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Boluo county dragon Lotus Lake Village Town Industrial Park, China
It’s the beginning of June, an excellent time to assess this season’s gardening efforts.
Whether a beginner or a seasoned pro, I can bet that something in your vegetable garden is different from years past. As the cool spring weather transitions into the hot temps that’ll get your garden growing like gangbusters, let’s take some time to reflect on what’s happened so far.
I used a row cover only briefly to protect my arugula plants from the marauding flea beetles. It looks like the row cover worked. When I finally removed the cover from the arugula— it was getting kind of hot under there and the plants were getting too tall—not one little flea beetle had left a hole anywhere. Good news.
The bad news—the flea beetles did find the arugula once the cover was removed. But by that time the plants were large and healthy enough to survive until harvest. So what if some of the leaves in my salad have holes in them? I don’t mind.
Salt hay mulch has been covering the soil for about two weeks now and it’s working well. There are no weeds poking through. The soil underneath is relatively moist—but that could be thanks to all the rain we had last week. Another bonus is that the hay mulch hasn’t washed away like buckwheat hull mulch does in a rainstorm. And, let’s not forget that this one bale of hay costs less than one bag of buckwheat hull mulch, and I haven’t even used a whole bale yet.
Instead of sowing seeds, I bought six-packs of broccoli, kale, arugula, and chard this year. For the broccoli, kale, and arugula, I did this on purpose—and that purpose was to have sizable plants that could suffer through and survive damage from flea beetles, and still grow despite the damage.
So far my plan has worked. The arugula was hurt by flea beetles, but it grew despite that. The kale is growing well with no signs of flea beetle damage, as is the broccoli, but the latter is still small. I harvested all of the arugula three days ago, and I am waiting to see if perhaps the beetles will now suddenly discover the other crops in my garden.
Oh, and those chard six-packs—I had completely forgotten to buy chard seeds this year!
Spring weather is becoming rare here in New England. This winter lingered far too long and the weather has immediately gone into summer mode. Last year, summer started far too early.
Either way, we have been faced with a very short window of opportunity for cool-spring crops like greens. I do think the one way we can combat this is to go straight for the transplants, either purchased at a garden center or started as seeds indoors several months in advance. This way they have a chance to grow to harvestable sizes in cool weather before warm weather makes them bolt.
I have two major garden projects slated for this summer. One is to finally get the zucchini growing up on a trellis system. I know it can be done—I just need to set aside an afternoon to do it. The second is to set up at least one row of tomatoes in a Florida weave. I know, I know, it sounds like a bad hairstyle. But it’s a type of trellising for tomatoes. Let’s hope it doesn’t end up looking like a bad hair day in the end.