Garden Update

The one sunny weekend we got to enjoy recently made me feel a bit more optimistic about gardening this year, enough that I took these pictures. But now we are back to the gray, cold, rainy and just plain dismal days. One cucumber has died, my zucchinis are yellowing and the tomatoes are just standing still. It's very depressing because I can't help them. I've made mock greenhouses out of plastic containers, but we'll need to buy a full on greenhouse with a heater if this is the region's weather future.

Here's some updates on plants I posted before. This shows about a month's worth of growth, so while things are looking better, you can see that this cold weather has severely stunted the garden's progress.

I should note though before you read the depressing report below, that we have been eating some food from the garden. The herbs are awesome: sage, sorrel, mint (i have other plants besides the new Kentucky below), thyme, chives, and oregano. Edible flowers we've enjoyed include arugala, sage blossoms, chive and onion scapes. I also have an Italian dandelion that is growing like a champ (of course) and we've eaten the leaves in several salads or green combos. We've also had overwintered chard, collards, and onions. Yesterday I harvested snow peas. We've eaten some fava leaves and will have beans shortly. Kale is on it's way. Yesterday we ate young borage leaves - which are a bit fuzzy, but taste like crunchy cucumbers. Soon we will have borage flowers. Some plants will continue to thrive in this cold weather. And the hyperextended spring has meant more morels and fiddleheads at the forager stand.

Kentucky Mint - big enough to harvest now, but normally mint is a plant you keep in a container in a vain attempt to contain it. I bought this plant as a start in early April. In other year's, we would be eating mint pesto to keep up with the crop.
 

Purple podded peas. They are beautiful. And the flowers are like sweet peas. We will get a few as you can see and we will actually get them on time for peas, but the wind knocked over the top growth this week and snapped the vines, so we won't get many. Have we ever had heavy wind like that in the middle of June before? That was not a gardening scenario I was prepared for.
 

These lettuces are nearly big enough to harvest a few leaves. I bought these as starts in early April. Can you imagine how much we would pay for lettuce in the store if growing seasons were always like this? Normally a lettuce crop is about 45 days from seed planting to full heads. These went in the ground as 3 inch starts 2 months agree and have grown about 2 inches. Wow.
 

A bean sprout - some hope for summer? I'm keeping my fingers crossed.