GA: Cucamelons are wimpy because very shaded but they're hanging in there...

Hoping once they grow more upward and get out of the shade maybe they'll be able to do something... for now they're very wimpy.  I gave them a tomato cage to climb.

GA: Cucumber plants looking good so far! Very vigorous! (All are Straight 8 variety)

The cucumber beetles are there too, but wow, the first two years at GA my cukes (Eureka) all did horrendously.  With how well these Straight 8s are looking, maybe I'll actually get a decent GA harvest of cukes this year... or will the cucumber beetles be their detriment?  I'm hopeful that the long period of being covered will help.  And they are on the vertical fence post thing again this year.

GA: All zukes are now un-covered

Decided to remove ALL of the covers from the GA zukes, even the ones that aren't close to producing.

Several have been uncovered for a few weeks now.  Have seen definitely cucumber beetles and a few squash bugs.  I haven't been spending tons of time checking for insects like I did last year but do check every now and then and remove.

Harvested ~half the garlic -- the two test scapes are straight up

 Harvested ~half the garlic -- the two test scapes are straight up.

Of the 4 or 5 elephant garlic in the east-most row of the main garlic bed, only one or two went into cloves, the others are the one big clove.  All have the little bulbil things too which I'll keep separately.

The rest of the garlic are all Music.  They're bulbs smaller than I had hoped, but not bad.  I didn't remove any leaves/stem, just brought them inside intact and put them in the basement on the hallway metal rack (but in the basement).

Harvested one of the two Music tests with the scape left on -- it's definitely smaller than average, but is the same size as at least one of the others, so not a big loss from leaving the scape.

GA: Belstar side-shoot harvest ongoing -- very nice!

Today harvested enough side shoots for 1 x walnut-broc recipe and 1 x pea-broc recipe.  

FOY: Harvested one volunteer garlic

Harvested one of the volunteer garlic from last year's elephant garlic bed.  Woo hoo, this one was a very nice size and had cloves.

Waiting a bit longer for the rest of the garlic, as the two next scapes aren't quite fully up yet, and there still aren't three brown leaves at the bottom.

GA: Spooned all onions

I've never ever "spooned" onions before but learned about it recently (though a random YT video I think) so decided to do that.  Just used my finger to ring around each onion to loose things and try to expose the bulb (most have started to bulb out).

Some of them, the ground is SO hard, like cement, once you get below the few cms of compost.  Next year I definitely want to add chopped straw to the soil when tranplanting, to help have a softer soil.

Started rutabaga in PT

First time trying rutabaga.  I'll start them in PTs, then put the seeds into the garden (GA) -- some where the pulled bolted cauliflower was, others in random spots probably.

FOY / GA: First zuke of the year harvested

Several of the GA zukes are looking great and harvested the first zuke today.  None of of the four backyard zukes are though -- all looking pretty puny.

GA: A cauliflower has bolted! And tied the leaves of the other four cauliflowers

The one that bolted, the "head" is still very small BUT it went all spikey -- I tied its leaves anyway because why not, but pretty sure that one will be no good.

The other four -- one has a wee head, the others I didn't look closely into but tied them all up, we'll see how it goes.  This week is a mega heat wave so I'm not too confident!

GA: 3rd and 4th Belstar broccoli heads harvested -- still nice and big!

^^^

GA: 2nd and 3rd Belstar broccoli heads harvested -- nice and big! :D

Great big heads!  ~1 pound each.

With 1 head, I made two batches of the walnut-broccoli stirfy; next time I would instead try a single batch and just have a higher ratio of broccoli in it.

With the other 1 head, I made one batch of the Am veg soup -- 5 cups broccoli, no other vegetable (other than celery/onion/garlic).  At first I didn't put any tahini and it was just kinda okay -- then I added tahini and it was delicious!

GA: Leek moth in uncovered onions?

A few days ago all of a sudden the uncovered onions started looking they have leek moth damage.  I'm not totally sure though because when I removed a few of the worst leaves and slit them open, I didn't see any larvae.  

Also, the covered sets' cover broke a week or so ago so I had removed it altogether, but today I decided to cover it again with a new cover.  But likely there are some leek moth eggs/larvae in there.

Planning to spray some BTK, but lately it's been raining every day, so not much point in spraying right now.

SO MUCH RAIN over the past week -- multiple days of lots of rain

The peppers are not looking great.  Nothing else seems to be suffering too much, but still waiting the garden to look like everything has taken off.  Broc/caul/kale/chard doing great, and potatoes also look fabulous.

GA: First head from Belstar -- some individual flowers drying/brown like last year

While piracicaba harvest has been ongoing for a week or two (puny harvests though), today the first Belstar head was ready.  Decent size, but not huge, but still plenty for the 2 cups needed for the walnut broccoli recipe, which is what it got used for.

Not sure why, but same as last year, some of the individual little flowers are drying and turning brown and falling off, but not a big deal.

GA: Clover sown

 Sowed some clover in 7A.  Loosed the soil (didn't amend it), sprinkled the (dry) seeds, hand "raked" to cover, watered, covered with burlap.

GA: Aphids all over the buckwheat ---- volunteers and sown!!!!! Apparently a risk of May buckwheat

Argh!!!! A day or two ago, I noticed there were lots of ladybugs at GA, especially on the buckwheat.  I didn't think much of it.  Well, today I happened to notice green aphids on some buckwheat I had pulled and dropped yesterday ---- then inspected all of the volunteer uckwheat and ALL had green aphids!!!!    Then had a look at the sown buckwheat patch -- at first I thought it was in the clear, but upon closer inspection it also had green aphids throughout!!!

A Cornell website says it can be a risk of buckwheat sown in May and it even says this is the case for both volunteers and sown.

So, today I pulled ALL buckwheat and tossed it all in the compost heap, worried that these might be aphids who might move on to other types of plants.  

SAD!!!

I'll try another round of buckwheat later in the summer and see if it happens again.

(I don't know what type of aphids they are, but they are green in colour.)

Oh! Aphids on backyard buckwheat too!! I've leave those in place anyway.

^^^

Scapes starting appearing several days ago (garlic)

Scapes starting appearing several days ago (garlic).  No full loops yet, but likely within a few more days for some.

GA: Flops (partial) so far: Includes cukes, beans, watermelons, a tomatillo, and a tomato

Here are the flops at GA so far -- at least they're just partial flops at this point:

- Cukes:  3 or 4 of the little transplants died, no idea why.  Could there be a cutworm?  I don't have pencil crayons with the cukes.

- Watermelon:  Thinking I'd be smart and start from seed onsite rather than transplants (since last year most of the transplants went kaput within a day or two of transplanting) -- well, not having great results with the pre-sprouted seeds.  Next year, plant 2 or 3 PSSs per location!

- Beans:  WTH!?!  Some of the new pops look diseased or something, kaput!

- Tomato:  One wimpy transplant went kaput, not really surprised.

- Tomatillo:  One wimpy transplant went kaput, not really surprised.