Early summer garden

Perennials and roses are abloom, and the vegetable garden is providing harvests.  This may be peak time for gardeners in mid-Missouri.  Peas are finished, but I'm now harvesting green beans.

'Calima' green beans

Stray volunteer lettuce plants are growing in various places, including the bean row, and I'm just letting them go so I can collect seeds.

The cabbages I (trans)planted June 10 don't seem to be growing very fast.  Maybe it's too hot.  The 'Primo Vantage' green variety is doing better than the 'Omero' red ones.

'Omero' cabbage

Okra seed germination was poor this year even though it wasn't old seed.  I started with 2 rows, and had to move some to end up with just one row.  

'Carmine Splendor' okra

There are a couple of fruits on the long sweet pepper plants.  I grew them from seeds I collected from a pepper I got at the grocery store, so I don't know what variety they are.  I just hope they're as good as the store peppers.  I've been spraying them with an epsom salt solution to try to enhance growth.   Probably need to water them more.

I tried the method of growing potatoes in straw, but I've not been pleased.  I did get three medium-sized potatoes off one plant today, but the rest aren't producing.  Maybe it's been too dry?  Maybe 'Yukon Gold' potatoes don't do well by that method?  Maybe I don't know what I'm doing?

The garlic was finally ready to be harvested.  I'm going to braid and hang them.

The French Charentais melons ('Savor') are starting to climb their cages and flower.

One 'German Johnson' plant has a small green fruit on it.

Cucumbers have finally gotten going.  The seeds were two or three years old, and even being held in the freezeer, they're losing viability.  I'll have to buy new seed for the next planting.  Before I started freezing leftover seeds, I found that even in the second year, seed viability was greatly reduced.

'Marketmore' cucumber

I pulled up a couple wasabi radishes and found that while the plants are grown and setting seed, the taproots were no bigger than my little finger.  

They were planted last fall.

Wasabi seed heads

I finally decided to read up on how you're supposed to harvest these things and found out they aren't ready for harvesting until the second year.  I guess I'll just leave them in the ground and see what happens.

The onions are at the stage for harvesting as green onions, and since I planted them waaaay to densely, it's working out that I get the perfect size green onions by thinning the crop.

Of course there's no way I was going to get a year without raccoon damage.  The kids are out before dawn and wreaking havoc wherever they can.

I thought I'd discourage this darling little guy by turning the hose on him before letting him go.  At first he tried to get away from the stream, and then he just started playing with it.  What can you do?

'Hens and chicks' poppy