Karen's Garden Delights Journal
2nd week of June 2011

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Another pleasant week of gardening weather and if you are a regular garden journal reader you perhaps noticed that I am spending more time in the garden than I am at the computer... I am feeling mostly caught up with crops in the ground and my mulch hay arrived this week which we are spreading on the newspaper in the paths to keep weeds down plus makes things look spiffy. I had a friend help early in the week and two young adult helpers came on Saturday to attack some nasty sections of weeds. Both were barter "payments" and I'm excited about how clean the garden is looking for mid-June. If you want to come visit, now is the time to stop by but if you wait a few weeks, be prepared to grab a hoe and help weed! Here is the edible landscape in front of our house which is a fun place to nibble. Some children who visited recently really enjoyed tasting the edible flowers and herbs in this bed and throughout the garden. The licorice flavor of the bronze fennel (the tall feathery plants) was their favorite and I dug a few small plants up for them to take home along with some borage.

An Amish produce grower near us had some tomato woes after not cleaning out his sprayer well enough from using the herbicide 2,4d and was desperately looking for more tomato plants. I was very glad to share my last two flats of plants with them which meant I didn't have the guilt of throwing any plants in the compost! It will be interesting for them to try my rainbow of varieties and I'm also hoping he considers going organic after this unfortunate incident! When his wife came to pick up the plants we quickly walked through the garden and I thought she would be impressed that I had beans in blossom but she said hers were ready to pick. She had started the plants in the greenhouse and then put them out under row cover. It is a lot of fuss for bean plants but the rewards were that she had 20# of beans to sell at the Orrville Farmers Market this week at premium prices. After working hard to clear out my greenhouse, I stopped by a nearby greenhouse having a 50% off sale on their plants. Amazingly, most plants were still in very good condition this late in the season and not leggy and overgrown. I came home with nine flats of plants... I was going to plant more butternut squash and melons from seed but with such nice plants already started, I came home with butternut, acorn, delicata and hubbard squash plus several melon varieties. I snatched up two plug trays with over 100 plants each, one with fall broccoli and the other cabbage. The real treasure was a whole flat of stevia plants plus another flat full of lavender, lemon grass and other herbs. I found a few flowers to round out my mom's flower bed and my cutting beds plus decided a few extra cayenne pepper plants were in order. I tried to quickly get things into the ground so I wouldn't need to be vigilant about watering on hot days. Now not all of this went into my garden, I also went around to several friends to share the bounty.

With a few days hitting the 80s, I decided it was time to set up the shade cloth apparatus to attempt to keep good lettuce available into July. Lettuce is not very happy in the heat but my customers seem to want salad all season long. This system with old snow fence over my trampoline leg cold frame worked well last year and so again I am planting some heat resistant lettuces (Little Gem, Aneunue and a summer mix.) The summer lettuce is never as lush and glorious as spring salad but if I can keep it nice and sweet I will be happy. Before I know it, it will be time to start planting lettuce for fall and starting coldframe plants. Summer seems to fly by when you are having fun.