June is a tricky time for us at Blithewold.  Just when the crowds have started to wane from Spring’s glorious show, summer arrives and a whole new set of eyes are on the property.  Not only do we head into all sorts of projects around the grounds, but temperatures in the garden are ripe for planting  warm season crops, yet still cool enough for leafy greens and the last of the spring radishes, resulting in a long list of to-do’s.

Planting, weeding, trellising, weeding, seeding, weeding and other odds and ends fill the time I have to work in the garden completely, not quite giving me a chance to take a look and appreciate what is coming out of the garden.  However, I know I need photographs for this blog, and thus, a moment of appreciation.  Below is our third donation this year to the East Bay Food Pantry, which vary weekly with the crops, this one is about 50 heads of lettuce, radishes, kale and some turnips from a late March sowing I made in the cold frames.

And while those crops are coming out, plenty or new crops are going in to fill the last of the empty garden spaces.  6 varieties of peppers, 10 types of tomatoes, 4 different eggplants, 2 types of squash, cantaloupe, cucumbers and tomatillos transplants got their roots dirty today, and that is success by any measure.

I had the opportunity to put up a small slat fence for the cucumbers a week or two ago, and during my Saturday program showed a simple trellising method for tomatoes.

All the tomatoes are also in, but that will be next week’s topic to get everyone excited for this year’s Tomato Taste Test, so I’ll only mention that yes, those tomatoes are planted amongst the lettuces, specifically where the pantry donations were.

Even still with all of these pressing planting issues, the weeding must get done (pictures not included) and projects finished up.  Specifically, the block edging I started making back in winter, put in in April, and finally finished the compound-angled corner pieces.

Lastly, the framing for the bean trellis is nearing completion, and should be planted by next week.

Whew!  Anybody else nearing completion on planting?