Things are coming along okay. Just about everything I transplanted looks to have made the transition just fine, and is looking good. I still need to plant a few more cucumbers – I’m staggering those, and I did the first half about three weeks ago – and some chard to fill in the spots where nothing came up.
Beans are climbing, though I’ve had to deal with a minor bean leaf beetle infestation. I spent about an hour last week, one night after dark, picking them off the leaves (maybe a couple dozen?), and I think I’ve only seen one since then. The peas seem to grow several inches every day, and are now as tall (or taller) than I am, and we picked the first snap last week, just to taste 🙂 We should be ready to pick enough for dinner sometime in the next couple days. The shell peas have lots of pods, but nothing big enough to pick and shell yet.
The spinach was a big disappointment – as I’ve mentioned earlier, most of it came up just fine, but never grew. They’re all still just sitting there, the biggest is maybe a baseball-sized clump. Not sure what happened there, but I’ll see if I can fix it in time to plant a fall crop. Lettuce is kind of in the same boat, but that is at least big enough that we can eat some of it. Because these are all new gardens, I’m going to try to pick up an at-home soil test kit since I don’t really know what I might be lacking. Probably something I should have done before I planted anything… oh well.
We’ve had a decent mix of sun and rain recently, though we’re still a bit on the dry side lately. Figures, after all the rain we had in the spring. Happy gardening!
Very few things as satisfying as beans and peas starting to produce, and as part of the bargain they deliver valuable nitrogen into the soil. One of my favorite vegetables to grow.
I know how you feel with the spinach, same thing happened to me!
I have never tried growing spinach but I seem to have the same issue with my oriental mustard greens (Tah Tsoi). It started fine but stayed quite small until they finally bolted. The peas growing near them are thriving, however.