Spring garden progress is happening

Snow peas!

The spring has brought its share of challenges, beginning  with earlier than normal warm weather in February, drought, and killing frost in March.
 
 Lately we've been so busy in the garden we haven't had time to post.

 


Overall the weather enabled us to clean
up the garden and prepare the beds. We harvested  most of the winter onions as green, leaving some to mature along with garlic which we had also planted last fall.

The first spring crop to be planted was snow peas, and we built an improved pea support using bamboo. Working with bamboo was another challenge, but it did go up and is serving its purpose.

Snow peas support

Red and Green Kale

The drought slowed germination and growth of crops. Timely rains have finally arrived, and now that frost danger is past we'll have our irrigation on again. We have an abundance of greens and have begun harvesting lettuce, spinach, kale and snow peas. We are grateful for the abundance of early produce.

Our current challenge is cabbage loopers which are raising havoc with some cabbage, but we are working to limit the damage using BT a biological control.

                                                                   There is never a dull moment at Koinonia Community Garden.

Peas & lettuce out, cucumbers & beans in

This week brought the end of lettuce for our spring garden.  We harvested the last of the first planting of peas, and took out the plants.  We planted cucumbers and our first planting of green beans.  Next come the second planting of sweet corn and okra, as the last peas go out, probably the end of this week.
Little of our abundance goes to waste. Most of the lettuce and lots of peas went to the local food pantry, along with a large bag of Swiss chard picked this morning. The carrots are coming in, and more beets too.
We're seeing our first challenges from pests.  We lost two tomato plants to a disease that is spread by thrips.
And, we've destroyed Japanese Beetles that attacked the basil, eggplant and tomatoes.
It's all good.

Time for hot weather crops of summer

Summertime is nearly upon us, as our garden crops respond to the changing seasons.  We've been inundated with more lettuce than we can harvest and give away.  Spinach bolted and went out last week. 

Today we harvested the first banana peppers of the season, along with more chard, beets, peas, and of course lettuce.The next week is forecast to be much hotter than it has been with some rain possible.  Still we must water the corn as it has only started coming up and it may not withstand the temperatures near one hundred degrees.