Summer is Just Around the Corner and Time to Focus on Different Plants

Now that summer is just about here in two days the weather is not as warm or sunny as it should be.  Normally the month of June is quite warm and dry, but this year it has been quite cooler and more damp than usual.  The good news about this is that my Spring plants are continuing to grow and produce.

At the moment it looks like my peas and radishes are done for the season.  My lettuce on the other hand is still growing and with a little bit of luck I could probably pick them one more time.  I did pick some this morning along with the rest of the peas and I got a good harvest from both of them.

I will be focusing more on my summer plants with the possibility of warmer weather arriving.  This includes all my squash plants, tomatoes, corn, melons, cucumbers, pole beans, and carrots.  I have weeded everything so far and finished with the carrots today.  With this rain I will probably have to weed them again before July fourth.

This was the last harvest of peas and I was able to pick close to 250 pea pods.  This is the most I have picked from one harvest this season and I hope to enjoy every single one of them.  I got a large bowl of lettuce today as well and look forward to possibly getting some more in the next week or so.

One of The Largest Harvests of Lettuce for 2017

It was that time of the season when all my lettuce plants were ready for harvesting including my Ruby glow hybrid leaves.  This is when I usually pick quite a bit of them and over 190 leaves were picked this week from these plants.  I should have picked a few more in order to get an even 200, but I am certain to have plenty of more harvests before all the hot weather returns.

For now my lettuce plants are producing leaves, but with some high temperatures coming during the weekend I will have to watch to see if any of the plants try to start going to seed.  They usually bolt when the weather is consistently warm and I don't know exactly how long this warm weather will last.
 

This was the first harvest for my Ruby glow lettuce and I picked about 50 leaves for now.  There are still plenty of leaves on the plants for another harvest or two.  If the weather isn't too hot I might have even more leaves to pick from all my plants.

Update on Peas, Radishes, Lettuce and Onions

I just wanted to shoot an update on my spring crop for now.  With the weather that we have been having it has benefited my spring crop the most.  My lettuce plants are flourishing, my peas are starting to produce pods, my onions have thick green stems, and my radishes are almost ready for harvesting.

The past two weeks have been exciting and with all the flowers that my peas are growing I am sure I will have plenty of pods before the spring season is over.  If we keep getting cool and wet weather the peas will give me enough pods to last several weeks or more.

The last time I checked my radishes the roots were quite small and I was covering them up with dirt in order to keep the bulbs out of the sun.  The sun can turn them color and make them quite bitter similar to what happens to carrots if exposed to sunlight.  Now they are about the size of golf balls from what I could see.  I won't know their actual size until I harvest them which should be coming real soon.

My lettuce plants have many leaves at the moment and I should start harvesting more of them from most of my plants.  They look quite ready and the weather has definitely been helping them with these leaves.  I have harvested from a couple of plants such as iceberg, butterhead, and loose leaf.  The only one I haven't harvested from would be my romaine lettuce or the Ruby glow hybrid.  I will be picking from them real soon once I think they have enough leaves to loose a few of them.

Here is the romaine lettuce that I haven't picked any leaves from yet.  I probably could pick a few of the older and lower ones.  I might do that tomorrow depending on what I have going on.








So far my spring crop is doing quite well and also my onions are part of this season as well and they are getting thick and strong stems.  This usually means that I might be getting good sized onions this season as long as this weather holds out or I keep feeding them until they are ready to be picked.

Butterhead Lettuce Ready for Picking

Getting the first harvest of the season is always exciting especially if it is a vegetable or leaf that you love to eat.  I love using lettuce in salads and sandwiches and are just the perfect leaves for any dish.

Today was a good day to start picking the first harvest of lettuce.  I only picked from some of the first plants that were ready to go into the garden.  Not all of my lettuce plants were ready for picking and I only focused on four of them which happened to be butterhead lettuce.

It didn't take that long to pick and it took more time to clean them off.  It rained recently and much of the dirt got on most of the older leaves.  These are the leaves I picked today, but later I will pick all the bigger and greener leaves when the time is right.

From this picture it doesn't look like I picked any leaves from this plant.  This is mainly due to the fact I picked all the older leaves which were smaller and hidden underneath all the larger leaves you see here.  In the next harvest you will definitely notice a difference with more leaves picked.

The Zucchini Harvesting Season has Begun

That is right the time for harvesting zucchini has started and that is what I did this past weekend.  They always grow much faster than you would think, but as long as they get bigger each day it was only a matter of time before I picked them.  The first one of the season was three pounds and about average in size for my liking.

Now that it is time for harvesting other fruits and vegetables my lettuce season is coming to an end.  The plants lasted a long time and I was able to pick them throughout the Spring and well into the warm and hot summer season. 

Normally when it gets too hot they go to seed and that is pretty much the end.  Before the lettuce season ends I was able to get on more large harvest of iceberg lettuce.  My Ruby glow might have one more harvest in them as well, but I don't think I will be picking as many leaves as previously.  Below are 80 leaves of iceberg lettuce picked recently.

Time to Thin Out Those Carrots Along with Harvesting Ruby Glow Lettuce

My garden I had finally given me some good Ruby glow lettuce leaves that I could pick this week.  Picking lettuce leaves is very easy and since I had picked my other iceberg lettuce not that long ago I though it would be very good to pick these leaves to make up from last season.  I am very happy with the 65 leaves I picked and I couldn't ask for anymore from just eight plants that were planted this year.

 Just a little before and after picture of just one of the plants that I harvested.  I did not pick that many leaves because I wanted to make sure that it didn't go to seed early.  If I pick too many leaves it might prematurely go to seed and that would mean only one harvest of these plants which is something I didn't want to happen.  I just stuck to picking the bottom leaves rather than any other leaves on the plant.

The next thing I had to do was make sure that my carrots were thinned out and all the weeds removed.  Removing the weeds from my carrots is one of the more difficult tasks in the garden mainly due to the nature of carrot plants and how small and fragile they are.  Nevertheless I did get it done and it took about an entire day to do it correctly.

Here are just a bunch of carrot sprouts that needed to get thinned out.  They grew throughout the entire row, but some places had more or less plants sprouting.  It all depended on how many seeds I placed and how many of them actually sprouted.

 You can see that there were a bunch of carrot sprouts, but only one in every three to four inches could stay.  All the others needed to be removed.

Here is one of those plants that was able to stay because it was stronger and was probably one of the first sprouts to appear.  Now that the thinning process is over I can now focus on caring for them rather than worrying about them being smothered by weeds or each other.  This is plenty of space for carrots to grow and thrive.

Started the Process of Weeding Garden and More Lettuce Harvested

This week has been quite busy especially with all the weeding that needs to be done throughout the entire garden.  The only thing that doesn't need to be weeded is the onions that are in totes because they are all covered with mulch which keeps the weeds out and less work for me.  Luckily with all the rain that we received this week means more weeds in the garden need to be plucked from the ground.

The good thing about getting all this rain is that now I can collect more grass clippings from mowing the lawn which I can then use on plants that cannot compete with many weeds.  Some of the plants that can use mulch would include the onions in the garden or even my corn which have a shallow root system.  I can even use it for my tomatoes that do not like uneven watering and having a mulch to retain water can help that.  It all depends what I will use these grass clippings for.

I also collected some more lettuce leaves that needed picking which came after the rain.  Picking them in the morning is supposed to allow the leaves to create a more crisp and firm leaf and supposed to last long.  I am not sure if this is true, but I did pick over 50 leaves this week.  All of them came from my iceberg lettuce plants.

Two containers full of these leaves was a good amount to collect from about a dozen iceberg plants.  I still have my ruby glow plants that are continuing to grow and I hope to start picking these leaves in the very near future.  I know I have been saying this for awhile, but I want to pick them when the time is right which is quickly approaching.

As usual I had to compare these leaves to my foot in order to show you the average size of these leaves.  They are quite large and at least they are all green as compared to what you can get from the store.

Along with the picking of lettuce weeding was done throughout the entire garden.  This included tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, melons, peppers, beans, and corn.

Here are a few pictures of the weeded plants.

Getting My Lettuce to the Kitchen Table

I was deciding on whether or not to begin picking my lettuce a week ago or to wait a little bit longer for larger leaves.  I think I made the right choice by picking them today and they look really good and I am looking forward to eating them.  I still have spinach left so I will have to finish up my spinach before I can start eating my iceberg lettuce.  No worry though because they will go fast and soon I will be enjoying the great taste of my organic lettuce.

I am really looking forward to picking my ruby glow hybrid which is what I grew this season as something different that I haven't grown before.  It is also a romaine type lettuce which is much more healthier and comes with an antioxidant which is why it is red in color compared to the traditional green iceberg lettuce.

Check out the large leaves that were removed from my plants today.

Two pounds in total was collected and 39 leaves.  I gave them a quick rinse and placed them in the refrigerator to keep them firm and crisp just the way I like them.  The ruby glow hybrid leaves are not quite ready and I am waiting for them to produce more leaves before picking them. 

Probably a good layer of mulch will help them out quite a bit.  I don't like to let the soil dry out too long otherwise they might bolt or go to seed prematurely.  Mulch can easily solve this probably especially when I use grass clippings.  This is the best type of mulch for keeping out weeds and retaining moisture.