't make it and the other two look rather pathetic and I'm not hopeful.  The marigold I'm not really worried about.  I desperately need to get some cages or something for the tomato plants so that they stop flopping over and getting blown around but I haven't gotten out to the garden center yet.  Soon! Hopefully before they are too big to be enclosed.

[SuburbanHippie]

I finally got my garden planted.  LOL.  I'm just a tad behind.  Granted, I'm in zone 5 so it's not that bad.  Here's a couple pics taken from my deck.

20 tomato plants (if they all survive, some got injured from the wind) and 4 mounds of melons behind them

3 rows of corn (will plant 3 more to the left in two weeks), spinach, lettuce, carrots, a row of peas bc I got lazy, a couple pepper plants in the front.  Beans will go to the right in two weeks once it gets (and stays) hot.

[Magpie1972]

I picked some collards. I am totally impressed with me. Ha!

And, used my cilantro for the first time since it flowered. It's very lemony - it was really delicious.

I love the garden set up, SuburbanHippie. Looks like you have a LOT of land to work with there.

I added pics to my blog.

www.magpiedelights.blogspot.com
 

I must learn how to add them here. I know it can't be complicated.

[Owen'nZoe]

Magpie, your garden looks great, and Suburban Hippie - wow, what a nice big garden!

I have my garden and my community garden all completely planted now. I also have three flats of seedlings to transplant in as soon as the spring veggies are done. So far, we've been harvesting mostly mixed salads (lettuce, spinach, baby kale, herbs, radishes, green onions, etc.), but today we had our first broccoli and baby turnips. Yumm!

The strawberry beds are absolutely packed this year - my kids have been checking on their strawberries every day. Here's hoping we get the ripe ones before the critters do!

[RosieL]

Magpie - You just shocked me. I have never been successful with Cilantro because it always flowers before I get a chance to cook it. I had it in my head that it bolts like lettuce and is basically not good after that. Hmmm, not sure how I got that notion. What is your cilantro's cycle? To add pics you can right-click an image on your blog, choose "Copy Image URL" (or something similar if on a PC), click the square icon in the text editor on here, click Image URL, then paste in the URL you copied. 

SubHippie - Looks great! You're making me want to dig up another section of my yard..need more space!

Owen'nZoe - Yay for broccoli. Ever had a problem with white cauliflower butterflies? A friend is battling those for her broccoli. :-/

Member	Zone	Site	What's newly ripe?
Farmer Cathy		Blog
lunita1	9	Blog
RosieL	7	Garden Log	Zucchini, peas
Magpie1972		Blog
HeatherAtHome	4	Blog
SweetSilver	7

Don't know your zone? Look here: http://www.gardenweb.com/zones/zip.cgi

[RosieL]

I have a problem! Each year the mites get my tomatoes before it's time for their demise. I just got home from a 2 week trip and the mites have ravaged my peas. The bottom of the pea plants is brown and completely infested. I sprayed a spicy oil mixture, but this is a serious infestation. Should I pull all the peas immediately? I saw some good-spider webs and one spider, probably having a feast. The tomato plants are not infested yet. Would a ladybug release be useful, or is that under-kill for a problem like this?

I picked the first Zucchini today, and a pound of peas (all snap or snow). 

[GardenStream]

I am almost ready to plant my garden. I am so far behind.

I did plant a bunch of things, but all the rain a couple weeks ago and then the 90+ temps destroyed them. I was making an attempt to grow from direct seeding and that was a disaster.

Today or tomorrow the tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and all the other things we really want to eat this year will be going into the ground. The only bonus to planting this late is that my local greenhouse has all veggies 50% off this week. I'll go and buy a few more flats today.

[RosieL]

I made my facebook garden album public. I'm curious, would one of you guys take a look and let me know whether you can see the pics? http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100238997004938.2712267.5717300 

Also, can you let me know if this opens me up to you seeing everything on my page and other photo albums?

[HeatherAtHome]

Originally Posted by RosieL 

I made my facebook garden album public. I'm curious, would one of you guys take a look and let me know whether you can see the pics? http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100238997004938.2712267.5717300 

Also, can you let me know if this opens me up to you seeing everything on my page and other photo albums?

Nope, can't see it. I'm a non FB user and this is what I see:

 

This content is currently unavailable

The page you requested cannot be displayed right now. It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired, or you may not have permission to view this page.

[HeatherAtHome]

I'm still in planting mode. Tomatoes and peppers went in yesterday. Today (fingers crossed) my Dad is coming with his tiller to clear up the weeded spaces where my potatoes, corn and squash will be planted. Everything else was planted last week. 

[SuburbanHippie]

Thanks for the compliments!  I love sharing garden photos. 

So about 6 of my tomato plants are going to the compost.  They're looking dried up and dead.  DH wants to buy plants to replace them.  I want to use the extra space for more beans (since they all are on the far end close to where I could put beans).  What to do...what to do...

I had a couple volunteer plants come up from last year's compost that we moved with us from our old house.  It looks like pumpkins again.  One is growing by the melons (score!).  The other is growing by the corn (score again!).  I have great luck with volunteer pumpkins (and never from ones that I plant myself lol) so I'm really excited!

[RosieL]

SuburbanHippie - Any idea what happened to them? I have one plant that's shriveling up and dying, one of two tomatoes in a container on the deck. It's in the same soil and getting hte same amount of water as another thriving plant, and no insects to be seen. I'm guessing some sort of disease. :-/  I'm a bigger fan of tomatoes than beans, because they're more versatile in the kitchen (plus DH only eats beans cooked *just so*.)

I am trying to blast these little guys away with bursts of water. I don't want to pull my peas and they're also right next to the tomatoes. :(

And has anyone ever seen this on a zucchini? Its fellow fruit are dark, dark green. It's almost like blossom end rot on a zucch.

[rhianna813]

Yeah I am also eating lettuce now :-) And we have lovely white flowers on the english peas. I am carefully watching my cabbage plants as the white moth has been fluttering by and laying eggs on the leaves. In the past the caterpillars have taken out whole small plants. Any advice on this?

Rhianna

Oregon zone 8

[GardenStream]

Originally Posted by RosieL 

And has anyone ever seen this on a zucchini? Its fellow fruit are dark, dark green. It's almost like blossom end rot on a zucchini

That's what happens when the zucchini isn't fully pollinated.

[SuburbanHippie]

RosieL- I think it was a combination of wind damage and extreme heat.  DH insisted we bring them all out one day when it was sunny and hot, but the wind was crazy.  When I brought them in that night some of them were bent over.  A couple days later was when we planted them outside and it was cooler again.  I thought that maybe they would recover.  Now it's record breaking heat again and they are all shriveled up.  Oh well. 

[RosieL]

Rhianna - I lost all my broccoli to those little buggers last season. I tried diatamaceous earth to no avail. I hear there is one killer of those guys, but I can't remember the name (starts with a B), and I don't know if it's organic. I do know that the eggs mine laid were yellow and easy to spot with some leaf-flipping. If you don't have too many plants, I would find those eggs and strip them off. Also, I read that making fake moths, e.g. by cutting out plastic yogurt containers and putting them on sticks, would deter more egg-laying, because the guys are territorial. I don't know if that's true, since mine were much further along when I noticed them. 

Garden Stream - Wow thanks for the information, it's surprising! I have so many bees, but they concentrate in the back yard. I'll have to start assisting my zucchini's sex lives!

SH - Awe, that's definitely disappointment. However it's not too late to plant more, be it the beans or the tomatoes. 

I have an open spot in which I'm trying to think what to plant. It gets the least sun of all my garden, probably about five full hours. I have had success with colder weather crops there, through the summer, like lettuce and collards. Any other ideas for veggies that might benefit from some shade from the hottest of the hot summer days?

[Owen'nZoe]

Originally Posted by rhianna813 

Yeah I am also eating lettuce now :-) And we have lovely white flowers on the english peas. I am carefully watching my cabbage plants as the white moth has been fluttering by and laying eggs on the leaves. In the past the caterpillars have taken out whole small plants. Any advice on this?

Rhianna

Oregon zone 8

Do you cover them? This is the first year I've tried covering my broccoli with a floating row cover, and so far, so good. I haven't seen a single caterpillar. I'm just about to plant my cabbage for fall and plan to do the same.
 

[rhianna813]

I have 6 cabbage and 6 broccoli plants. The moths have been laying eggs on only the cabbage so far. I've been wiping the eggs off as I find them. I don't have any row covers, but that is a good idea. Right now, I'd need a free/homemade option :-) Maybe I will try the faux plastic moths and report back.

2 years ago I had some broc transplants which were outside but not yet planted. I noticed "something" was eating the leaves so I brought them inside. Assumed it was slugs. The plants kept getting eaten inside! I even suspected my cat at one point hahahaha Then I saw the fat green caterpillars all over them. By then the plants were gone. So I popped them into a large jar with airholes... and they cocooned and hatched. We released them and DS loved it. Great science project for him and me!

Rhianna

[Owen'nZoe]

Rhianna -

Floating row covers can be very inexpensive if you buy them locally. I got enough fabric for 2  4x8 beds for under $10 at my local garden center, which isn't the cheapest spot in the world to buy from (I would think Home Depot or Lowes would be cheaper). I've also heard recently that Big Lots often carries packages of the fabric for around a dollar. Maybe that is an option if you have one near you? Of course, you need to get the covers on before you have caterpillars, so maybe this would be a better solution for you next year?