June Garden Update

For the past couple of years we had an in-ground garden in our backyard, but it always managed to get overrun with weeds, and just generally be out of control. Most of that is my fault, as I didn’t take the time to properly maintain it. This year we decided to try something easier and put together two small raised beds on our patio. The patio gets a lot of sun, and the raised beds are easy to maintain.

In the first box we planted three different types of tomatoes, some spring onions, a few heads of garlic (I know, I know - super late to plant garlic), and some chives. The tomatoes are doing great, and the spring onions and chives are coming along nicely. The first garlic head was ready to harvest a few days ago and it made the smallest head of garlic I’ve ever seen. It’s drying out now, and I can’t wait to make a very small serving of garlic bread with it.

The smallest head of garlic I've ever seen.

Big tomato coming in strong

A cluster of cherry tomatoes starting to grow

Chives! I pluck one every morning and munch on it while I make my coffee.

We also have a strawberry plant that is going strong. We get to eat one or two fresh strawbs a day now, and they are delicious.

Wife holding strawberries and cherry tomatoes from the garden.

The first strawberry!

In our second box we planted snap peas (way too many), potatoes, lettuce, cilantro, and basil. The peas are growing like crazy. Everyday we harvest a handful and fry them up with some garlic and olive oil. The potatoes are doing well, but they are still small. I think we planted them a bit late, so we will see how they do. The lettuce is also growing super fast - I’ve gifted a few harvests to my parents and they love it.

The cilantro was a late addition - my mom had some she wasn’t going to eat so we just threw it in there. It’s doing well and I’ll probably put it in some salsa with the tomatoes next month. The basil is doing okay - all the basil suffered from blight early on but they are starting to recover.

Snap peas growing like crazy. We harvest a handful every day.

Potatoes are still small, but they are growing well.

Lettuce is growing super fast. I've gifted a few harvests to my parents.

We also planted a few blueberry bushes in the yard. Not much to report on them yet, as they are still small and only producing a few berries. I expect they will take a few years to really get going, but I’m excited to have them in the yard.

We also have plenty of bees in the yard, as per usual. Mostly we get eastern carpenter bees, but we also have a few honey bees and bumblebees. They are all busy pollinating the flowers and plants in the yard, and it’s great to see them buzzing around. The carpenter bees are super dumb and fly right into you, but they are harmless.

Western honey bee? Not sure, but we have a lot of them.