The Veggie Garden in June

So I fell off the map for a while. I wish I could say I was too busy in the garden to sit in front of a computer, but that was hardly the case. My garden is feeling very neglected. Between traveling, extreme hot weather, more traveling, and more extreme hot weather, I've spent very little time with my plants.

Speaking of hot weather, we just came off a hot streak of multiple consecutive 100+ days. While I'm not positive it was the longest 100+ streak I've endured, I am sure it was the longest I've ever seen in JUNE.

Despite all that, the veggies are growing. As expected, those peas didn't survive the hot spells. I pulled them out and sowed beans in there: romano and french filet.

Surprisingly, I still have greens. The lettuce never did much,

but at least it hasn't bolted. It did make a tasty salad the other night, and I think there's enough left for one or two more.

And there's still kale:

(I don't know why that uploaded sideways. Tilt your head, or the screen, if you don't mind)

I made more kale chips tonight. A crowded cookie-sheet worth, and I ate them all in one sitting. No, that's not right - I don't think I ever made it to sitting.

Last year I planted some garlic but never got around to harvesting it. So this year the bulb's cloves sprouted, grew, and formed new bulbs. Kinda looks like and exploded garlic bulb:

These were not the scape-producing garlic. Instead, some have made bulbils partly up the stem:

The other (this year's) garlic isn't quite ready yet.

Last year I also tried red onions from seed. I wasn't very successful, partly because I planted them in some very hard clay soil. I dug up and ate the best bulbs (by best I mean 1-1/2 inches in diameter!) last year, and left some in the ground. I have no idea whether second-year onions are any good, but I figured it would be kind of like planting onion sets, right?

This year the tops grew very large, and flowered:

I didn't know if onions were like garlic where the flower stalks should be cut off, so I cut some and left others. Today I dug up one whose flower bud I had previously cut:

It looked nice from the top, but once I dug it up I saw that it was flat on the bottom. I guess that clay didn't get any softer over the past year.

The summer veggies are on their way. I planted 10 tomatoes and 7 peppers:

(photo from three weeks ago)

There are flowers on some of the peppers and the tomatoes:

Across the garden, the cucumbers and squash are flowering, too:

(another sideways picture! sorry.)

Nothing much to report on the fruit front. There was a blackberry ready yesterday. I decided it was going to be my treat after planting the beans, but then I forgot it. It was missing today. Oh, well, there are many more to come. I never built cages for the strawberries, so they are feeding the wildlife. I'm ok with that - they were mostly for groundcover. I'm not even going to mention the plums and blueberries.

Tomorrow Next Up: flowers!