Beets and Peas

We've been enjoying lots of food from our garden so far this spring and summer. Lettuce, spinach, green onions, snow peas, sweet peas, and beets to name a few. We've already harvested 5 gallons of snow peas, 13 gallons of beets, 8 cups of sweet peas.

We still have a couple gallons of beets to harvest. Depending on the amount of rain we get hopefully they will be done in a week or shortly thereafter so we can replant that plot. We pulled up all the snow pea plants this week and will be preparing those beds for more rutabaga's and beets for winter feed for the animals. We also will be planting more beans, lettuce, and spinach soon.

Our back garden plot didn't get fully planted because of all the rocks. We did get some squash in and a nice section of sweet corn. We also put some potato boxes in the back garden which will allow us to add some nice topsoil once the potato boxes are broken down in the fall.

The tomatoes are flowering and forming nicely, I hope to eat our first cherry tomatoes this week. The green, purple and yellow beans are all flowering. The rutabaga's are about as big as softballs and will be harvested soon. Our strawberries did well and are sending out lots of new shoots. This week our big projects will be do replant the beds that have been harvested along with weeding and redirecting in the strawberry bed. I want to guide the little offshoots to stay close to the current rows. We also need to put about 4 inches of straw around the base of the potato plants before the potatoes start peeking through the surface.

We've not been getting enough rain so we will continue to try to water a couple sections of the garden each night. It takes me about 4 evenings of 8 hour waterings to get the equivalency of a 1/2 inch of rain on the plants. The plants seem to be doing well, however I was shocked to see how a nice nitrogen filled rain that we received last night perked up the plants more than all my well water has. Some of the plants seemed to double in size after last nights rain.