Battening down the vegetable garden

This is NOT a good time to be leaving my vegetable beds for a couple of weeks, even if it'll be a glorious time to be visiting gardens in Toronto during the Garden Blogger's Fling.

The sugar snap peas have just started to produce (amazing for late May).  I've underplanted them with beans, which have emerged quite nicely, but they'll really need the gardener's hands to be trained up the trellises.  I've harvested all of the young perennial leeks of any size, leaving more than enough to spread around when I get back.

I'd like to sow squash seeds now, too, but am worried about enough moisture supporting them while we're gone....so I'm going to wait.  It's been so cool this spring, it hasn't really been good planting weather before now.  The tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are in place and growing well, so that's good.

The tiny basil seedlings in flats that have just emerged... hmm, what was I thinking?  Time enough to sow another round when we return. They're on their own.

Yes, we have folks keeping tabs on the house and indoor plants, and a friend will water, too, when she's in town on market day,  but the swapping of cool season to warm season is not so easy.

I harvested all of the "outside" lettuce and kale leaves today, and all of the turnip greens, along with the sugar snap peas that have matured so far. The greens and peas were a lovely addition to our dinner this evening, eaten at home after a number of days eating out, with guests, programs, etc. and before a couple of weeks of the same ahead.

Welsh onions from a couple of years ago

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Harvesting vegetables

It's amazing how small gardens can be productive.  I feel like I don't have very much space in my raised beds in the mountains, but coming back for the weekend, I harvested LOTS of beans, ripe peppers, and squash.  This after harvesting everything last weekend, including all the small beans and squash. The tromboncino and Tatume squash and the remainder of the tomatillos and tomatoes will be edited this weekend -- the squash leaves are suffering from mildew. I'm going to leave the butternut squash to mature -- that's fun. Never had any of those before!

All of the cool-season fall greens and root crops that I sowed earlier are looking great, and popping up much faster than they do in the low soil and air temperatures of spring.  The beds were dry, but I gave them a good soaking this afternoon.

I just finished 'putting up' everything that I harvested last week yesterday evening.  So there's a second round waiting for me, too.  At least the tomatoes are largely finished!

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Cleaning up

I spent quite a bit of time today cleaning up the raised beds in the mountains today. This meant editing some tomatoes that were not producing very much, along with some squash plants.

I'll add some mushroom compost and organic fertilizer over the weekend, and sow more fall greens and lettuce!

Uh, having two vegetable gardens is way too tempting.  How can I resist replanting?

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Pizza peppers...

I love thick-walled and productive pizza peppers.  One source is Territorial Seed, where they describe them as hot, but I haven't found them to be hot at all.  They're juicy and delicious. Totally Tomatoes may offer the same variety, hard to know.

And they're certainly the most substantial peppers that I've ever grown (in terms of being as close to as thick-walled as greenhouse peppers).

'Pizza' peppers

Here's an image of a couple of peppers from the garden (one from the Piedmont, one from the mountains). The larger one is from a well-watered mountain container, the smaller was on its own.

I left the edge of the lime in the photo for a size perspective.  They're not big, but delicious and the plants are productive!

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