Hello,
Your cucumbers probably have many male flowers. They come out one or two weeks before the female flowers to attract bees to the garden. The female flowers should be coming out soon. Female flowers are the ones with a little cucumber underneath, the male flowers without. We are now in the second crest of the cucumber beetle wave. You absolutely need to search for them and kill them every time you go into the garden. Now is the time when they are mating and unchecked they can reproduce very fast. Cucumber beetles usually hide inside the yellow cucumber or zucchini flower. Don’t be shy to sacrifice a flower to kill the bug inside. More flowers will grow.
Japanese beetles are a problem too this year. Try your best to keep them off of your plants as much as possible. The best organic fix is is to apply parasitic nematodes (available in most garden centres) in the next couple of weeks. This will drastically reduce their numbers next year. For this year, shake affected plants over a bucket of soapy water in the morning. Spraying with neem oil can help as well.
Your peppers are probably getting nice and big now, or will be soon. You can pick them while they are still green, if you prefer green peppers, but if you wait they will mature to red or orange depending on the variety. Same goes for the hot peppers.
If you are spraying for powdery mildew with 40% milk / 60% water or 1 tablespoon of baking soda to 1 gallon of water, it will stop the spread of the fungus, but will not remove it from the affected leaves. Eventually you can remove the affected leaves but be careful not to remove more than 30% of the leaves on the plant at once.
If you have garlic in your garden it will be ready soon. Once the leaves start to turn brown you can start harvesting at anytime. I suggest picking it as you need it, and leaving the rest to grow bigger.
The red cabbage seems to be taking quite a bit longer to head up. It should start to form a nice head in the next couple of weeks.
Your tomatoes are going to be ready soon. If the cherry tomato plants surpass the top of the trellis, you can either loop it back down the trellis, snip it off or let it grow…
Best,
Tereska Gesing