Here are the latest pictures from our backyard garden beds.

Here’s one of the beds with the floating row covers in place.  Floating row covers are pretty cool.  They’re so light that they just “float” on top of everything, and rise along with the growing plants.  Definitely $10 well spent.  I’m glad I left them full-sized and didn’t cut them down to fit the beds originally, because now the one on the west bed is just big enough to cover it well.  We’ll have to remove that one soon, because the peas are just starting to bloom, and if they’re covered the bees won’t be able to pollinate them.

These are all the radishes from the first square, except that one I pulled last time.  As you can see, they didn’t make much of a root.  The tops are huge, and they were starting to bolt and go to seed, so they weren’t going to get any better.  I think that means there’s too much nitrogen in the soil compared to the levels of potassium and/or potash.  We’ll see how the turnips, carrots, and later radishes do.  The chickens got to enjoy this batch.

The radishes are gone from this area, and everything else is getting bigger.  Their square will probably get a basil plant.  There’s a new paprika pepper transplanted into the front square where leaf lettuce didn’t come up.  The Swiss chard is big enough to pick a small batch soon.

This isn’t as much of a jungle as it looks like in the picture.  The garlic and onions are kind of sprawling, mostly because of that one time Pepper thought the floating row cover was a bed for her to sleep on.  But the peas are growing well and starting to bloom, and they don’t like too much sun anyway.  We’ll be trying the mesculine lettuce in a salad very soon.

This is the north side of that bed.  There are tomatoes in all the north squares except the one with the thyme plant.  They were growing pretty slowly in the cool weather, but they’re starting to take off now.

This section looks a lot better than last time.  All the shallots are alive and growing.  The head lettuce is bouncing back from being transplanted.  The peas still look very rough from bird damage, but they’re growing.  The other two paprika peppers are now in this area too.

The pole beans and replanted bush beans came up when we finally got some sun, and they’re growing fast now.  They may need a little thinning, and the pole beans will need a trellis in a few weeks.

I hadn’t been watering these plants very often, because where they were sitting near the edge of the porch, they were catching enough moisture to keep them going in cool weather.  But the first hot day really gave them a beating.  I watered them after I took this picture, and they looked fine an hour later.