Saturday, June 6, 2009

Warm Weather Crops

Today was a lovely warm, sunny day and we made the transition to a summer garden. The cold frame was put away. The row covers came off and the electric fence was turned on. We staked up our sad 4 pea plants. And we transplanted tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and cucumbers into the garden. I planted 7 tomatoes: 2 Roma, 1 Yellow Brandywine, 1 Pink Tomato, 1 Green Zebra, 1 Sweet Chelsea Cherry, and 1 Mystery Heirloom. I planted peppers #1 and 4, which are the only two that sprouted. We put walls of water around all the peppers and tomatoes to help them with the cool climate. I put in 2 slicing cucumbers, and 9 pickling cucumbers. I covered these with row cover to protect them from cucumber beetles. We also seeded 18 of Blue Lake Bush Beans and 18 Romano Bush Beans.
We harvested a lot from the garden today. All the radishes came up and went into a salad for lunch with arugula that was going to seed and some spinach and freckles romaine.

For dinner we harvested the two squares of Broccoli Rabe.
Matt cooked it into Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe which was the recipe that led us the plant it in the first place. I planted on 4/27 so it matured pretty quickly. I read that it goes quickly once it starts to flower and since some of the flowers were beginning to open we decided it was time to eat it. I only had about 4 plants in a square. Next time I'll put it closer together. The roots didn't expand that much and so I could have had a lot more. I'll probably re-seed it and see how another batch does in the summer temperatures.
The kale is looking great, and we plan to harvest some for dinner later this week. I'm not sure how long the leaves will keep their unspoiled appearance now that the row cover is off. I can't cover just the kale because they are too close to the electric fence. I'll have to use BT if the cabbage moth caterpillars start attacking.

1 comment:

Dan said...

Your garden is really starting to grow. Everything looks great. The broccoli rabe has grown well, I have never tried it before. How does it taste? I am planting purple sprouting broccoli as a fall crop. Similar idea but more like broccoli with less leaves. It is reportedly very cold tolerant so we shall see.