Blueberry Harvest is Done!

Yay! The end of the blueberry season hit, and I can get back to my garden.  It's long, hot, and hard work out on the field, and many nights I got home after dark - the days I didn't I spent with the kids, who miss their Papa this time of the year.

One thing I do like about this garden is that I'm able to leave it alone and get on with things that need doing, and it chugs along without micromanagement.
It doesn't do spectacularly, but it doesn't die over a week if I'm not here.  The second planting of beans has grown in my absence, and the summer rains have brought it to bud pretty fast. I'm looking forward to beans being back on the menu in a week or so.
The other summer plants I put in on the 1st are starting to peek up, although the heavy rains of summer may have washed a couple of things out.  Between the young kale and a few other things, the month of 'wait' wasn't spent in garden famine. Next year I'll fine tune my planting a little more to hopefully afford more overlap into this time of the year.

 Now is the time when your long-grow spring plants (tomatoes, peppers, etc) come in and you compliment them with the fast grow plants of the summer (lettuce,spinache).  With a little more experience (and room) I hope to be hitting this time of year with summer salads at my fingertips.

My 3 little toms have been putting out a few fruits, and I've already tasted one. It's such a shame I probably won't get this variety again. The insides had thick walls and were juicy - ideal for slicing and putting on a summer sandwich.   Still, a few of these go quite a ways when used like that - so I should be having juicy ham and tomato sandwiches for lunch for a few weeks - when I finish the oft-halted spring clean of the kitchen I'll compliment that with home baked bread (and later lettuce).

Not the best of photos - but the largest of the broccoli put out some florets.  Not many, but enough to steam and have with my lunch tomorrow. This one budded early and looked like it might start flowering early - so waste not, want not.
  I'm looking forward to a taste of this.
Other plants are doing ok, with one other starting to put out.  This area of the garden was troublesome in the Autumn, but the broccoli here loved the rain and the partial shade.
Next year I'll plant this out entirely with broccoli and cabbage.

Speaking of cabbage - despite some sun burn and a couple of critters having a nom - these are starting to form up into the familiar 'ball' - along side them the others I planted 'staggered' are coming along, but time will tell if they take off.
Some carrots are in front of these, but they're not liking this area of the garden so much - still this is about experimenting and finding out the best places for various plants.  I'll continue to try new things and optimize the layout.

In the germination pots I put down some Bib Lettuce, alongside it is some Black Seeded Simpson that I had planted earlier.  These will be transplanted into the garden proper - hopefully I'll have this on the plate before the end of the month, when my Salad Bowl variety goes in.

I also planted out some Bib into one of the squares - just to compare. But the germination was slower, and some birds decided to pluck at the seedlings - for some reason they leave the germination pots alone.

Peppers are looking great. Not an abundance, but certainly the same amount I'd buy at the store if I had to.  They are big and juicy - and I could put cling wrap around them and put them on a shelf with the best the grocery store had to offer.
Now that I'm back in the swing and getting back on schedule, the application of some worm tea to these will make them start popping.

The herb garden is going very well - I'll have to trim back the basil and do some drying - I have more than  I could need.  The dill is growing nicely as well, and enough parsley that I will empty out the containers I have on the back porch in August and use them to plant something else.
The two Cilantro that made it are up and going to seed - this isn't a bad thing. Cilantro/Coreander (as I grew up calling it) is rather versatile. The leaf is used a lot in Mexican foods, but the seed is what you'll find used in the U.K. and in Australia more often.  The hard seeds are stored in a glass jar, and you grind them in a pestle before use.  This twin-usage is something I like - if I had more tomatoes earlier I'd have made fresh salsa, but instead I have an all purpose spice that I can keep forever.
On the herb front I have 4 bags of basil leaves I will need to check in the drying room - about $25 worth of dried herbs there, more than likely $100 worth if it were used fresh.  Trimming these back again I expect a similar quantity to dry.  A good thing as it's wife's go-to herb in the kitchen.

OH NOES!  No, it's not a disaster on the 4x4 raised bed. It was cleared and replanted.  If you click on the image to go full sized you'll see carrots (staggered planting with a weeks break between them) and brussels sprouts pushing up near the back. At the very back are the last of the kale seedings and some broccoli I needed to put out. I'll be comparing this extremely sunny bed to my partial shade. A tomato was put back there as well, but I fear the heavy rains may have washed it out.
The middle row is being left clean for August.
August is the month when it seems most of your summer planting comes in, and I'm going to be needing space for them - many of my faves like beets are August plants.

Not all is roses though. My cherry tomatoes are in limbo, not dying, not growing, and not flowering - I may move them and see what happens. The big disappointment was the squash. Just when they started getting some nice sized squash, the heavy rains and winds put some kind of rot on them (not the usual fuzzy rot that hits the squash itself when the ground is too wet or dry) - it went into the plants themselves and made them brittle, snapping in the wind.
The butternut started to get it on it's vine so I cut it back and gave it a dose of fertilizer and it popped back to life.  I'll see if it manages to make a comeback over this summer.  Live and learn. I'll be putting in a dedicated squash and corn patch near the driveway next year and see how that goes.

The harvest today.  It's not a cornucopia, but all good tasty summer veg. Enough tomatoes and peppers to see me through a week or so, a taste of ultra fresh broccoli, and a couple of cherry toms to put on the side of a plate - to pop in the mouth to cleanse the palette.  Around these parts you're probably looking at $6-8 dollars that I don't have to spend, and that to me is the taste of victory.

Cheers - See you at the end of the week, and happy gardening!