2010 Garden Journal - June
June 4 - we have finally received some rain with more than 75mm over the past 5 days. The vegetable garden is looking great except for some bug or animal damage to the pole bean and kohlrabi sprouts. The potatoes have all sprouted with the exception of a half a row of Yukon Gold. Luckily we have plenty of extra potatoes to plant a second row. The early peas are already forming pods.
June 5 - Many of the shrubs in the gardens have become a bit overgrown so I decided to spend some time this year doing some heavy pruning. I severely cut back all the purple sandcherries and in fact cut to within 2 feet the sandcherries on the east side of the house. I also pruned the Miss Kim Lilacs reducing their size by about two feet. We replanted some pole bean and kohlrabi seeds to replace the damaged seedlings and put a fence around the peas to keep the chipmunks from beating us to the peas.
June 7 - I finally replaced the Little Henry Sweetspire in the Patio Garden. While I loved the look of this shrub in fall as it turns a translucent red, it was just not very nice the remainder of the season. Every spring I experienced winter die-back of one-half to two-thirds of the branches depending upon how much snow cover we had that winter. Then the bottom growth did not leaf out until very late May. In addition, the plant spreads vigorously by underground runners. While I expected the plant to spread I did not expect small 'tufts' of new plants popping up all over the place. So, out it came and in it's place I put 8 large Green Velvet Boxwood. These will look nice outside the kitchen window providing some much needed evergreen colour in that garden.
June 7 - Added three tomato plants picked up from the nursery today: Carolina Gold, Sweet Million cherry, and a yellow pear tomato.
June 7/8 - replaced Little Henri Sweetspire with 8 Green Velvet Boxwoods in the Kitchen Patio Garden.
June 8 - fertilized lawn again with 9 bags of Scotts.
June 13 - first mounding of potatoes.
June 16 - first snow peas ready in the garden. Regular peas were once again eaten by the chipmunks before we could get to them despite 1/4 inch wire fencing. I covered the sugar snap peas with flexible netting to see if that works better.
June 16/17 - removed weeping Japanese Maple from front walkway due to severe winter die back. The entire area was redesigned around a Red Prince Weigela. I also removed Carefree Beauty Roses from the front gardens as these just do not seem to survive our winter winds. I replaced these with another Red Prince Weigela. The front walkway now has three Red Prince even spaced throughout the garden.
June 18 - picked first ripe red tomato! Small cucumber also on the vine and a few kholrabi are ready to be picked.
June 20 - second mounding of potatoes. We used well composted material from our original compost pile, sifted to remove any twigs.
June 26 - picked the last of the snow peas and sugar snap peas. The netting helped keep the chipmunk away from the sugar snap peas although he nibbled a few. Next year we have to build a taller climbing apparatus that will also allow us to more easily apply and remove the netting. While I removed the sugar snap pea vines (they were actually starting to rot on the bottom, I think from being confined by the netting), I only cut back the snow peas and regular peas as an experiment to see if they will resprout for a fall harvest.
June 26 - planted last two rows of potatoes (Yukon Gold and Norland) and topped up mounding of early plants slightly.
June 27 - planted succession rows of lettuce, spinach, beets. We also replanted some purple haze carrots to fill in the row as these did not germinate well.
June 30 - last day of June and we ate our first zucchini -- a sure sign that summer is here. Pruned weigela to encourage more colourful leaf growth after enjoying the flowers for the past three weeks.
By the end of June we have been consistently eating a variety of greens, we were just finishing up the peas and have been eating kholrabi, some tomatoes and cucumbers and even one zucchini.
Temperatures varied during June with a cooler period early in the month followed by higher than normal temperatures for most of the second half of June. Our average maximum temperature for June 2010 was 24.2C with an extreme high of 29.4C on June 23. We received almost double the norm in rainfall however, which saw the gardens through the heat spell very well. In total we received 165.5mm of rain in June compared to a norm of 83.9mm.
