~June’s Garden~

The excitement is building! We’ve yet to taste our first samplings from the garden, but with the first sighting of peas, it can’t be long now!! The tomatoes are flowering, however we’re still pulling the buds to allow them to fully recover from their near-drowning as a result of all the rain we’ve had this month. I haven’t had to even consider watering the garden yet! This week is the first one forecasted to be a week of wall to wall sunshine so we’ll see how well the mulching helps to retain the water whether I have to break out the irrigation tools.

Speaking of mulching… please note all of the weeds in week three! I certainly was far behind in pulling them and getting further behind every day! What a blessing it was for my husband to stumble upon a source of old hay for free! He grabbed ten bales and there’s more where that came from. I’m hoping to send him back for enough for next year as well. Some of the bigger weeds are just starting to poke through, but I’m hoping the smaller ones have been suffocated by the hay. It certainly looks much nicer.

Hopefully everything is large enough now that if the hens happen to breach one of the weak points in our decorative, badly needing a make over, security fencing any damage they inflict would be minimal.

I hope that because they were tearing the place up at the beginning of the month in search of little seed goodies and having a dandy time scattering the straw we initially laid. Since time is a valuable commodity, and we tired of using ours chasing them from within the garden, we cooped them up. In the meantime, most of the openings have been sealed and the little ones have grown large enough that it may be difficult for them to get in now.

With egg production dropping down to 4 a day average I’m eager to let them have another chance in the yard so they’ll call off their strike. We opened their door for the first time last night and it was such fun to see them stretching their wings literally. Scampering in little bursts of half-flight all over in their excitement. The two turkeys were strutting and gobbling around the yard. And our dog, Shep, looking like a naughty child just caught with his hand in the cookie jar every time we walked around the corner where he was chasing them or trying to resist the temptation to do so.

I have such fun watching the garden progress. I wish I had a more effective way of doing so but now this fits the bill!

How are your gardens coming along? Are you reaping the harvest yet or still
patiently
waiting for that momentous day?