Monthly Archives: June 2023

It’s been about a month since my last garden post with the raised beds.  Most of the garden was planted on May 6^th.

As you can see from the photos, the growth of the plants has exploded.  We’ve been eating spinach and lettuce for a few weeks now.  The netting has kept the plants very clean and bug free.  I think it also supplies a bit of shade, too.  When I planted the seeds back in mid-April, I thought that I didn’t have a very large spot for the leafy greens, but the small space has been more than enough to supply our needs.  I also discovered that it’s better to cut the greens early in the morning so they’ll stay crisp.  If I cut them later in the day, they tend to get wilty.

Also, in the same raised bed I have sixteen pepper plants (hot and sweet), a large basil plant and cilantro, and some sugar pea pods. The peppers are just coming in this week and I’ve been eating the pea pods every time I pass by so I couldn’t exactly tell you how those are producing. 

The second raised bed has ten tomato plants and two eggplants.  The first set of tomato plants that I planted in mid April were hit heavily by a very hard frost at the end of April.  I just cut off the cherry tomatoes and, surprise surprise, the plants grew back.  The others I pulled out and planted some new plants.  We have Sweet 100 (cherry), Fat Mama (roma-type), Park Whopper, Pink Brandywine (a German tomato which was our favorite a couple of years ago.)  They all are heavy with tomatoes so I’m sure we’ll be eating them in a few weeks.

The eggplants were only hit a little by flea beetles.  We don’t use any pesticides and, as before, the plants pulled out of the attack.

The green beans are blossoming heavily so I expect we’ll have some beans pretty soon.  And the two squash mounds are producing.  We have yellow squash and grey zucchini which we’ve been eating for a week or so. 

I’ve been watering about every other day depending upon the soil moisture.  The ground cloth and the cardboard have been doing a great job of keeping the weeds down and the moisture up.  No pesticides and a light feeding about once a week. 

So far, I’m pretty pleased with the new raised beds.  So much less work after initial set up.  But I’m going to miss fresh sweet corn and my cut flowers. 

Stay tuned for future reports.  Meanwhile, I’ll have to check out my zucchini brownies recipe.