Everything Turns! Turns! Turns!

"To everything there is a season" as The Byrds once sang.

And that rings true for my life both in and out of the garden. Right now the season seems to be a busy one. I haven't done a blog entry here in at least a week or two. With good reason. There have been dance recitals for my daughter, neighborhood garage sales to participate in and run, Fathers Day, etc etc. And it is not going to slow down anytime soon.

The garden seems to be the same way. A lot of high 70's/low 80's weather coupled with a good dose of rain over the last week or two has the garden growing at warp speed! I'll get to that more in a little bit by way of pictures.

The last time I had left you with an entry, I believe I was bemoaning the fate of my plants at the hands of pests. I have some bad news but mostly good news for all of that. First, the bad. I previously had mentioned that my  one patch of radishes had root maggots in them and across the yard the other patch had gone unscathed. Well... as I was pulling the last of the spring radishes from my "good patch" I found a few to have the dreaded root maggots. So gross.

BUT! There is good news to be had, as promised. My beets and spinach that had been battling leaf miner have made a great recovery thanks to my crushing of the eggs on the back of leaves every other day or so. It would seem I have helped to interrupt their life cycle. Although I cannot take all of the credit. I also used some Captain Jack's Organic Insecticide two or three times and it seems to have pitched in with the effort as well. I've also seen some predatory beneficial insects buzzing around the garden so I will share some of the success with them too. Good job little ones.

The beet leaves are looking much healthier now

The beets have rebounded so nicely that there are some close to harvest!

 So there is a great success story. Patience and a little effort took a crop that looked to be almost lost and turned it around in almost two weeks. Without using heavy pesticides/poison.

My Purplette mini bulbing onions are starting to come along as well. 

Here is one I harvested as a tester to see where they are at in their growth.

Also, my peas have grown over a foot in the last week and have started flowering and producing pods!

Look how tall they are now!

Game on

 And not to be out done but some of my pepper plants have been flowering and producing peppers already as well!

The plant is going to need to grow faster if it wants to support any more of these spicy guys

More flowers

As of right now the only downside is that my beans and melon have been fairly sporadic with their sprouting and even when the beans do sprout it looks like squirrels or something have been eating about half of them. Also, some of my spinach is getting ready to bolt. Need to eat it soon. Oh well. I can't complain too much. Everything seems fairly healthy. Here, take a look and judge for yourself.

Here you can see carrots, beets, onions and more carrots

Mmmm lettuce

Pole beans

Summer Squash and Zucchini

Pepper and Tomato plants

More Pepper and Tomatoes

Basil

Pepper plant

And here we have compost pile tomatoes. They started growing out of compost so I'm going to let them go and see what happens!

 So there it is. Gerich Gardens in mid June. There have been failures, sure. I like to call them learning experiences. The next thing I want to do is get my Brussels Sprouts ready to plant out for a fall crop. There is always something to keep you busy for each and every season. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.