Spring to Summer

We actually had some sunshine for me to work in today. I spent my morning trying to finish up the "conversion" of switching over the kitchen garden from Spring garden to Summer garden. I began the  morning by harvesting all of the "Blauschokker" purple podded peas and then pulled up the plants.

 I was then able to finish planting the tomato plants that I purchased two weeks ago. I thought that I had only bought four more plants but it turns out that I had five new plants! So one of them had to get planted away from the others on the left edge of the garden. Planted today, "Galina", "Valencia", "Fantastic VF", "Matina", and "Black Pear".

These are my original four grafted tomato plants. They have been in the ground for a few weeks now and are really starting to take off. The "Black Krim" on the far right has almost filled the first level of the cage system. It won't be too long before I will need to add the second tier to this group.

Friday my new cucumber trellis arrived from Gardener's Supply company. Just in time! I got it all set up in a snap and then transplanted my ten "Russian Pickling" starts at the base of the trellis. The plan is this summer they will slowly climb the trellis and the fruit will hang down through the squares. This will keep it clean and dry and will save much needed space.

Here's a close-up of my young plants. They have just produced their first true leaf. I am sure hoping that the birds will leave them alone until they get a bit bigger.

As July fast approaches, my garlic is looking great. The hardneck "Chesnook Red" leaves are starting to turn yellow, just like the books say they should!

And I was pleased to discover this week they have produced garlic scapes. I will let the scapes grow for maybe another week before cutting them off. I have found a recipe for garlic scape pesto that sounds delicious, so I want to give that a try with my scape harvest.

Here is a close-up of a garlic stalk. Many of the stalks are quite thick at the base. I am hoping that is a sign of a large bulb underneath.

My onion plants are also doing really well. Here's the half row of "Mars", the red storage onion.

The other half of the row is planted with "Frontier" a yellow storage onion. These plants are just a touch smaller than the "Mars" plants, so it will be interesting to compare the final bulb size of both.

Now that we have passed the Summer Solstice, the onion bulbs will begin to grow by leaps and bounds.

I have two more projects left to complete the Summer kitchen garden. I need to transplant my kale starts and I want to buy a few more morning glory. Right now my new tour has one huge volunteer morning glory plant at its base. As you can see its first two tendrils have wrapped on and are starting to climb. Last year I grew a variety here that had a mix of three colors, so it will be a surprise what color blooms I will have with this volunteer plant.