June is possibly the best time of the year in the garden. It certainly is a month for flowers. The spring vegetables are being harvested and plantings for late summer and fall are now undertaken.
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| Echinacea, penstemon, rudbeckia, coreopsis, and purple poppy mallow. |
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| Native purple poppy mallow in May |
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| Native Purple Poppy Mallow in June |
This year the noble Penstemon have a strong presence in the native garden. Below are Penstemon cobaea (Purple Beardtongue) and Penstemon digitalis (Foxglove Beardtongue). A large number of the native wildflowers in our gardens, including the Foxglove Beardtongue, were gifts shared from parishioners wanting to help us fill our landscape.
Sharing perennials is a great way to bring joy to other people. Thank you, dear friends!
Grow Native Flowers!
Growing wildflowers in their native climate and ecology means less work for you. The plants grow and flourish, and have greater resistance to disease.
Click here to purchase purple poppy mallow, Penstemon cobaea, and Penstemon digitalis.
My herbs are also flowering: sage, lavender, chamomile, and cilantro. I will collect coriander from the cilantro once the plants seed out. On pleasant afternoons, my children and I gather the chamomile flowers to dry and make tea. ⎯Children love to pick flowers!
Still Very Rainy
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| Just under 3" of rain yesterday, alone! |
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| Your tomatoe plants are droopy? Let me cheer you up! |
Huge Strawberry Harvest
The strawberry patch has been producing wildly since mid-May. Distracted by school events and some sickness, the patch has not been properly picked.
Despite that, we did get nearly 15 gallons of strawberries over the course of the season, and I made several quarts of jam.
Strawberries bruise easily, I've learned, so it's best to pick them in a flat container, not a plastic bag. They taste a bit watery with lots of rain, but are really tasty after a few days of sunshine!
Recently, though, I viewed a recommendation¹ from no-dig gardener Charles Dowding about cutting the strawberry plants down to 1 inch above the roots and composting the tops, to prevent runners. So, that will be my new action plan.
For maintenance, I cover the patch each fall with plenty of leaves. These degrade over time into the soil and eventually feed the plants. Otherwise, I have left the patch alone.
Learning About No-Dig
Charles Dowding has raised quality, organic vegetables for over 40 years using no-dig methods, and has shared his qualitative gardening expertise.
Read more about Charles Dowding's No-Dig method in his book, "No Dig".
Other Harvests
Radishes, spinach, and pak choi have been harvested completely out of the garden in May, as have most of the overwintered lettuces and spinaches, in order to make room for new vegetables. However, fennel and kale are still being harvested. These were planted last winter.
Spring plantings of lettuce, peas, turnips and broad beans are now ready for harvest.
The broad beans are an exciting addition to the spring vegetable beds. They can be eaten as tender beans right away once the pods swell or later if they are allowed to mature and harden. Cook them in oil with sausage and garlic for a pleasant lunch.
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| Broad beans |
March sowings of lettuce, orach, beets, carrots, and kale are nearly ready. Garlic, onions, and shallots should be finished by July.
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| Young Orach Plant |
You can purchase orach seed here. Germination rates, in my experience, are somewhat low. Using the baggy method, I have had success with growing these plants.
Kale is planted in my regular garden. However, this is the 2nd year in which I have planted kale in my shade garden as well. Traditional leafy greens don't like the intense sub-tropical heat of Missouri. The plants get eaten by bugs in the summer heat, yet the critters have mostly left my shade plants alone.
New Plantings
The last week of May lima beans and squash were planted in the ground and are currently germinating, as well as malabar spinach, a leafy green said to take intense heat.
I still would like to plant out rutabaga, corn and okra for the summer.
Hotbed
The hotbed was a success: it kept my frost-sensitive seedlings alive in early spring. But the hot bed has more to give!
Since I was a bit overwhelmed these past few weeks, I lazily threw last year's left over sweet potatoes and some extra tomato plants into the hotbed. While I am hoping the no dig approach loosens my soil over time, I am also hoping to yield an easy sweet potato harvest this year from the compost pile.
A melon plant or squash of some sort also started growing in the compost, and I am excited to watch it grow. It is already quite big. I have heard great things about accidental plantings from the compost bed.
The compost from the hotbed will be recycled next spring as a potting soil for seedlings, since I do not think that I will get enough compost out of it to lay over my garden.
See the March and May posts for more on the hotbed.
Bugs
The bugs have not really touched the cabbages, kale or broccoli yet. However, any uneaten spinach and totsoi plants have lots of damage, and I know the bugs are coming for the rest of my brassicas.
I could cover them with insect netting. However, I read that a simple salt water spray will dehydrate cabbage worms.
When I was in Iowa, I was advised to wait until after July 4th to plant zucchini and other squashes to prevent squash beetles. According to this strategy, the first round of squash bugs will already have come out, and not finding squashes in my garden, will have found someone else's garden to infest. (Sorry, whoever you are.)
Since I have had major problems with squash bugs the past few years, it is my plan this year to wait out the planting of zucchini.
The Big Cover Crop Experiment
I would like say the cover crop is a useful tool for a regular home gardener to use, but I am not sure right now if it has an advantage over simple mulching, especially with the timing. Cover crops are said to reduce pest pressure and promote soil structure and fertility.
Since my soil is compacted, last fall I started several new beds by tilling to aerate and remove the weeds. Then, to enhance the soil structure, I planted rye and clover which continued to grow over winter. In April, the crop was then cut down, and I covered the beds for about three weeks with black plastic.
However, when I pulled the covers off, I found the cover crop had not quite died off. I was impatient and had some tomatoes to plant, so I planted into the beds anyway.
The layer of mulch left on top of the beds was thin, so more mulch was needed. I was able to cover about half of the cover crop beds with grass but had to wait for new mowings to finish covering it.
Meanwhile, Rye has grown back in the uncovered beds. The vegetable transplants are looking great in the mulched beds, but are struggling in the un-mulched ones.
In retrospect, I think I should have waited longer to mow down the rye. It's recommended to wait until the rye gets to the milky stage before cutting it down, which will kill it. Also, perhaps I could have used clear plastic. This traps the heat, solarizing the soil within three weeks. The black plastic, which works by occluding the soil from sunlight, takes longer. I have two beds that still remain covered after 6 weeks, and the cover crop looks like it is now fully terminated.
See my May and March posts for more on the cover crop.
Animals
1. Charles Dowding. "Strawberry plants in summer, cut stems to the ground," Youtube, July 8, 2024, URL. DOA: June 4, 2025.