Rain, rain, go away!

Well, we have entered week number two of steady rainy/cloudy days. The garden is thriving with the cool and wet weather, but much of what needs to be done cannot be until we get some steady dry days.

The lettuces are growing beautifully! Each week we harvest several pounds of each variety to take to market. Whatever doesn't sell goes into our store for our daily customers for the next week. (And of course, to our families!)

Our radishes have come and gone. What remains in the garden now is too hot or woody to be consumed, so we are letting them go to flower. They not only attract beneficial insects, but the blooms give way to edible seed pods. In about a month, we will have a second harvest of radish pods that (in my opinion) are much tastier than the radishes themselves. Hopefully those will sell well at market!

Our early planted spinach has gone to seed. The rest is ready to be harvested and sold for likely the final few times in the coming weeks.

On the vine, our peas are flowering and setting pods quickly and efficiently. We have several types of snap peas and shelling peas. The snap peas are ready to go; the shelling peas are almost there. We had a good germination from Wando, but Progress No. 9 was really hit and miss. Our Golden Pod peas are doing amazing. The Sugar Snaps are by far the tastiest.

The Bright Lights swiss chard continues to grow and provide lovely color to our market offerings, as well as salad toppers. We were very confused for the longest time, however. Both Rita and I thought that the swiss chard were beets and that the beet greens were swiss chard. We had logged the wrong seeds in our garden chart and so it took until some beets started forming under the "swiss chard" and the "beets" continued to have no root to speak of that we realized our mistake. Having never grown swiss chard before, I just assumed the bright leaf colors were due to the intense red that beets naturally posess. Ha.

We have corn popping up in rows and winter squash planted in between. The plan is to have the sprawling vines offer a ground cover between the corn plants and rows. The broccoli and cabbage have mostly been planted and grow daily.

The summer squash is ailing from cucumber beetles already so we are trying a new spray to repel them: tea tree oil diluted in water. So far we've seen some success. We will keep trying this spray to see the long term effects. Having rain all the time sort of delays our observation.

Finally, we have gotten the rest of our started plants from Tracy. Eggplant, melon, celery, peppers and tomatoes. They sit patiently on our patio, waiting for some sunny days to introduce them into the garden for good.