June’s Flowers, Fruit and Vegetables
June is a beautiful time in my PNW zone 8 garden! The flowers are almost at their peak, we’re harvesting spring foods, and planting to take advantage of the rest of the season.
I thought I’d share with you some of the things growing around our little cottage garden acre.
June is one of my most favorite months here in Oregon with so many things blooming, fruiting, and producing…and nothing dry or brown yet. Believe it or not, we’re so dry in July, August, and September that by the end of July everything is brown – only the trees stay green! So much for rainy Oregon.
Strawberries & Blueberries
I’ve been picking strawberries for more than a week, but I was surprised to go out today and find that we’ve got some ripe blueberries already. The bushes are just loaded with berries this year, so this is just the beginning of a month or more of harvesting blueberries- yeah!
Flowers
Our hydrangea here are just starting to bloom, while the spirea are at their height of glory – they have such a delicate, airy bloom.
Spring Vegetables
In the vegetable garden, I’m harvesting chard, celery (behind the chard above), lettuce (both cut-and-come-again and heads of buttercrunch, romaine, and red leaf), broccoli, and cabbage.
I’m waiting to see if I’ll get any peas before it gets too hot, because I planted them rather late this year.
Summer Vegetables
I was happy to see that the corn and beans seedlings are safely up – the last couple times I’ve looked, it seemed like the birds were pulling them up as fast as they sprouted!
I covered the beds with chicken wire and row covers. But that’s also why I usually sow pretty thickly and thin later. I learned after having to re-sow corn at least two times one year. Sigh.
Tip: See how I plant corn to be WEED-FREE all season long here.
I put another layer of straw on the potatoes to hill them up and the early red variety is sprouting pretty purple flowers.
Some of the bigger tomatoes are flowering, too. I still keep the row cover around them because we get a lot of wind in our garden and this time of year it is often a chilly wind. You can go here to see how I plant tomatoes so that they thrive – and why planting under cover is a good idea.
I have all different sizes of tomatoes this year since I failed to start any from seed. Thankfully I got some small starts from my friend, Shannan, and then I bought some gallon-sized tomatoes as well as some regular-sized ones that were more economically priced.
It will be fun to see the differences in ripening depending on the size they were when I planted them.
What do you have growing in your gardens?
I’m just a wee bit jealous of your strawberries being ready. š One or two of mine are just getting some color — can’t wait! The warm weather we’re expecting later this week to welcome summer should do its ripening job, and then we’ll be eating some berries! Other garden news for us is that our corn is up! We’ve fed seedlings to the local birds, too, so we always put bird netting over ours when we plant to avoid the frustration of replanting. Today we’ll be putting down eggshell around our lettuce as the slugs think we planted it just for them — can you believe that? haha! Thanks so much for hosting! ~Lisa
Oh the slugs always seem to be lying in wait to take over the garden, don’t they? If you look close, you can see all the holes in the outside cabbage leaves- I’ve got to put down some more sluggo. It’s a never-ending battle this time of year.
Good idea on the bird netting – sounds much easier to lay out than my rusty, rolled up and heavy wire fencing. š
You’ll never regret using the bird netting! I should do a post about that one day soon. Too late for this season, but it would likely be a blessing to others for next year!
Very impressive… You’ve got a lot going on and it all looks so good! We have similar growing climate.. I’m in the Northeast and June is also my favorite month for my shrubs and perennial gardens…This year we added 8 large 4×12 raised beds in our backyard for cut-flowers, herbs and vegetables…I’m sharing the latest here today! Thank you for hosting! Have a great week!
My favorite day of the week! I love the pictures of your garden. We have had an early season here, today I’ll be canning, can you believe it! I’m making SF Cherry Pie filling, and dill pickled peas. We also have a ton of strawberries this year, that’s been fun for the kids. I’ve already picked about a dozen cherry tomatoes off of one of our plants. This should be an awesome canning season with everything doing so well.
I have a question on starting your own plants. I tried it for the first time this year and I’ve found that my starts seem weaker, smaller trunk stems than the store bought starts. Is there anything I can do to make them better when I start them?
Wow, Sakura, tomatoes already…sigh. I will be canning that rhubarb chutney this week (that I talked about a couple weeks ago) and freezing strawberries, so I know what you mean that the season has started (I’ve already put up some pickled asparagus). Fun times ahead. š
As for your starts, I’ve gotten the best results when I keep the light source close to the top of the seedlings so they don’t have to reach toward any light – and fed them weekly with a diluted solution of fish emulsion. Get the odor-free kind, though, if the seed bed is in the house, ’cause that stuff is stinky! š