June Garden

June started out continuing the drought of May, but in the last week, we’ve had over 3 inches of rain, and the garden is happy. Here are a few things going on out there.

I’ve got 17 sweet potato plants under black plastic. I’ve had great luck over the years with this method. I have had a vole problem for the last few years since we no longer have outdoor cats.  This year’s challenge is to keep the potatoes vole-free.

Here’s a Brandywine tomato and a whole bed of tomatoes. The plants are small, but they have bounced back from the sunscald they endured while still seedlings.

I’ve been hilling up the potatoes and removing the flowers.

I’ve got two beds of corn.  They need weeding, but are doing fine. The last storm blew some stalks over, but they righted themselves. I’ll put a little corral around the beds soon to hold up the stalks should another storm come through. The stalks don’t right themselves when they are bigger.

I’m letting a lot of cilantro go to seed. One plant produces hundreds of seeds.

The aronia berry is supposedly a “superfood”, extremely high in antioxidants. We harvest about a gallon later in the season. They make an excellent shake, with bananas and whatever.

I’ve got a lot of weeding to look forward to, but the garden is mostly planted, and the coming harvests will make the work worthwhile.