I love how things change this time of year.  One day you’re harvesting your first radish of the season, the next week you’re pulling the rest of them out because they’ve decided to bolt.  While Andy will miss the radishes, it gave me space to sprinkle another patch of scallion seed.  I love having scallions on hand in the garden, and am looking forward to some getting large enough to use.

Here at the home garden, the beans and cucumbers are sprouting.

Here you can see bean sprouts in the bed right in front of us, and then as you look down the row at the next two boxes, you can see the lone row of cucumber sprouts.  Time is now ticking and I need to figure out what I want to do for a cucumber trellis this year.  I need to get the trellis up before I leave for ten days at the end of the month.

When I planted the cucumbers last week, I kept looking at the two packages of pickling cucumbers I had and wished I had the space to plant them.  I’ve been really pleased with the pickling cukes I get from the farmstand, but it sure would be nice to grow my own for a change.  I looked around, and found a corner to tuck them into.

See that wet line of dirt up there to the left?  Over which is placed a bright red trellis?  Yep, that’s where I’ve put a row of pickling cucumbers.  With that planting, I was utterly and completely out of space here at the home garden.

The tomatoes are doing very well here at home- there are blossoms on a few now, and I need to start making my plan for supporting them.  All the sudden I’m up against a deadline!  I don’t want to come home from our trip and find everything’s gone awry while I’m gone.

Oh!  Here’s the potato and bean patch.  It’s looking fabulous!

You can see some of the bean leaves along on the outside edges as the potatoes just get bigger and bigger in the middle.  We have a little bit of the compost pile left yet, and I plan to use that to bury the potato plants a little more.   This bed doesn’t have a fence, but my mom gave me a bag of dog hair that I plan to use as a natural bunny repellent.

Things have changed at The Sunset Garden as well.  I spent my morning over there with a hedge trimmers trimming away all the weeds around the edge of the garden.  I went back and forth on doing that, as it was mostly just clover and grasses, and I thought it might hide my plants from animals.  I decided to trim it all this once and see what happens.  I’m sure they’ll grow back, and I can decide if I want to trim again or leave things be.  For now, I am glad I took the time to do so, and it also enabled me to weed the onions very thoroughly.

Last week I did end up going to the garden center and picking up 12 heirloom tomatoes to replace the ones that had died.  I now have 65 tomato plants over there, and they all are looking great!

I noticed a few of the pole beans starting to just poke out, but no sign yet of the squash or watermelon.   When I was picking up the tomatoes last week, I was also enticed by celery, leeks, and a few more brussels sprout plants to replace a few that didn’t make it here.

I really had to get creative with the leeks, and now it’s safe to say there is no more room in this garden either!

As my plants are getting bigger in both gardens, it’s time for me to start thinking about mulching with some straw.  I have the straw, I’m just waiting on a little more growth before I use it.   Last night we enjoyed our first spinach and kale tossed with pasta, and over the weekend we discovered we liked collard greens as well, so we’re already enjoying the fruits of my labor.  Have to keep an eye on that spinach though, as it’s suddenly quite warm out, and it looks like it’s thinking about going to seed just as we’re finally enjoying it.