Gardening – Summer Is Here: Now What?

Cabbage is progressing nicely, but the Cauliflower is lagging. R Dub will be disappointed if we do not get at least one nice cauliflower this season.

Operation Green Thumb has made it to official summer. We are roughly half way through the Zone 5 growing season. So how are the gardening newbies doing?

We’ve harvested radishes and planted a second round. We’ve harvested spinach and replaced them with beets. We’ve harvested lettuce in the Cut and Come Again method…and they are COMING AGAIN!

Beets seeds were sown last week. 48 seeds 1″ apart have now been thinned out to 18 seedlings 3″ apart. 50 days to harvest.

THe second go around of radishes will soon be ready to pull. We are thinking Swiss Chard to replace the radishes.

Soon to be ready are carrots which should be ready to pull on July 7th. The package says 68 days and that is starting to look spot on.

3 rows of carrots have taken over the front of Beds A& B. The harvested spinach had no problem sharing sun with the carrots and neither will the beets that will be in long after we pull the carrots next week. However, the double row of carrots in Bed A overshadowed the bunch onions who really need more room to mature.

Also newly planted in Bed A is one of our herb gardens. Planted from left to right are Parsley, Dill, Oregano, Basil, Cilantro and Rosemary.

Herbs from top to bottom, left to right. Parsley, Dill, Oregano, Basil, Cilantro, and Rosemary.

Started from seed and soon to be transplanted to four gallon containers is sweet corn. Harvest for the sweet corn should be in late September beating the first frost by 2 or 3 weeks…we hope…

Sweet corn seedlings that will be transferred to containers. Looks like at least 5 seedlings each of Super Sweet Corn and Candy Corn. The containers will be clustered together to encourage better pollination. Stay tuned!

What else can be harvested? Peas and beans have some produce ready. We picked about two dozen peas last Sunday for a small family get together that went over very well. Beans we can pick a few this weekend for our Independence Day feast!

We have two rosemary plants that survived the first round of indoor seeds. This herb is known for poor germination. One plant is in a pot, pictured below. One in Bed A which may have been a tactical error. Rosemary does not transfer well from a bed to a container…according to the experts…whoever they are…

Snap sweet peas, green beans and yetwax beans.

Potted rosemary plant. It is just 6″ tall and with TLC should get to be 2 feet tall and one foot wide. Wish us luck. Herbs are difficult in zone 5.

A 1″ rosemary plant in Bed A, perhaps it will take off after the carrots are pulled. “Experts” say it will not survive a container transplant in fall and it will definitely not survive a Wisconsin winter. We will see. We are not giving up.

Peppers are a large portion of our container garden. We have one container each or Sweet Pepper, Yellow Pepper, Jalapeno, and Pepperoncini. Plus two containers each of Beaver Dam Pepper and Tabasco Pepper.

How are they doing? There are plenty of fruit on the Pepperoncini, Jalapeno and Beaver Dam plants. To date nothing on the Tabasco or the sweet bell type peppers.