June Is Bustin' Out All Over! A Peek at the Vegetable Garden

Oh my goodness, the vegetable garden is the exploding phase!  The pea vines that the seed packet promised would only reached two feet high are easily four.  Hundreds of green tomatoes are popping out.  We've eaten up most of the radishes before they got smothered by the rest of the verdant mess.

I really pack my garden tight, with the obvious exception of the bed in the front right.   If there is a spot of bare soil I will find something to plant there.  For one thing, I didn't want to double dig this year.  It is a big pain with our heavy clay.  I also keep a variety of plants all mixed up together, and feed with compost all the time, so I think it should be okay for soil quality long-term.  The other bonus is less weeding, since there just isn't much room for weeds!

Sometimes though, I forget all about little things that I planted under taller things.  Like the arugula that the tomato plants covered up.  A sad little yellow flower bolted to the surface, and I thought, "I wonder what that could be?"  Oh yes, there's about a square yard of arugula under all of that!  We'll be having that with our pizza tonight!

These things from outer space are onions.  I grew them from seed last year, but they were so puny at harvest-time that I decided to leave them and see if anything would happen.

Pea vine jungle!  Usually the peas are long finished by mid-June, but we had such a late spring they are just flowering now.

This may be unclear, but down the middle of the tomato bed I have Romaine lettuce in the very center, flanked by cucumber plants.  The cukes will grow up and over the lettuce on a string trellis.  They shade the lettuce, so I can keep growing it through the hot summer months.

Roma tomatoes!  I have ten plants of these.  Right now things are looking good for canning spaghetti sauce!  Also visible is some of the forgotten arugula and butterhead lettuce.

We're getting tomatoes before peas this year!  And aren't green bean blossoms pretty?

Tons and tons of tomatoes!!!  These are "Jelly Bean."

I don't know why this photo is upside-down.  But it's a pumpkin vine sprawled over the hugel.  That's basically a glorified compost pile, because there is just too much carbon from the wood underneath for things to grow well there this year.

Also upside-down.  Biggest broccoli head I've ever grown!  How to I know when to harvest it?  And yes, I am that pale.

And finally, a miniature chicken up in a tree.