Will There Be Any Pickles?

I have been bonding with the roadside vegetable garden this week, spending some quality time in my almost oasis of order in the wildness that surrounds me.

That tall thing on the right is a parsnip that overwintered and that I am letting go to seed. You might say even in the vegetable garden I have troubles being ruthless and getting rid of living plants.

The one sunflower in this year's roadside vegetable garden is on the left. Not many came up this year. I think the seeds are lying in wait to taunt me in later years under the fresh layer of wood chips.

I did a little weeding, very little, there aren't that many. I planted more tomatoes and the cucumbers grown from seed in flats this year instead of direct sowing. One drawback to the wood chip mulch is that it does favor a certain amount of sluggage and a high number of rolly pollies. They love nothing better than germinating seeds. If I can get the seedlings to the hardened off stage they get left alone. This year I seeded a number of things in trays on top of the gravel of the septic tank where they would be safer to avoid the torment of disappearing seedlings.

I say almost oasis of order. A near whole row of potatoes came up from ones I evidently missed when harvesting last year. The potatoes are actually becoming a bit of a pest. I always miss a few it seems. They overwinter and come back up in the spring. I couldn't bare to yank free potatoes. I just tucked some of the extra cucumbers in to the thinner parts of the free potato row.

I planted a whole row of cucumbers and then some and still have extras. I may plant the remainder in the sewer line bed. The last two years have been pathetic for cucumbers. As soon as they get going they have gotten the wilt. The harvest was terrible and there were not enough to make pickles. Will we get pickles this year?

This is a parsnip blooming. It is obviously in the Apiaceae or carrot family. Maybe the parsnips will go wild and I can start foraging for them in a few years.

The store bought tomatoes are already a nice size and blooming. I hope the newly planted seedling tomatoes will extend the tomato season. I live next door to a tomato fiend. She'll eat tomatoes morning, noon and night when they are picked ripe from the vine.

I have to remind myself most vegetables are warm season crops and this is only the second week of June, a mere three and a half weeks past our average last frost date. Compared to the Lush most of the vegetable garden is still tiny. I have to contend with the cool of my higher elevation too. That can slow things down.

I need to find room for another row of parsnips. Did I put anything in the fading radish row?

Two of these Eryngium 'Big Blue' followed me home from a nursery a few weeks back. They have settled in nicely. I hope to see them grow taller and more robust in the years to come. They will have to compete with the Lush to stand out.

See what I mean. They are in there off to the left down slope just a bit along with another native I added, Boltonia asteroides.

The hundreds of daylilies will be blooming soon adding another layer of color to the organized chaos outside the more ordered bounds of the roadside vegetable garden. A lot of the traffic on the scenic byway will slow down to rubberneck. Flowers work better than speed bumps on some folks.