Late June and the garden is growing and bountiful!
Last year we made the switch to no-till growing. This means we've stopped using the tractor cultivator and the rototiller. Instead we are applying lots of compost and using landscape fabric for weedy patches. It has been exciting and very encouraging to make the switch. The soil is just so much healthier if we aren't tilling it. Healthier soil makes for healthier crops. And this spring's broccoli is beautiful. It is fun to go out to the garden when we are harvesting crops like this!
This week we are trellising cucumbers, planting a few beds (a pleasant lull in the planting action between spring planting and fall planting), mulching a few odds and ends, and trellising and pruning tomatoes. The pruning, trellising and mulching helps keep the crops healthy and producing and makes harvesting much easier for us. We'll probably be pruning and trellising well into August. The first tomato plants do already have fruits on them. With this hot weather, I'm curious to see when the first fruits will ripen.
The other big item on the to-do list is making hay. It was cut last Friday and is currently drying. Our neighbour will bale it and then we'll get it into the barn for the sheep in winter. What they don't eat (and what they do, actually) will become compost and that will feed the soil for future crops.
A few folks have requested a preview of the following week's potential share contents. So I will aim to include my best guess in future. Here we go for next week: Your shares may include savoy cabbage, green cabbage, kohlrabi, sugar snap peas, snow peas, green beans, lettuce, bok choy, mustard, mizuna, komatsuma, summer squash, beets, radicchio, and endive.
