Bean, beans the musical fruit…

…or more specifically peas really.

The garden is doing pretty well this year.  Last year I didn’t plant enough cold weather vegetables and this year has been unseasonable warm so I didn’t plant enough warm weather vegetables.  Mother nature is a trickster.

The variety of Sugar Snap Peas I planted are extremely tall.  It’s a good thing I learned from last year and over built the trellis because they’ve climbed 6 feet and beyond at this point.  The plants are heavily loaded with peas and blooms now.  I foresee a lot of peas in our near future.

The radishes keep going to seed rather than actually creating radishes and I’ve heard radish seeds are tasty too so I’ve debated letting them.  The mustard greens bolt pretty quickly so they went to seed before we ate much of them.  I’m letting them go to seed so I can collect the seeds also though.  The lettuces have all been hanging in there.  We haven’t harvested very many, but the few we have are on their second growing at this point.  The cauliflower, kale, brussel

Squash blossoms

sprouts, and beets are still growing but quite slowly.  I don’t know if the heat has just been too much for them, but I haven’t given up on them yet.  We did lose this year’s blueberries to the heat.  The vegetable garden is on a timer to ensure it gets water but the blueberries are elsewhere and didn’t get enough water.  We purchased a couple squash starters when I didn’t get seeds started in time and they are doing pretty well.  The variety doing the best is the “eight ball” which we’ve already harvested two zukes from.  I have to resist the urge to pull all the squash blossoms off the plants and stuff/fry them though.   I could have planted things more densely again this year and I thought I had over last year but I still see lots of room to plant.  I did make one rather silly mistake with my beans this year.  I planted a variety I *thought* were pole beans and it turned out they were bush beans.  Fortunately they seem to be pretty forgiving and are still putting on beans despite that they are rather crowded and have silly strings hanging above them.

In the front containers I have all my full sun plants and they are all doing fabulously well with the drip system we put in place (and is also on a timer).  I have lots of green tomatoes (both small and full size) and the herbs are flourishing.  The pepper plants are doing well, although I had to replant a couple the slugs demolished.

In the wild plants we had quite a showing of the alpine strawberries and even had enough to pick a small bowlful for strawberry shortcake.  I don’t know if they are liking all the sun we’ve had or the fact that Bengt didn’t mow the hill side they are on.  They seem to flourish the most where they are nestled in the tall grasses.  The salmonberries are mostly done at this point and the thimbleberries are just starting to heat their peak.  We seem to have two varieties of blackberries and the earlier, smaller variety is starting to ripen.

Currently in the garden:

Head and Leaf Lettuce*, Brussel Sprouts, Red  Beets, Radishes*, Carrots, Walla Walla Onions, Cauliflower, Sugar Snap Peas*, Shelling Peas*, Green Beans, Kale, Potatoes, Zucchinis, and Cucumbers.

Currently in the container garden:

Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant, Fennel*, Sage*, Orange Mint*, Basil, and Dill*.

Currently running wild:
Alpine Strawberries, Thimbleberries*, and Blackberries.

* Things we are currently harvesting.