Vegetable garden tour #2

About 3 weeks ago, I took you on a tour of my vegetable garden. Now that we’re at the end of June, I thought you might like to see how it’s coming along. Here is the “official” vegetable garden tour #2!

I wanted to make a correction on something I said in my video. When I talked about the ‘Sugar Magnolia’ purple-pod sugar-snap peas, I meant to say it was developed by Alan Kapuler. (I said John). Whoops! My apologies for the error.

How is the garden doing?

For the most part, everything is growing well. There have been a few hiccups along the way, though. This includes poor carrot and spinach seed germination. Pillbugs have been munching on the stems of my melon and cucumber seedlings. And we’ve had crazy temperature fluctuations. Despite all this, I never cease to be amazed by how most of the plants overcome challenges!

I still have 4 beds covered and they’ll remain covered for the rest of the season. The lettuce bed has bird netting over it to keep nibbling birds at bay. The cabbage bed has bridal veil fabric over it to keep cabbage butterflies from laying eggs on the leaves. And there’s floating row cover over crops that can have insect problems. These include kale and mizuna, to keep cabbage butterflies away. For the Swiss chard and beets, I’m preventing leaf miner adults from lay eggs on the leaves.

Otherwise, everything else is uncovered and plants that required thinning (i.e., carrots and parsnips) are good to go.

What are some of the milestones in the garden at this point? The young ‘Tuscan Napoli’ melons (see photo at top), small tomatoes and little zucchinis stand out. The photo to the left is of the ‘Sugar Magnolia’ pea I mentioned in this video. It’s the first purple sugar-snap pea, developed by Alan Kapuler. They are crunchy and delicious!

Stay tuned for the next video update. I hope you’re enjoying them so far and don’t hesitate to ask questions about what you’re seeing. Just drop me a note at Susan@susansinthegarden.com. Happy gardening!