Three Summer Crop Vegetables Harvesting Continues

 It is that time of the season where most of my vegetables are going to be ready for picking and harvesting.  So far I have been consistently picking cucumbers and zucchini and this weekend I started with harvesting my corn for the first time this season.  Corn usually ripens around the same time and I usually pick an entire row as long as they are the same type or breed of corn.  I have two rows of corn and the second row will soon be harvested in a couple of weeks.  For now I picked an early type and that is what I have been enjoying for the past few days.

The cucumber vines in the garden have been growing since the beginning of May and have been just producing cucumbers on a weekly basis.  I have been picking a harvest pretty much every week and yesterday I probably picked the most so far this summer.  I am glad I am picking plenty of cucumbers because I need to make up from last year when I only picked just a couple of cucumbers from one or two vines.  

It seems that I will be picking tomatoes next from the garden.  Many of them are ripening slow because of the cloudy and rainy weather that has been around this year.  I am sure that with a couple of days of some sun most of them will be harvest prone.  These would include all the types of tomatoes that I planted such as cherry, Roma, and beefsteak.  There was one on a plant yesterday that I should have picked, but I will wait another day before I get to enjoy it's juicy flavor.

Eggplants are another vegetable that looks like it will be ready soon.  These plants I started inside because this is one plant that needs much time to mature and it seems that they are maturing earlier than normal which is a good thing.  I would guess that all the plants have at least one eggplant growing from them and possibly more with all the flowers that they had on them.  I would guess sometime this month at least one or more eggplants will be mature enough for harvesting.

It Looks Like Plants are Starting to Produce Fruit for a Good Harvest

This is about the time that things are starting to happen and harvests will start to become common or at least once a week at the minimum.  Tomatoes will probably be the last to harvest not including my pumpkins which are always picked close to October as possible if at all.  Sometimes I have to pick my pumpkins much earlier because the plant is dead and the pumpkin can't grow or ripen anymore by being outside.  For now I am going to be focusing on vegetables that are ready or ripening right now.

 

The first new harvest for the season are my cucumbers.  I transplanted many vines this season and I also planted seeds directly in the soil as well so I have two batches of plants that I am hoping will produce many cucumbers for me.

 

I have already picked three so far this year and I am hoping to pick many more.  I have looked at the vines and I am seeing most of them with at least one or more female flowers and fruits that are getting bigger each day.  By the end of this month I hope to have at least a dozen cucumbers picked.

  Next up on the list would be my zucchini which have been growing for quite some time.  I would say around the fourth of July is when my plants began producing flowers and short after zucchini appeared on all three plants.  There are three plants, but four zucchinis that I will be picking very soon because they are large right now and only a little bit more time on the plant until it is ready to be picked and then cooked.  

My pole beans have been climbing with their vines and while this is happening they are starting to produce flowers along the way.  I think my beans might actually starting coming right after I start picking my first batch of corn.  Right now they have flowers that are opening, but no beans so far.  With the two plants that sprouted this season I am not looking to have a big harvest.

As I just mentioned my corn plants are coming through with the silks that is a sign that corn should be harvested in a couple of weeks.  This first time is a fast grower and doesn't take as long as my silver queen which I planted  in the other row.  This is the first time growing silver queen corn and I am looking forward to how it will come out this season.  Right now I will have to wait for them since they don't have any silks yet, but this early type does and should be harvesting in the near future.

Tilling, Transplanting, and Sowing for The Month of May

 This is when the garden season gets quite busy is during this month because of the many things that need to be done.  First of all tilling the rest of the garden needs to be done before I can start transplanting or sowing seeds into the garden.  I also like to wait a few days after tilling the garden before I actually start planting any seeds or adding any plants into the garden soil.  I like to let the birds in the area find as many caterpillars and bugs in the soil as they can before any planting is done.  

One of the first seeds planted into the garden were my bean seeds.  I like to have just two ten foot rows of bean plants because I find that pole bean will yield plenty of beans with this many plants.  This will definitely be enough for a summer harvest as long as most of the beans sprout.  I am hoping that this rain will get them sprouting real soon.  

June is just around the corner and this means that my June bearing strawberries should be ready for a good harvest with all this rain.  Although some of them have started turning red and even a few of them are pretty much ready for picking.   The bigger and largest harvests of strawberries will definitely come in June rather than the end of May.  Once we get a little bit more sun I am sure most of the berries will ripen and deliver a good and hopefully decent harvest for this year.

 I have two rows of corn planted, one short row of potatoes, and another large row full of cantaloupe, pumpkin, and zucchini seeds.  I planted my squash and melon seeds a little bit later because I wanted to make sure that I got my beans, corn, and tomato plants into the garden as soon as possible.  zucchini plants tend to grow fast and they don't need as much time as melons or eggplants for example.  

I still have peppers and eggplants that I need to transplant into the garden.  I was hoping to get my eggplants into the garden by this week, but ended up getting a little busy with my tomatoes instead.   This week I will at least add my eggplants into the garden and probably some of the more mature peppers as well.  Some of the younger peppers I will wait some time before adding them to the garden.

Now the Garden Season has Started with The First Transplants in The Garden

 Early to mid April happens to be the best time to start transplanting cool weather plants into the garden.  If you are using cold frames or placing row covers over your plants you can even start transplanting much sooner.  This is also a great way to extend the garden season especially in areas that are much cooler such as in northern states.  I like to do the first tiling sometime in April and do enough for adding all my springtime crops.

 

 This year I have decided on growing spinach, lettuce, potatoes, onions, and sun king broccoli which should be able to withstand the hot months and produce a decent crop.  I am still working on whether I should grow peas and or radishes.  Most likely I will plant pea because I bought a whole packet of seeds in the beginning of the year and would be a waste not to use them.

Even though these are normally springtime plants I can still plant them later and use them for a fall time crop instead.  Normally I plant kale and broccoli for a fall crop, but I decided that I would use them for a springtime crop instead.  I want to see if I can get a much better crop during the spring or if the fall is where I should keep my kale and broccoli plants.

This week was the perfect time to get my spinach and kale into the garden and the weather is still cool enough that they should be able to provide some great leaves for consumption.  I still have my lettuce and broccoli growing in pots outside, but they are not quite ready for planting.  I still have some time before the hot weather comes around and ends the spring season.  I would say in less than a month I will be putting my lettuce into the garden.  

 

I still have seeds that need to be planted indoors including many flowers that include cosmos, statice, calendula, amaranthus, queen annes lace, and some more wildflowers.  I already have six containers of both dill and alyssum at the moment, but I need to start growing many of the other flowers that I need to support my garden and plants.  I will hopefully start getting them planted indoors and placing them under lights this week.

Getting Seeds to Sprout is Much Easier with Coconut Pellets Hopefully

 Using coconut pellets is what I have started to use this year to get my seeds to start sprouting quickly and easily.  Hopefully this will get my plants off to a very good start and will be much healthier when I start placing them in the garden.  Although that is very from far now since it is still cold to place anything outside just yet I want to make sure that they start out right.  Hopefully these pellets will prove to be a worthwhile investment.

Previously I had planted some alyssum, dill, and wildflowers seeds into large plastic containers and they have been sprouting quite.  I would say this year they have all sprouted more successfully than any other that I had planted these same flowers.  I usually plant them in between rows to attract the insects that are needed in the garden.  These particular flowers end up bringing some of the best insects that any gardener could ask for.

 I also have spinach, kale, and some lettuce that are doing pretty well in the cool cellar that I keep them in until the weather temperatures are a little bit warmer.  Right now the weather is still too cold to start placing these plants outside, but it won't be long until I start hardening them out and preparing them to be placed in the garden.  For now I am going to be keeping them inside underneath some cheap fluorescent lights until time is right for outside growing.  

 I still have many more seeds to plant, but for now I have just started with some summer crop seeds for an early start.  I still have to plant pumpkins, zucchini, carrots, and many other flowers too.  I like to plant flowers early as well which include amaranthus, cosmos, statice, calendula, queen Anne's lace, and much more which are also used for insect attracting.