Garden Roundup for June

During the month of June, our chickens laid 92 eggs, all of which made it to the house.  I don’t know if one or two of them weren’t feeling well, because we usually get 3-4 eggs a day, but there were several days we only got 2.  And I couldn’t find any other nests in their usual spots.  But lately we’ve been back to 3-4.  At first I wondered if it was the heat, but the last couple of days have been the hottest, and we got 4 eggs each day.

Last month I said I only needed to plant our second batch of sweet corn and some potatoes.  Well, I planted the corn, but only six or seven stalks have grown.  Which is better than the 0 from the first batch.  We had bad luck with corn last year, so I don’t know what’s going on.  Two years ago, I finally finished off a big bag of corn we got, like ten years ago, and we always had good germination from it.  But these last two years I’ve only bought the little bags, but I may have to go back to the big bags.  Or find out where my sister got her corn, because they have a good crop coming.  As to the potatoes, other stuff happened in June, so we never got around looking for seed potatoes.  But, last year we also had trouble with our potatoes.  They sprouted, but never got that big and got lost in the weeds.  I tried digging some, but barely got anything, so I forgot about them.  But apparently, they produced some potatoes that survived the winter, and a rototilling, to grow in a couple of rows that I just noticed a week or so ago.  Some of them have already grown bigger than what they did last year, so maybe we’ll get some potatoes out of them.

Things I’ve harvested in June: more leaf lettuce, a few turnips, some onions, red currants, red raspberries, and blueberries.  I’m not sure what happened with our currants.  Usually, the plants are just loaded and I pick a few containers before I eventually give up.  But this year I think I picked eight.  Not eight containers, eight currants.  I don’t know if we had a late frost that hit at the wrong time, or we had a week or so of heavy rain that maybe knocked the berries off, or if the birds – which usually eat some but not enough to notice – had to eat them because whatever they normally eat wasn’t ripe on time.  It’s a bit depressing, but I guess it just means the hours I usually spend picking currants can now be spent picking raspberries or blueberries.  Joy.

A couple of days after I post this, I’ll probably be picking our first peas.  And a week from not I might have a zucchini.  So that’s good.