He's 2!

Let's take a break from the gardening to celebrate Carson.  He turned 2 yesterday.  We've been celebrating all week long.  We started with a swim at Bear Lake.

We made some Cake (then tried the icing on for size)

And of course, we blew out some candles.

We love you Carson.  Happy 2nd Birthday!

Composed

Sometimes a day doesn't feel right from the start.  This happened to me on Monday.  I was running late, forgot my coffee, was feeling a little tense, and then, while driving 75 mph on I-80 on my way to work, my car started to shake, violently.  Then I had some trouble steering.  Once pulled off the road and after completing a little panic attack, I called for a tow to the mechanic and got a lift home.  Needless to say, I didn't make it to work (my apologies to any patients that were rescheduled.  I owe you a batch of cookies or some tomatoes).
My stress started to abate pretty quickly when I entered the house to a smiling Carson yelling "Mommy!"
So we did what you do when stuck at home waiting for the news from a mechanic.  We sat around in the backyard, did a little garden maintenance and put together the components of a composed salad.
Beets with fresh oregano and carrots with fresh thyme.

Roasted until tender, then beets peeled and seasoned with salt and pepper.  The carrots were just sliced.

On a plate with some lettuce, fresh tomatoes, cukes, and green beans.  This was drizzled with a quick balsamic vinaigrette and some crusty bread and goat cheese.  It was a perfect summer composed salad.
Oh, and my car, fine, it turned out that a dry cleaner's bag was wrapped all around my drive train and while this rendered my steering useless for a moment once removed my car (and myself) remained unscathed.

The goods

After cold, excessive rain, and late warming, things are picking up the pace in the garden.

The scarlet runners are enticing the bees

The cucumbers are spreading out on their trellis

The collard greens and chard are taking off even though they are being snacked on by the birds

The companion planting of basil and onions is working out nicely

It turns out that carrots and tomatillos are good neighbors too.

So far this month I've been harvesting carrots, dark greens, potatoes, cucumbers, and herbs on a regular basis.  Carson is conducting his own harvests also.

Next, we get ready for the winter garden...more on this to come.
-JG

Fava Beans

Fava Beans (aka Broad Beans) are a food that I discovered only a few years ago.  I liked them so much I started to grow them.  They are an easy bean grow, which is nice.
Here are 2 views of fava plants.  The first shows beans almost mature, the second are mature and ready to be picked.  Gravity gives some great clues.

This was a nice harvest.

OK.  I know, enough with the bean photos.  Moving on to what we cooked with these beauties.  We made a pasta dish with favas, garden peas, dried tomatoes, onion, and garlic.  The fresh pasta came from Nu nooz, the rest came from the garden with the exception of the Parmasean cheese.

Can you say delicious?  Yes, it was.  Can you tell that I have a little bit of a love thing for these beans?

Benefits of a wet spring

I like to think of the glass as half full, for me the world just works better this way. 
For example, I could spin you the sad tale of the state of my tomatoes, peppers, and melons after this cold wet spring.  However, they'll get big eventually. 
In the meantime, after using some netting to keep the birds out, my peas are looking beautiful and filling up my A-frame nicely.

My Garlic is on autopilot and looks like we'll have nice big heads.  Essentially, all I've been doing for the garlic since I planted is watering once a week if it doesn't rain, and weeding.  I'll be pulling these up in a week or so.

The wet weather has also boosted the populations of my beneficial insects.  Look at this beautiful dragon fly, fat from eating pests like aphids and mosquitos.

We had our first appreciable harvest of summer greens.  From left, Rainbow Chard, Lacinato Kale, Collard Greens. 

And last but not least, strawberries.

All said, it has been a good week.

Colors of June

Things are mostly green out here in the June Garden, but there are stirrings of other hues.
Take this Radicchio for example, its getting nice and purple in the center

And it turns out that blue potatoes make blue flowers, how lovely.

I keep catching Carson "red" handed...hey, did you just swipe my gloves?

When Greens Bolt

If you are like me and live in the northern climes of the US, some of your greens are getting ready to bolt or already have.  Let's discuss bolting, shall we?  This is what you will see when things are moving in that direction

The individual plants will start to look taller with what will appear to be one or many flower heads developing at the top.  The plant is now placing its emphasis on reproduction and producing seed for self propagation.  For most mild lettuces, this means that you have missed the boat, the leaves will already be much too bitter to enjoy.  For Arugula, which is spicy, this is your last chance to pull up and harvest, like I did here

I pick off all of the big leaves and leave the feathery looking ones at the top near the seed head for the compost bin.

Additionally, I leave a few plants scattered throughout the bed and let them go completely to seed.  I try to leave them in places that won't interfere with the other plants and along my drip line so that I will not need to add extra watering work.  This way, I end up with more seeds for these varieties of whatever green I grew, Sylvetta Wild and Sputnik Arugula in this case.

I used to think about seeing my greens bolt as a sad ending to a good thing.  Now I think about it like this (greens + seed = bonus!).