Harvesting Turnips in Standing Water After Heavy Rains June 23
Notice Brian's Reflection In The Water
Come again another day.... About 10 days, that is. It seems the only topic the last couple weeks has been the over abundance of rain and thunderstorms. This has certainly been the wettest June we have ever seen and the most violent with fast moving storms, incredible lightening and high winds. And it comes at a time when so much work needs to be done in the garden. This is the month when the weeds grow as fast as the vegetables and staying on top of it is a must. Somewhere around the middle of May, the garden looked really good. Brian is getting the hang of using the tractor cultivator which happily displaces much hand weeding. The rows of our April planted spring crops looked great and we were on track. But the rains came and never left. The tractor sat. The mower sat. The weeds grew like mad choking out a second planting of root crops almost completely. Our hand weeding was no match.
Kelsey Floats A Bin Down The Aisle To Harvest Turnips
And our planting continues to be delayed. We are still waiting to plant such crops as those wonderful pineapple tomatillos. Those plants are sitting in the greenhouse waiting to be set out in the garden. We also have the next round of lettuces and greens that continue to sit. We had a gorgeous second planting of spinach in flats ready to set out but those declined in the greenhouse because of continued delays and we tossed them. I piled up a stack of several flats of young transplants ready to dump in the compost pile that simply could not hold out any longer in their small plug cells.
Young Parsley Plants Under Water
And the potatoes. Still not hilled. Potatoes need to be hilled 2 or 3 times in a growing season. Each plant will produce potatoes in the gap between the seed potato and the surface of the soil. Widen that gap and we'll have more potatoes. The potatoes haven't been hilled once and plants typically start dying back in July. There is not much time left to hill them and see our yields increase.
But we do see a light at the end of all these storms. The weather forecast for the next 10 days shows no rain this entire week and moderate temperatures. It will take all week for the ground to dry and mellow so we can do some tractor work - tilling and preparing beds for planting. But we'll be weeding by tomorrow afternoon again trying to salvage what we can from a garden in distress.
