"So, plant a cabbage, get a cabbage, not a sauerkraut!"

It has been raining in abundance this month.  The weather kept us out of the gardens part of the time, and Cabaret performances kept us out the rest!  It was wonderful to get outside to play in the dirt a little bit today.  It rained pretty good yesterday, so it was a little less-than-ideal soil conditions, but we still weeded most of the new retaining wall bed and finished it off with green and purple cabbages, a new Chinese 5-color pepper (courtesy of Grahm & Gayle!), some lobelia and petunias, a lemon thyme, a wormwood, some pretty red geraniums, more chard, and more nasturtiums.

The weeds have really gotten away from us.  My plan this week and weekend is to get everything weeded and healthy again.  Most urgent: the front bed and the garage bed.  The vegetable gardens also need weeded, but they're not in quite as bad of a situation.  Also, in the photo above, you can see the area by the lamppost is not finished yet.  I also want to get in there, amend that soil, and get our acid bed started, so we can plant our rhododendron and blueberries.

 

Also this weekend, we shelled our first large harvest of peas, sauteed some of the dwarf curly kale (thicker and chewier than the Red Russian), picked another few beets, and sent some friends home with salad greens.  I want to get out to the pea patch again before we do freezing to make sure we got all the available pods.

"Just because it's June, June, June!"

After last week's multiple days of rain, it was nice to spend Sunday outdoors, finally getting back into the garden to do some work.  Britt had come to visit from Indiana, and by the time she left to get back on the road it was after noon, although it was still pleasantly cool for working outside.  There were TONS of gnats and bugs from all that wetness, though.

We noticed that our marigolds in the garden were in very sad shape.  I don't know what we did to kill them, but they were not just stressed from the heat -- they were dead!  We found some volunteer marigolds and replanted them in areas where our bought plants had died back.

The rabbits had gotten another of our bell pepper plants, but fortunately, mom & dad dropped by with a couple of orange bells for us, so that was a quick and easy replacement.

Tasks accomplished:

• Replaced some marigolds
• Replaced bell pepper plant
• Planted cherry tomato seedlings in the obelisk in the garage garden
• Planted replacement nasturtium along the front retaining wall
• Planted muskmelon seeds
• Moved and planted short zinnias around the tiered garden and the raised beds
• Anna planted sunflowers in her garden, and trimmed up the lamb's ear
• Pulled back grass and laid down cocoa mulch and straw around raised beds
• Prepared potato box and planted some potatoes, then put hosta around it
• Put in pea sticks for the garden peas and sugar snap peas to climb
• Burned all the branches and sticks from last week's crazy storms
• Trimmed back some of the wildly-growing perennial flowers
• Weeded (mostly) the garage garden again

Needless to say, I'm moving a little slowly today.  That was a busy Sunday!  Now we're into a week of Cabaret rehearsals, but I'm hoping to take some time off work tomorrow afternoon to finish cleaning up the garage garden and put in the green beans, brussel sprouts, herb plants, and whatever other miscellaneous plantings we need to take care of!