June Garden Update

Patience, patience, patience. A necessary trait for home gardeners, especially if you’re starting from seed. That’s one of the biggest lessons I’m learning here in our first year of gardening. Things are growing, but slowwwwwly. The weather has been a challenge, and apparently many gardeners in my area (Pittsburgh) are experiencing similar problems. We had a crazy heat wave, like 90’s at the end of May. No rain, then tons of rain, then cold nights, now back to somewhat normal.

Potato bed is thriving, but is also the biggest problem spot for garden bugs

I’m trying to give myself some grace, but it’s hard when it’s almost July, and all we’ve really harvested is a little spinach, 2 carrots, and a handful of peas. Where are the tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, all the bounty?? We “cheated” and bought a couple plants. A poblano pepper, parsley, peppermint, and rosemary. Been using the herbs a bit, and topping off the poblano to let the plant itself get bigger before it starts producing vegetables.

You can see some of the tomato plants in the left bed have been growing. But the peppers in the right bed are just chilling there

The tomato plants are started to grow some, but the various squash and peppers seem to just be sitting kind of still. I know the potatoes and carrots are growing, but since we’re waiting for them to grow and ripen, haven’t really seen the results yet. Still, when I go back and look at pictures from a month ago, there’s a big change. I just wonder how the people I follow on Instagram and listen to on podcasts are harvesting so much already.

The peas have been producing nicely for us though! I’m going to look into how late I can plant more

It’s okay, I’m fortunate. I don’t rely on this food to feed my family or anything like that. When I don’t have tomatoes in the garden, I get them from the store. But the primary motivation to start a garden was to save that money at the grocery store, so I’m still anxiously looking forward to the day when I can use more of my own home-grown produce. Can’t wait to see what the July garden update looks like! Photo dump below 🙂