Garden journal - May 2020

May 2020 - From last evening in the garden after a rainstorm. A quick journaling of where we’re at near the end of May: The peas and lettuce have taken off, as have the potatoes. The tomatoes and cucumbers, which I started indoors by seed back in March, are hanging in there, waiting for their late summer debut. Some of the cucumbers are already flowering, which seems too early - did the transplanting stress them? Six ornamental pumpkin plants have sprouted, we’re currently harvesting radishes, succession sowing as we pick. In a few weeks, they’ll be replaced with the pepper plants we started by seed. The carrots are coming up strong, I’ll need to thin those soon, and all twelve bean plants have sprouted, with a thirteenth popping up in the potato patch. This year, I also added two acorn squash, two butternut squash, two spaghetti squash and two cantaloupe. The butternut squash did fantastic last year, but I’m new to the rest of it. Come August, it’s going to be a tight fit, hopefully not too tight. All eight blueberry bushes are flowering, not something I’m sure I should let them do, as we just planted them last fall, but I’m too excited to see them fruit, even just a little. We’re currently combatting a small amount of caterpillars on the four apple trees with regular applications of neem oil. All twenty raspberry shoots planted along that side fence took and are developing leaves and canes. Most of the cutting flower seedlings have so far survived their transplant from the potting shed and the seeds sown directly have started to pop. We did get some pretty heavy rains later last evening, so after my morning coffee I’ll be headed out to make sure everything is holding up okay. Happy Saturday.