It is hot!

The garden is going to be so great this year. It's already great, but now we have the heat we needed for things to really get going. Starting to get cherry tomatoes. I had about 10 of them for dinner yesterday in a salad. Then I cut some zucchini flowers and small zucchini and sauteed them in olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper--yummy.

Pak choi is done. Time to plant some more. Same with the broccoli and beets.

Ginger and a new gardener, Katherine came today. Katherine is a musician and composer. Katherine weeded, made wells around the tomato plants and filled them with water. Ginger journaled, took photos and helped harvest some vegetables: Swiss chard, kale, rosemary, oregano, lavender, two plums and a couple of cherry tomatoes. Come on, cherry tomatoes----turn red. We're ready.

The other tomato plants are full of green tomatoes. The bell pepper plants are flowering and producing peppers. The eggplant is also flowering--lots of eggplant this year. The peach tree is done producing peaches. I was a little disappointed with the peach tree. The peaches weren't that sweet, I didn't cover them and the birds took quite a few. Oh well, maybe next year will be better.

Watered early this morning and about 4:30 this afternoon. It's hot. Which is great f or the vegetables, but they need water. Added Fish Emulsion to water for one of the flowering plants.

This afternoon I added HB101 and water to the orange tree (20 drops in 5 gallons of water). The miracle food.

Wednesday

Got a lot accomplished in the garden today. Harvested the rest of the corn and cut down the stalks. I would have pulled them out, except for the fact that I planted new corn in between the stalks (pull out the stalks, pull out the new corn).

Pulled out the last of the pak choi, the royal oak leaf lettuce and the arugula. Where the arugula used to be (south side of the raised bed) we planted 2 rows of arugula and one row of green onions. Lauren, a new member, did the cultivating and planting.

We have potatoes. Can't believe it. I thought the plants died, but Rodney started digging into the mounds and found so many beautiful Yukon Gold potatoes--30 maybe? Spread the dirt from the potatoes around the garden.

Watered everything very well. The June gloom is over and the sun comes out very early in the morning. Hot, hot, hot!

Rodney basically built (I helped) the supports for the tomato plants. Just in time, I might add. They were getting so big. The stake I put in the ground for each of the plants has worked well so far, but soon it would not be enough. Thank goodness we have the supports now.

Ordered the Gardens Alive products to help keep my plants healthy. Beneficial Nematodes for the carrots, 10 packages of pot stickers, lace wings (to eat the aphids and white flies) (3 separate shipments) and Trichogrmma pretiosum which fights corn earworm and tomato hornworm. Never had anything to fight the big caterpillars on my tomatoes before. Hope this stuff works.

Quite overcast again this morning. I hoed the garden today, loosening up the soil and watered well, including a mixture of water and mycorrhizal fungi. Good for the vegetables. Harvested more corn, beans and a beautiful squash.

Oh, and don't forget the peaches. I made a yummy peach crumble. I think I am going to have plums this year, too, even though it's just the first year for the plum tree.

I think I have to order more products to prevent corn earworm and tomato hornworm (Trichogramma Pretiosum), aphids & whiteflies (green lacewings) and root-knot nematodes on carrots (Beneficial Sf Nematodes)

Meanwhile, the garden is doing so well. Just flourishing! Must take some photos--tomorrow.

It's been so overcast and misty, no, I correct myself, I think it was actually doing more than misting. Anyway, the vegetables seem to love the extra moisture. Flora came today to work in the garden. She planted corn kernels in between the corn stalks so we will have a second harvest of corn. That corn is so good. I am having my 2nd day of corn on the cob with butter, cayenne pepper and lime, roasted on the barbecue--delicious.

I pulled out the last sage plant and planted thyme and more sage. I also moved my worm bin into the herb garden. To explain, I had a compost pile which was moved out of the compost bin into a blue tarp. Many months later, due to the dark, wet conditions, all these worms appeared. I have this huge pile of worms and compost--great for the garden.

Harvested corn, kale, pak choi, swiss chard and oregano. I prepared saueed kale for the first time. I think I added too much salt--way too salty. However, the addition of wine vinegar was good.

Sprayed Neem Oil over all the vegetables. This product stops aphids and white flies, which I seem to have an abundance of in the garden. Turns out I should be spraying every 2 weeks and it's been over a month. I have some catching up to do. More sticky yellow patches to catch the little buggers.

Meanwhile, the powdery mildew on the zucchini leaves is going crazy. There is so much more today. I cut out a lot of the infected leaves, but there are still so many more. What to do????