Summer is here!

It hit me from out of the blue, I went to Google around 7pm, Friday night when I noticed their "first day of summer" logo - wow, me of all people to not realize that the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, was here! I immediately went outside with my camera and used the light of the slow setting sun to get photos for this next entry.

May flowers? Some, but in the Northeast, JUNE FLOWERS dominate! Many wild flowers are still in bloom in the lawn (as seen in the June 9th entry), and many flowers can be seen in the garden as well. Yellow flowers from the Mustard Greens, Strawberries, German Giant Radishes -- and pictured below, the amazing light purple flowers from the giant Sakurajima Radishes!

On June 19th, I photographed my first ripe strawberry. These are from Guerney's, called "Whopper" for their large size. This is their 2nd season here, but I need to buy some bird netting if I expect to harvest enough for saving.

I've got a poultry fence up for the Oregon Sugar Peas to climb. Funny, the package reads that trellacing isn't necessary, but I disagree. It's much easier to weed them when they're trained on a fence, otherwise the runners will cling to the nearest weeds for support.

Many types of beans have been planted this year. This is a late bloomer of the Vermont Cranberrys. The 2nd photo is of a Charlevoux red kidney bean.

I'm nervous about my Iran Pumpkin. I was sent 6 seeds - only one made it! Now I have a small fence guarding the sole survivor. Apparently, the demand for the Iran Pumpkin shot up because of an article called;

"Three Phunky Pumpkins" - which appeared in Mother Earth News in the fall of 2007. In fact, that's how I first learned of this rare plant myself.

Nearby, I have Moon & Stars watermelons coming up. They already have yellow speckles on the leaves. I decided to plant another hill last weekend.

Lesson learned this year is to NOT start squash, pumpkins, melons & especially cuccumbers early. This isn't necessary because they only like to germinate and grow when temps begin to hit 80 degrees. The peat pots don't work well with them either.

After a shakey start, the purple cauliflower plants seem stable and strong - although, I lost six plants so far. I won't start them as early next season because they were very thin and curly at the base. I planted them as I would tomatoes by digging a small trench and laying them on their sides and burrying them up to the first leaves. Strange, but it seems to have worked.

Of all the 13 varieties of tomatoes planted this year, the Ildi (an early yellow grape tomato) has the most unusual leaves. They appear to be curled, making the plant look like it's dried-up, when in fact it's doing fine.

As of this week, I have 36 tomatoes staked with green bamboo (painted) stakes which I purchased locally

(6 packages of 6 bamboo for $1.89 ea.). I still need to dig out last year's bamboo stakes that I stored for the winter.

The weather has been kind to the gardens with rain no less than every other day. I had quite the scare though back on Monday, June 16th, when widespread hail dime to nickle-sized was falling for up to 10 minutes in both north & south counties. Luckily, no damage to anything seen here.

:)