Weekly Veggie Patch Update 6/2/08 (June the tooth)

Everything is planted, really, I’m just waiting now for them all to DO something. I need to weed and such, but that’s about it.

Someone (slugs, probably) ate my 3 melon plants. I’ve replanted two of them from seed, they are both already sprouting. I put some sand around the plants, I’ve read this deters slugs. It didn’t. They’re gone again. Either it’s the slugs or the birds (or something else) are getting under the floating row cover I put over them. I’m going to plant seeds again and put a milk jug cloche over them this time, possibly weighted down with a rock. It’s strange, because nothing has touched the squash plants.

The beans are sprouting, slugs are liking them. I put sharp/coarse sand around them, and the peppers. No sign of the pole beans yet. The peas finally started blooming, though, and the pumpkins have sprouted.

I did seed some 4-Seasons butterhead lettuce, arugula, and bush beans in pots (2 each) to see how they do. I also started 8 of each of the heading lettuces inside.

Potatoes are coming up beautifully (see top picture), even some of those that I thought were rotted due to the rain. We still have 200lb to plant, hopefully this week.

Garlic looks good, if small, and the scapes are starting to appear, too. The asparagus we planted in the new bed a week ago is just starting to sprout up.

Over the weekend we made a trip to Olive Garden for dinner. We hadn’t been in a few years, I had forgotten how good it was. Afterward, we went to Home Depot and I found that their herbs were .30 cheaper each than Ashcombes, and most of their varieties had at least 3 separate plants in each pot. So I got 10: 2 pots of sweet basil, 2 pots of lemon basil, 2 pots of lemon verbena, 1 cilantro, 1 variegated sage, 1 arugula, 1 dill. So yesterday I planted 6 separate sweet basil plants in the hopes I can sell some to David the Lion Potter this summer, along with who knows what else he could use. I also planted quite a bit of the herbs I bought at Ashcombe’s a couple weeks ago, and have 9 plants total yet to go in.