Third Week of June Garden Perk Ups

The first week of June brought terrible temps and cloud cover.  I really doubted that the corn would catch up, but it has. There is Hope!  Last week, once all the corn stalks popped up, I added organic blood meal around each stalk, and this week, I added steer manure. I think we are back on track with growth. 

Potatoes, I truly thought would be done by now.  However, as you can see, the leaves are still bright green and simply not ready to dig out. 

Last weekend, on Father's Day, we had a thunderstorm that knocked over one of the bell pepper plants.  We have it staked up now, and I note that there is a nice sized bell pepper on it. We have taken them out of the green house due to the fact that it is getting too hot for them in there and they will blister/burn. 

Strawberries are just about done.  I keep them contained in a bucket on the deck to keep critters out (mostly).  

I planted two cucumber plants, one each per bucket, and they are starting to look like real plants.  I put the buckets side by side for pollination purposes when they start flowering. This keeps the slugs out. 

Tomato plants are still in the green house for warmth purposes.  The earliest one is called July 4th, and it has two cute little tomatoes.  Even the cherry sized tomato plant is without tomatoes at this point. So yes, we may actually have some standard-size red tomatoes in July this year! Very Unusual for the Pacific NW!

Have cut the scapes off the garlic and they will be dug up the first week of July. 

The Rhode Island Pullets are almost 19 weeks of age.  Getting pretty close to laying time for them. We need to replace the flooring in the coop with the nesting box so that they can start practicing with that, or they will end up laying them all over the place, which isn't very good when the rainy weather hits. 

Corn first week of June	Corn third week of June
Potato leaves still Green	Bell Pepper this week
Strawberries winding down	Cucumber starting up
July 4th Tomato Plant

First week of June Gardening Blues

It's the first week of June and, like last year, it has turned off colder than usual. Lots of rain and humidity. Hoping for the best, for the corn. It's hard to keep the soil at "growing temps" when it cools off like this.  It will do what it can do and we will live with it. 

My replant of corn from last week is coming up along with the plants that were already sprouting up last week, so, if it warms up this summer, we should have a nice "micro" crop. I planted 28.  In some spots, there are two that came up. (I always plant at least two to try to ensure that one comes up.)  Usually one pops up, occasionally 2 pop up and some times none pops up.... I soak the seeds over night to try to spur growth, but some seeds just don't grow. Corn is difficult to grow in our region, so when it happens, it is BLISS! 😋  Hey, the basil actually sprouted this year.  Didn't happen last year.  Keeping my fingers crossed that they keep growing. Time to fertilize too.  Corn and Onions need a lot of fertilizer to grow quickly. 

I need to start weeding both gardens.  I need to replant some bush beans too. Potatoes are still flowering which is a good sign!  Typically, the more flowering we see, the more potatoes we get. We don't pull them until the flowering is all done and the leaves start dying. I think we will be getting potatoes early this year!!!

Picking and pickling my mini radish crop this weekend. YUM - love pickled radishes on my burgers! 

We sold our three older Welsummers this morning.  I never ask for "going rate" and I never have a problem selling them to a good home.  I'm disappointed, however, when people try to talk me down to a lower amount, considering I am already asking 50% less than the local rate. But, rather than get upset and throw verbal darts, I just don't reply at all.  They are sold to a nice family that I know will love them as much as we have. I handed over plenty of fresh eggs to seal the deal. 

Next projects are to finish the east wall of the greenhouse to help control humidity and temps, put a new floor in the smaller coop so that we can get the pullets moved, and then work on the hoop coop to shore it back up and put in a larger door.  The plastic zip ties are giving out so it is time to replace those before our fall meat chickens arrive. 

Just a typical first week of June with rain, albeit colder then we would like. Hopefully, this will clear quickly and we can head into summer with a great mini crop this year. I don't want a repeat of last year!

Baby Corn Stalks	The Replants are Sprouting (see circle)
Harpo is Missing the Sun