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It appears that I left our melon and squash seedlings over our soil heating mat a day too long. All of the pots have germinated, but the plants are a bit tall. Getting the plants off the heat mat and from under the somewhat clear humidome would have prevented the legginess. We got a rather light picking of peas this morning. That made me think to bring in our Eclipse pea seed. Eclipses are a supersweet variety that don't germinate well in cool soil. But the peas stay sweet when grown in warm weather.
We didn’t get all that many peas in this morning’s picking. But with some previously picked and shelled peas, it was enough to freeze a pint of our early peas. It was time to empty out our Pyrex container of shelled peas, as some of them may have been there for several days. I haven’t found a good way to rotate the peas in it. Blocked from gardening in our beds, I weeded one side of the patches on either side of our front steps. There were more hostas in the one side than I remember planting. Several of them will need to be moved to where they'll receive more light. When my knees and calves said to stop weeding on my hands and knees, I did. It's cool to begin freezing produce from our garden. When I put the peas in our big freezer, I had to move several bags of frozen asparagus out of the way. Supper tonight will be grilled pork chops, baked potatoes, and the next to our last bag of frozen corn from last season.
Something not normal is the dearth of white egrets on the Turtle Creek Reservoir. The water there is usually lousy with the birds, but I haven't seen even one so far this season. I did see a Blue Heron yesterday when driving across the causeway of the reservoir. The oregano in our herb bed is doing its usual trick of trying to take over the bed, if not the world. I sort of let it go, and it's now in bloom. For best flavor, one wants to harvest oregano before it blooms. So, it was time today to cut it back.
Our how-to: Another Garden Delicacy: Homegrown Peas I brought in last year's Japanese Long Pickling cucumber saved seed today and started two deep sixpack inserts of the variety. JLPs, as we call them, produce long thin cucumbers. They're ideal for making bread and butter or dill pickle slices. We also use them to make some incredible sweet pickle relish. The JLP plants will replace our tall early peas when the pea vines play out. Feature story: A Cucumber of Distinction This evening in a light sprinkle, I moved three Cora Cascade vincas into a large hanging basket pot. This is the second such pot I've started. With it, I will pretty well fill our main hooks under our back porch. I'm going to need to hang a second hummingbird feeder from our back porch tomorrow. The tiny birds just about emptied a twelve ounce feeder in one day. This usually happens a little later in the season, but we seem to have some thirsty birds this year. While I watched the Pacers/Thunder game last night, I started some melons and squash. For watermelon, I seeded Ali Baba, Blacktail Mountain, Crimson Sweet Virginia Select, and Kalahari triploid. For cantaloupe, it was Athena and Sugar Cube. The squash started was a Slick Pik. Other than the Kalahari, all of the varieties planted are old favorites that have done well in the past for us. Triploid watermelon varieties come and go. Our previous favorite is no longer available, so we're trying a new one. Things are still really wet out from our recent rains, with more coming tonight and tomorrow. I did get out this morning and picked enough peas to justify shelling them. They shelled out for enough for supper and possibly enough more to freeze a pint. Every picture tells a story, don't it. While the Rod Stewart classic song doesn't have anything to do with gardening, the song title came to mind as I looked at our main raised garden bed with standing water in it.
After emptying the rain gauge, I was in for a couple of pleasant surprises. There were a lot of mature pea pods to pick. There's probably not enough there to yet make a meal, but it's a start. Besides the peas, each of our Moira tomato plants had put on a small tomato. Based on a Google AI search, we should be picking tomatoes by early July.
With any serious outside work out of the question, I sterilized some more potting soil to start some cucumbers, melons, and squash. UP TO 30% OFF Select Ryobi® Power Tool Kits (Sale ends June 15)
Marking the rows, shoveling a furrow down each row, watering with a mix of Serenade biofungicide and Quick Start fertilizer, and spacing the potato sets about a foot apart and covering them with soil took an hour or so. I beat the rain by an hour. The potato sets went in about three inches deep, about two inches shallower than is usually recommended. The long eyes on some of the sets got totally covered, so we'll see how that works out. As I don't have a how-to on growing potatoes, as I'm not very good at it, I'll give you a link to a Seed Savers article on the subject. I started some more gloxinias from seed yesterday. I also transplanted a Cora Cascade Vinca into a small hanging basket and three more in a large hanging basket. Spend $49, Get a $20 e-gift card off your first Chewy Purchase with code WELCOME (Ends 6/15/2025)
My big gardening treat for yesterday was finding our first ripe pod of peas. There was just one pod ready to be picked, and I didn't find any more this morning. Realizing that I'm going to want to start using last year's compost pile, I started a new one yesterday. The new pile is at the east edge of the field, just outside our East Garden plot. When doing so, I pulled a bunch of volunteer tomato plants from the old pile. They could carry disease that might infect the tomato plants I want to put in the East Garden plot.
And looking ahead, I have lots of healthy lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower transplants under our cold frame ready to go into our main raised bed. And there's a bag of seed potatoes in the basement that I need to rescue from a mesh bag. I'll have to sacrifice the bag to not harm the sprouts the potatoes have put out. Later I got out and direct seeded a double row of carrots and beets. The carrot varieties seeded were Mokum, Napoli, Naval, Scarlet Nantes, and Yaya. The beets were Red Ace and Burpee Golden. I haven't grown golden beets for years, so this planting should be interesting.
Later The green bean casserole with some "improvements" wasn't all that great. I'll stay with the tried and true Campbell's recipe next time around.
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