Karen's Garden Delights Journal
5th week of May 2011

We were catapulted into summer weather with a couple days in the 90s to start this week off. Since we were definitely not acclimatized to this heat, it made working outdoors a challenge and my long list of planting tasks was slowed to a trickle. I only was able to plant about a third of the peppers and tomatoes that I wanted to get in this week. The only times that were tolerable for working were early morning or late evening. Weather like this put us into iced-tea season. My husband is willing to work outdoors if there is plenty of cold herb tea available to quench his thirst. His favorite is tarragon tea sweetened with stevia leaves. I also make peppermint, anise hyssop and lemon verbena plus often toss in a few sprigs of stinging nettle for some extra nutrition. At the end of the week we had much more pleasant days in the upper 70s and that is the weather we completely missed in May this year. What a pleasure it is to work in comfortable temperatures again!

Strawberry season in our area is in full swing. Since this is a busy salad season for me, I stopped growing strawberries which require attention at the same time. I figure it is easier for me to sell extra salad to earn money for buying strawberries from our Amish friends. We have a couple plants in the flower bed for snacking but no patch where we need to spend hours picking. Apparently there is some strawberry disease going around and berries are either nice or ugly this year. I was fortunate to find very nice, chemical free ones at our neighbors. We helped make a connection for someone looking for berries to supply a CSA in Cleveland to four growers around the corner from us. These growers are thrilled to see so many berries leave at once but it also means I need to make sure I place my order for berries before the truck goes by to pick-up. Our daughter is taking over making strawberry jam and here are the strawberry pies she made. They didn't last very long.

With our attention on planting, some areas of weeds are getting ahead of me. I was thankful for a helper this week who helped start the mulching process where we lay down newspaper or cardboard and cover it with old hay. It makes things look neat and means that weeding in those areas will be kept to a minimum over the summer. I hope in the next few weeks to really tackle getting the main paths mulched and staying ahead of the weeds. There are also areas where the low tunnels were that may be easier to just send the lawnmower through to wipe them out. We also worked on pulling out all the black plastic pieces for the melons and squash. It was originally heavy grade silo plastic so we have been able to use it several years - a little messy to pull up and put back down but at least we are not adding to the trash every season. Some of those areas were planted with plants I started in newspaper pots like Libby pumpkins, Pennsylvania Dutch crookneck and a few goose gourds which are all extra long season varieties. Others were direct seeded like butternut squash, muskmelon and the fun little spinning gourds. A rain shower and the warm temperatures should make them germinate quickly.