Giving tomatoes, peppers, eggplants & co. what they need.
Now that your summer veggies are in the garden you need to care for them properly so they grow. Each plant in your garden needs sun, space, water and nutrients. We took care of the nutrients, adding worm castings and natural fertilizers to your whole garden.
To keep as many greens as possible in your garden, we only pulled a portion of the spring plants. In order for your plants to live and grow well together all the new plants need to have a clear area around them so that they can get enough sun and space.
To give your new plants enough sun, you need to harvest, harvest, harvest all the time. Pull out the rest of your radishes as soon as possible – they wont get any bigger. Keep cutting the larger kale and chard leaves so they don’t cast shade on the rest of your garden. Remove entire spinach and oak leaf lettuce plants as you need them.
The clear space around your new summer plants is crucial. If they are too crowded they wont grow. The tomatoes are planted in front of the snow peas while they are small. As the tomatoes get bigger, the snow peas will mature. I will eventually ask you to pull out the snow peas to attach the tomatoes to the trellis around mid-July.
Keep an eye out for slugs. I’ve found a couple of huge ones on my oak leaf lettuce. My Swiss chard and spinach are starting to show slug damage as well. It looks like paler patches on the leaves. You can just cut these parts off and eat the undamaged areas.
What to do with all those greens you are harvesting?
Spinach and garlic green soup
Kale chips, a great snack!
Mango radish salad
and for the kids – Ninja Turtle smoothies