How about all that rain this week? I’ll be honest that excessive rain comes with its own problems in the garden, but I can’t complain too much yet. If we’re getting 3 inches of rain a week all summer…well…there are limits. That should help with the Cheney Reservoir though. We could only be so lucky in that case. We ended up with 3.3 inches yesterday, and we really saw the benefits of our drainage system, as we had no standing water in the garden at all.

Here’s the whole garden today. The main visible difference is the addition of the straw mulch, although there are many more changes when you get closer!

The sugar snap peas are continuing to produce just enough for a little snack when you walk through the garden. I guess that’s the point of the Snack Garden, right?

Do you remember that sesame that we had planted last year? Well, it’s back, and not on purpose. It was a nice enough plant and all, but we didn’t want it back. Not surprisingly, it dropped a lot of seeds in this garden last year. That’s something to keep in mind if you are going to plant some…

The parsnips, which were so slow getting started, have really taken off and are growing well, especially this variety, ‘Javelin.’

This eggplant, and a couple of the others, are already putting out buds. I haven’t seen any flowers yet, but I’m impressed with how well they are all doing compared to last year. I saw 3 or 4 cucumber beetles on the plants last weekend when I was here at the farmers market. I promptly got the neem oil/pyrethin spray out of the shed and hit all the eggplant with it. That’s a pretty low level organic spray, and I tried to spray directly on all the beetles I saw. You might think that spraying after seeing just a few insects is a trifle reactionary, but cucumber beetles were a HUGE problem last year and they are extremely destructive to younger plants. I’d rather spray once now than have to break out the heavy duty stuff in a few weeks.

Some of the garlic and shallots are leaning some after the storms the past couple days. We’ll have to keep and eye on them, but I suspect the wind and driving rain may have hastened the onset of harvest season for some of our plants.

The little bit of spinach that is left in one of the accessible gardens is fully gone to seed. Time to pull it out!

Let’s end on a happier note, shall we? We have tomatoes set! The Tiny Tim tomato that was planted in the Accessible garden has several tomatoes growing on it. I know that most of our other tomato plants have most likely set fruit this week, but the tomatoes are too small to see easily. By next Friday I bet we will have some more green tomatoes to show off!

Have a great weekend!