I am still planning to plant some beans, as I have for the past week. I had visitors this evening, just as I had prepared the groove in the soil for my bunching onions. The beans were supposed to be next. And then supper. But I didn't get anything planted and didn't have supper until after 2100. Long after I was famished. Itty Bitty didn't get her walk either.
I did get around to checking all my tomato plants. I've been having flowers for weeks, but not one tomato has set. The plants are becoming more like bushes. I can only assume and wish for the tomatoes to produce a lot of fruit very soon.
I think all the plants seem to be rejuvenated after the rains we had last week, so my optimism hasn't been severed. The squash have especially taken on a vigorous growth spurt. Surprisingly, the peas look the same size as they did a couple days ago. The broccoli is growing big leaves, but I don't know that they will survive the June heat. The row of radish in between my squash plants have healthy looking leaves. I planted white radishes to motivate me to try eating a few. But I think most will be given away. I only grew them because they are supposedly good companion plants for the squash.
I saw a lot of bees and hundreds of ladybugs in March and April. Today, I saw one ladybug that I tried to follow with my camera, but it never landed on anything and I nearly became cross-eyed in the endeavor. I haven't seen many bees in the past two weeks or so. The grasshoppers are plentiful still. On my walks, I have seen many robins capturing them. But, as there are few mature trees around my home, I have not seen any robins here. The birds I have seen are too small to eat the grasshoppers, except maybe the smallest ones.
It looks like my chamomile, feverfew and echinacea are all making an appearance in the herb bed. I'm looking forward to chamomile tea and the chamomile is a lot like basil as companion plants for nearly everything.
Oh, I've been watching the melon patch closely because my rows of watermelon and cantaloupe seem to have a bunch of different plants in them that I don't think are melons. I started the melons from seed in pots. Whatever is growing alongside them don't look like arugula, amaranth, sunflowers, or weeds. So I am very curious what they are. At the end of the melon rows/hills, I planted borage. I didn't think they made it and were choked out by sunflowers. I decided to let the sunflowers grow. Now that they are a good size, I can tell that they are not sunflowers. These plants look like a darker green than I remember from growing borage in Denver. But I have to wait and see. I tried planting quite a bit in the melon patch to attract pollinators. And then I planted even more along one edge of the patch with some white clover. I haven't planted borage and clover together, but my plan was to let the clover spread through the melon patch after the melons were done harvesting to have something to turn over into the soil to replenish it a little. The clover seemed to fit the bill, as well as being attractive to pollinators. I could let the borage reseed, but I prefer to collect some seeds for next year because I might re-configure? the melon patch. That means that all but the one small bit of borage and clover will be tilled in with the very thick layers of straw.
I think the melon bed might be where I rotate my tomatoes and peppers to next year. Which is why I wanted to plant herbs that would nourish the soil and be beneficial if any reseeded.
