Sunday, June 11, 2006

Week 9: 10 June -- Slow but steady progress

It's amazing how much happens during the week between my weekends upstate. Both lettuce beds are doing well. The herbs found their way into two dishes this weekend (a parsley and tarragon frittata and roasted peppers with buffala mozzarella and basil). Peas have climbed about 16 inches up the trellis but I have yet to see a pod form which means I'm still weeks away from any harvest. On the way back today we drove by the garden at the restaurant Aubergine near my house, their peas are much taller and fuller than mine. I'm slightly concerned.

The first big story are my zucchinis which have now flowered. I'm pretty sure that's a good thing and not a sign that the plants have bolted (it's not nearly been warm enough for that). I know that zucchini flowers are a delicacy but I had no idea how to prepare them and if harvesting them would mean no actual zucchini (I fear that it would). So I let them be. I'm hoping that we'll see some real zukes forming soon.





The pumpkins are continuing their impressive progress. At this rate their going to start crowding each other out soon (see how the leaves are already starting to overlap each other). I think we'll cut them back to two or three plants per hill in the next week or so.








And now a setback. We had a lot of heavy rain over the past week and I've noticed some erosion across the Italian bed and the mesclun. In the picture here you can see the diagonal band of lighter soil where the erosion occurred. Some of the basil and parsley plants have their roots exposed now and I've lost a bit of the lettuce. I'm hoping for some dryer and warmer weather now but temperatures are due to remain low over the next week and there's still rain in the forecast. Yikes!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you aren't neglecting the lawn while harvesting all your vegetables.

John Deere

William Hoffman said...

Thanks for stopping by. I still feel like a total novice but am getting more confdent each week as I see progress. I'm already looking forward to next year when I can use what I learned from this season...and start planning a lot sooner!