It should be flip flop wearing weather, but instead the weather has been flip flopping. June is always a rainy month for us, but this year the rain held off until the end of the month, and even then it is more a threat than a reality. We have been expecting rain all week, and it certainly looks like rain, but so far it has amounted to very little actual rain fall at our house.

Due to this rain, we have had a slight delay in our wall building. Our hopes were to have the newest wall completely filled by yesterday, but we are just shy of that goal, with two sections still waiting to be filled. Unfortunately, the rain did come on the day that we had set aside to finish these sections. Not to worry, we are going into the Canada Day weekend, so with our extra day, we will get the wall finished.

The plants are loving the warm, wet, weather we have been having. Our harvests of delicious food is increasing and it looks like it will continue to do so over the next few weeks.

The potato towers needed to have another board added. The potato plants are growing really well, and have nice bushy tops to them. Hopefully our plan with the hay provides a large haul this year, it definitely has been helping with the speed at which our plants our growing.

The strawberries continue to produce. We have a harvest of strawberries every 3-4 days. Most of them are being frozen for some jam making in the fall. The hay has been doing a great job at keeping not only the weeds down, but also the creeper vines limited. In fact, we have not seen many vines growing off the plants at all. The plants instead, are using all their energy on the berries, which is exactly what we want.

Our tomato plants all have lots of flowers with a few of the plants having tomatoes growing. Our cherry tomato plants have the most amount of tomatoes growing with some beginning to turn orange. One of our beefsteak plants has now started a tomato as well.

We have started picking our peas, which are so tasty. The peas are continuing to grow up the backs of the raised beds and more flowers are blooming. I love these crispy little treats. I often end up eating a bunch of them while doing work in the yard, but some make it to the kitchen for stir-fry or veggies and dip for lunch.

The carrots are coming along nicely. We should have a harvest of those in another month, then we will start planting the next batch.

Our onions are growing big again. Last year the green stems were up to my shoulders, so we will see how big they get this year. The onions ended up also being really big last year. While we are waiting for the onions, we use the green tops for salads and adding into our cooking.

The squash plant (Patty Pan) is beginning to take-over its area. I’ve had to cut back a few of the leaves because they were shading our pepper plants. Depending on how the summer goes, I may have to transplant a few of the pepper plants to the other side of the garden bed to make sure they don’t get overwhelmed by the squash plant.

My one and only cucumber plant is finally starting to grow. I will have to keep an eye on it as well for the next little bit as it is also close to the squash plant. I think once it starts vining, it won’t be a problem. Our past years cucumbers intertwined and few in and out of the rocks, so I’m pretty sure we will be good there. It has room to stretch out.

Our pepper plants are looking great. They aren’t really growing big, but they are definitely producing lots of vegetables. We have a sweet pepper that is steadily growing in size. I can’t wait to harvest it. The banana pepper plants are currently exploding with vegetables. I don’t thinks the plants themselves grew much, but they are definitely providing a lot of peppers.

It is getting to the exciting part of having a garden, the harvesting and eating of all the home-grown food. I decided to weigh all of our harvests this year to see how much of each vegetable, herb and fruit we manage to grow. I think it will be interesting to keep those records and compare from year to year. Enjoy your weekend!