Another overcast morning. More rain on the way. As you can see, most of the garden is simply existing, rather than thriving.
Corn - should be "knee high by the fourth of July." Well, here it is, just to the left of this five foot pole. It's still not quite knee high, and it's well past the 4th.
Pole beans - last year at this time they were pushing six feet tall. Most are barely three feet this year, if that. This variety is blue coco, and it is the only one in my garden that is actually becoming tall.
The onions are actually looking very good this year. These are walla-wallas, and they are almost the size of baseballs already!
Peas are starting to come right along now. These are the prized Blue Podded Peas, which date back to the 16th century! A lot of blue (or purple) veg are popular now (peas, beans, potatoes, carrots), and you'd think they were all new varieties, but in truth many of these blue veg are very old varieties.
Sunflowers and borage. This is supposed to be a bed of cucumbers. Guess what didn't grow. The borage is doing great, but these giant sunflowers are supposed to be 6-12' tall, like last year. But no, this year they are maybe 5' tall.
Here's a close-up of the borage flower. Borage is edible and makes a colorful addition to your salads.
Sweet Annie, a member of the artemisia family, is a good companion plant for many garden veg. It will reseed vigorously, so be warned.
The black hollyhocks have flowers this year (they were planted last year). No flower is truly black, but these are close!
Verbascum...lovely...and up close so very colorful! This year, however, it has popped up all over the garden! Hm...another "vigorous grower."
Bush beans and potatoes. I only had three beds left for potatoes and beans, but I had more potatoes than I thought, so I had to tuck them in anywhere there was room. Combine this with all the volunteer potatoes from 2008 and even 2007, and I will be over run with spuds this year! I really must work out a better storage system for them, because they sprout before I get to eat them all!
Cukes and sunflowers. At least I think those are cukes. Not too many squash family seeds sprouted this year, so I kept adding miscellaneous seeds to the beds to the point where I'm not sure what is sprouting where!
Garlic. The garlic is growing very well. I snapped off the scapes this last week - they were lovely with their curlicue shapes. Bagged several up to give to friends, but no one seemed to want them. I think one needs to be in an up-scale urbanesque area to find a market for scapes. (Yes, those are potatoes with the garlic...leftovers from 2008.)
Carrots. I have six or seven carrot patches squeezed between the onion patches. This last weekend I divvied up several of the carrot clumps, moving them into areas where carrot seeds didn't sprout. Looks like I may need to move some more. The sunshine and rain from the last couple of days made many of the carrot tops just shoot up. My goal is long carrots this year, not hundreds of midget carrots. Hopefully the transplanting will help with that.
Pumpkins. I had to dig into the remains of the manure pile to get enough in one spot to plant the pumpkins this year, but there seems to be enough "juice" left for them to do well (so far). All we need now is some sunshine!
Broccoli and cauliflower. Yes, they are there under that row cover by the crabapple tree. I haven't peeked under since I planted them...don't want to be discouraged. This year I'm thinking of leaving the row cover in place as a foil for the cabbage whites and their larvae.
Peas. Lots of peas and they've started to flower. None are terribly tall, though. Maybe some are just short varieties, but I suspect the lack of sunshine has also stunted their growth.
