Growing Well, So Far!
Tomorrow is the summer Solstice, and the Food It Yourself garden is off to a grand start. Although tomorrow is also the official first day of summer in the northern hemisphere, the heat has already arrived. Indeed, a heat advisory has been issued in central Massachusetts for the next two days. I did all my garden care early today to avoid the heat. Have a look at how it’s growing.
Some things have gone exactly as planned. The leeks, turnips and herbs are thriving, as are the string beans. You can see in the picture that bean planting 1 is almost ready to bloom while bean planting 2 is just sprouting. Also, the sunflowers I planted in that bed are looking good. Mr. Food It Yourself and I both love sunflowers, so I planted many of them.
Some things did not go as planned. The carrots I planted had a terrible germination rate. Here are all that sprouted. I decided to plant some more sunflowers in that bed. Then, I transplanted all the volunteer tomatoes from the other raised beds. What type of tomatoes are they? Only time will tell. That’s the fun part of volunteer plants.
You can see in these pictures that the plants have been watered. A good watering early in the day will help keep the plants happy when the temperatures rise.
I also let the chickens out for some scratch time before the heat hit. While they were running around I topped off their water bucket. I’ll be checking on them frequently during the heat. Their henny shenanigans flushed out a small rabbit who was foraging in the front yard. Behold 30 seconds of bunny. Crank the volume for some songbird ASMR.
It is hard to believe, but we are already at the end of strawberry season. We got a decent crop, even though the chipmunks took their share. As usual, we ate the berries as fast as we harvested them so there is no strawberry jam. I am honestly okay with that. I am especially happy with the alpine strawberries. I started a few years ago with an entire packet of seeds, from which exactly two plants survived. We now have so many of them I will need to find more places to transplant them in the fall. The berries are tiny but have an intense flavor. I absolutely recommend you grow them.
The raspberries and cherries are on their way to ripening, and a few of the tomato plants have flowers on them. My chamomile, a multi-season project like the Alpine strawberries, actually has one flower. I may just get a cup of tea before the decade ends. The squash and cucumber plants are developing as predicted. Overall, I am pleased with the progress of this year’s garden. How are your plants doing? If you are heading into winter where you are, how was your growing season? Share in the comments!
