Garden Update Jerry Apps Photo

 Garden Update   Jerry Apps Photo

How does your garden grow?  My dad often said June was the magical month for vegetable gardening.  It is the month with the most daylight hours, with the longest day of the year on June 21. What Dad meant was you’d better have finished replanting any vegetable seeds that hadn’t come up.  And, perhaps most importantly you’ve got to get rid of the weeds.  It seems that weeds have a nasty habit of growing faster than vegetables.  If not removed, and removed often, weeds will kill vegetables faster than any bug or disease.  How?  By cutting off the much-needed light that all vegetables need to grow and thrive, and stealing nutrients from the soil that all plants need to grow.

In mid-June, with four inches of rain falling within a ten-day period, our garden is thriving.  So far, we have harvested lettuce.  Nothing tastes better than leaf lettuce cut from the garden and eaten an hour later. The potato crop looks especially good, as do the tomatoes.  The sweet corn seems a little sluggish in getting going this year.  I doubt it will be knee high by the Fourth of July—the goal for all corn growers in Wisconsin.

I want to commend my son, Steve and daughter-in-law, Natasha, as they are the primary caretakers of our big Roshara Garden.  I call them “Weed Warriors.”  Roto-tilling, hoeing, and “down on your knees weed pulling” are what’s necessary to be a “Weed Warrior.” A weed doesn’t have a chance in our garden.

Those reading my previous garden reports will recall the bunny problem we had last year.  They ate almost everything green and growing—save for sweet corn, tomatoes, potatoes and vine crops.  This year, Steve added a third wire to our electric fence that surrounds our garden.  The new wire is about four inches from the ground, and so far, fingers crossed, no bunny has tried to crawl over or under it—as best we can tell.  We’ll see what the following months have to offer.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Vegetable gardening—each year the same, each year different.

WHERE TO BUY MY BOOKS:

 Have you seen, GARDEN WISDOM, my book where I share some of what I have learned about gardening? You can buy my books at your local bookstore. order online from bookshop.org, or purchase from the Friends of the Patterson Memorial Library in Wild Rose—a fundraiser for them. Phone: 920-622-3835 for prices and ordering, or contact the librarian: barnard@wildroselibrary.
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984.
www.wildroselibrary.org

If you live in the western part of the state, stop at Ruth’s home town, Westby, visit Dregne’s.  and look at their great selection of my books. Order a book from them by calling 1-877-634-4414. They will be happy to help you.  If you live in northcentral Wisconsin, stop at the Janke bookstore in Wausau (phone 715-845-9648).  They have a large selection of my books.