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| Radishes, Collards, Chard, Purple Peacock Broccoli/Kale |
While it is now officially summer according to the calendar, we continue to have temperatures in the 50s and 60s here in the Pacific Northwest. But with a nice tall cloche in place, my garden is flourishing.
I have updated my irrigation system to accomodate the taller, leafier plants of a June garden, and I have already rotated a few crops out of the garden.
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| Irrigation system with central tubing and several barbs |
As you will see, the new irrigation system features one central 1/2" pipe or hose, with 1/4" tubing running into the beds with an assortment of different sprinkler and drip heads on the ends. This system is surprisingly inexpensive, endlessly customizable and can be changed throughout the season to suit the needs of different stages of growth for the garden. One of the beds also has a soaker hose pinned in a zig-zag along the whole length of the bed and it will provide good soil saturation when there are too many leaves to let much sprinkler-water down to the surface.
I got my system from Home Depot (DIG system), but I have picked up additional parts from Lowe's (Mister Landscaper system) and have found that they are interchangeable.In the last month or so I have harvested bolting spinach, kale and beets, as well as cycling through several crops of radishes and lettuces. I am now picking salad greens on an almost daily basis and have broccoli, collards, radishes, baby fennel, kales and ridiculous amounts of chard ready to go. You may recall that I planted peas in the area formerly known as the corn plot, and they have remained uncloched and subject to the less-than-ideal weather we have had, so they are just now blooming with flowers and still have a few weeks to go before they will be ready to eat.
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| cedar trellises |
At the suggestion of my friend and fellow-gardener, Christi, I decided to try and grow my summer-squashes as vertically as possible this year to save space. Those plants can sprawl so much that they take up precious ground space that could be used for other crops. Since summer-squashes aren't as viney as their wintery cousins, the trellis I built needed to be more or less a 'ramp' for them to grow up. I decided on an a-frame construction with an open back so that I could easily reach short rows of radishes, lettuces and carrots planted underneath the trellises. I shopped around at garden stores a little, but it seemed like buying a ready-made trellis would be much more expensive and far less fun than building my own. I found an amazing deal on cedar 1x1s at Limback Lumber in Ballard (25 6-foot pieces for $10!) and once they trimmed them for me, all I had to do was nail them together and install bolts and wingnuts for the braces.
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| Trellises in action |
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| lettuces, tomatoes, fennel and chard |
