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Health & Fitness

What to do in your Sammamish-Issaquah kitchen garden in June

Your vegetable beds and containers are finally bursting with spring crops, and now is not the time to be idle.

At last! Your vegetable beds and containers are bursting with spring crops that seem more abundant than you can remember. Your peas are climbing up their trellises with remarkable speed. Your lettuce covers the soil like an impressionist painting covers canvas. Kale and chard leaves appear so quickly you are tempted to sit nearby to watch them grow.

Now is not the time to be idle, however. The weeds are thriving alongside your crops, and your harvest won't be as bountiful without a bit of care.

The meteorological models are uncertain about our weather in June. One predicts that the rain and temperature have an equal chance of being above, below, or equal to average, and another leans towards a drier, warmer June than average. Either way, this June is likely to be more pleasant than last June.

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Under the influence of long days and warm sun, your cool-weather crops will quickly reach and then pass their prime. Not to worry; their demise makes room for warm-weather crops such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, corn, and beans. Seattle Tilth's Falaah Jones and Jillian Louise Altizer offer some tips on how to make the most of your cool-weather harvest and get your warm-weather plants in place.

Harvest and eat your cool-weather crops. The most important garden activity in June is harvesting and eating. Your pea plants will produce more if you harvest the pods as they become ready. Your kale will thrive with aggressive harvesting of the larger leaves. And your lettuce and radishes will become virtually inedible if you don't harvest them in time. "People keep waiting for their radishes to get bigger," says Jones. "But when the radishes bolt, they become tough and woody." It is best to harvest the radishes within six weeks of sprouting, regardless of their size. If the roots fail to impress, remember that the greens can be a delicious, slightly peppery, replacement for spinach in your favorite recipes.

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You can prolong the harvest of your cool weather crops with some care. Spinach will produce longer if you pinch off the buds as they start to develop. Keeping the temperature as low as possible helps as well. You can provide shade and keep the ground cool by watering at night. This is especially important if your lettuce is in a particularly hot part of the garden. "Lettuce will become a tower overnight," notes Jones, "and then it’s too bitter to eat."

If your plants do bolt, don't fret. Jones encourages gardeners to let a few cool-weather plants flower. "They will attract pollinators and you can save the seeds for next year."

Is your harvest bigger than you can consume? Donate it to the Issaquah Food Bank. You can also extend your spring harvest season by blanching the greens and storing them your freezer. "You'll love the kale and chard in December," says Jones.

Tend your garlic. When your garlic plants start to form stalks with a bud at the end, cut or snap them off. Known as garlic scapes, they are delicious to eat when young and tender. If left to grow, they will utilize energy that could otherwise be going to the bulbs. Once the scapes appear, back off on the watering. Don’t be distressed or increase your watering if your garlic plants start withering, because you are going to be harvesting in a few weeks if you planted them in the fall. Just don't let the plants dry out completely because the bulbs might separate and allow dirt to get in between the cloves.

Mound up soil around your potato plants. Potatoes grow on the stem rather than the roots of potato plants. To increase your harvest, mound soil around your potato plants. "Cover the whole plant, leaving just two to four inches sticking out of the soil," says Jones. "Repeat the process until you have made a big mound and the plant starts to flower."

Transplant your warm weather crops. Sometime in June, the nighttime temperatures should reach 50 degrees and stay there. At that point, it will be safe to transplant your warm weather crops to your garden beds.

It is always better to set up your trellises before you put your plants in. In addition to tomatoes, beans, and peas, you can trellis cucumbers and many squashes to reduce the amount of space they consume. Don't reuse pea trellises for your beans. Unlike peas that send out tendrils to climb up horizontal supports like ladder rungs, beans need vertical strings or poles to wrap around as they climb. "And remember beans get really tall," warns Jones. "Scarlet Runner Beans can grow to about 15 feet."

Visit the Pickering Barn Community Garden for ideas on ways to trellis your warm-weather crops.

Hinder pests. If you use row covers, keep them on your cabbage, chard, and carrot beds even after the temperature warms up. They will help prevent cabbage moths and other insects from laying eggs that will quickly develop into voracious larvae.

Now is the time to net your strawberries and blueberries to help protect them from birds, dear, and other garden visitors. Jones recommends using tulle from a fabric store rather than bird netting, which can fatally trap birds. "Tulle comes in different colors so you can dress your garden up for the party! Of course there's green and black so you can make it unobtrusive if you like." One disadvantage with tulle fabric is that it has a closer weave than bird netting, so the pollinators can't reach the blossoms. You can either wait to put it on until the small berries have formed, or remove it periodically to let the pollinators do their work.

"Accept a little damage," advises Jones. "You don’t have to take action against pests if they are consuming small amounts."

Stay on top of weeds. Issaquah's most common garden weeds - shotweed, stinky Robert, creeping buttercup, and fireweed - will continue to show up in your garden throughout June. Make sure to remove them before they spread their seeds.

Prepare for July planting. As if June weren't already busy enough, you need to get ready for July. In Issaquah and Sammamish, July is the month when you should be planting your autumn and overwintering plants. So acquire your seeds now and think about starting some seedlings in flats outdoors. It also might be prudent to double-check that your drip irrigation system works.

For the last two years Issaquah and Sammamish gardeners languished during a cold, wet June. With a proper spring here at last, it is easy to be intimidated by the abundance in our kitchen gardens and the work required to tend it. Fortunately, there is a cure at hand. If it all gets to be too much, just pluck the nearest strawberry or pea pod. Sit back. Enjoy.

For more tips on managing June's abundance, contact Seattle TIlth's free Garden Hotline.

 

Seattle Tilth’s Falaah Jones coordinates volunteer and educational programs at the City of Issaquah’s Pickering Barn Community Garden, where intern Jillian Louise Altizer is serving as garden steward. Educational sessions and volunteer work parties provide a unique opportunity to play outdoors while learning about sustainable gardening. The harvests are donated to the Issaquah Food Bank. You are welcome to visit the garden at any time!

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