Adjusting to summer weather

Organic Garden

Time to start your harvest

Now that summer weather is upon us, you can remove your floating row cover if you haven’t already and let the sun in. Fold it up and store it. You will need it a couple more times this season to protect the cucumbers and to extend the season into the late fall.

Make sure to water your garden regularly and deeply. A quick watering encourages your plant roots to grow upwards to reach the water and makes your plants stressed and vulnerable. A deep (20 min at least) watering promotes downward root growth for strong and healthy plants. Check your soil every day to make sure it is moist. If watering regularly is an issue, something simple like a drip hose, or sprinkler on a timerhelps a lot.

Slug hunting! Make sure to keep the area around your garden clean. Be proactive and look for slugs under rocks or wood and get rid of them right away. 1 slug can lay 4000 eggs in a single season. Talk about population explosion!

Because of the cold wet spring, the bok choy, rapini and roquette are going to flower right away with the sudden warm weather. Simply remove the flowers and the plant will keep growing.

Your seeds should have started sprouting. Radishes and peas plant about 7-10 days after planting, beets and carrots take quite a bit longer – up to 3 weeks! Once your seeds have sprouted it is important that you thin the extra seedlings so that you have just one seedling per space allotted. Each radish or carrot needs 2″ of space around it, peas and beets need about 3″.

Check out my video for more instructions.

You can start harvesting some of your vegetables almost right away. You can use onion greens as you would chives – simply cut off a couple of inches from each plant and add to a salad or pasta. If you had garlic planted last fall, you can start harvesting the greens in the same way.

Head outside with your salad bowl and remove the larger outer leaves from lettuces, spinach, bok choy, kale and chard for a lovely mixed green salad.

You can cut the entire bok choy just above the ground to let the entire thing grow again.

A lovely recipe for sourdough pizza with garlic greens and asparagus. Yum!

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