Decision Making

On the eve of the Summer Solstice this garden has never looked better!  There are several crops producing food today and the weeds are well under control.  Most significantly, I think I have made some good decisions and been willing to terminate some shaky plantings and re-plant while the season was still young.

To the left you can see a row of carrots and a row of spinach.  Both were originally planted on April 21 with very high mortality.  I took the decision to tear out these weedy rows and re-plant a month later (May 22).  Today these two rows look very strong.  Even more interesting, the new spinach looks almost the same as a couple of surviving plants from the April 21 plantings.

Filling in some spotty bean germination with lettuce.  I'm not happy with all my decisions to "fill in", but I hate to waste space in the garden.  To the far right is that strip of barley and red clover planted in early April.  The barley drowned out in all but the high spots, but the clover really took nicely.  I am curious to harvest the barley--it will be a first.  There were some weeds which I pulled out by hand.  I also gave up on my onion seen-saving experiment and tore them out with a potato fork.  Once that strip between the corn and barley is clean, I will probably put some cover in.

Potatoes are insanely strong!  The purple cherokee tomatoes look fantastic, and I have some OK pepper plants in that row as well.  The basil in the next row over is clean and coming up well.

Corn in the low field has been cleaned up nicely.  I still have not seen any of the re-planted stuff come up yet.

Never got a single radish out of the big field.  I gave up on them and tore them out yesterday and filled in with a giant tray of tomato seedlings that my brother in law Eric gave me.

There are a few beets of this size in the field now.  The row was mostly thinned but there is about 10' that I never really got to.

Peas began on Monday of this week.  I think they will be strong a reliable producers, but I have no idea for how long.  Today I picked maybe 2 pounds, and the field will probably produce at least a pound a day for awhile I'd say.  These are little marvel peas, an heirloom.