June Garden Update: Our harvest this month
Hello hello!!!! Hope everyone had an amazing 4th of July!
We spent the evening with my family. The kids swam, jumped on the trampoline, we BBQ’ed, made s’mores, set off some fireworks, and hit up the local Deer Park firework show. It was a day well spent!
I tried in vane to get this post up last Wednesday but my allergies were so bad that I was down for the count most of the week. Who else has had killer allergies this year? Since I’ve lived in town mine haven’t been that bad, but man did they hit me last week! For some reason it settled in my chest and I had the worst cough. I’ll spare you the details. For that reason I’ve been off my game. I didn’t get my post up like planned, so here it for you this today! I wanted to talk about garden harvests and hope you’ll chime in in the comments below and share your report!
This past month we’ve been able to enjoy lots of yummy goodness out of our backyard garden/orchard. For those of you new here, I live in Washington state, which is a zone 6 on the plant hardiness scale. Because of that our garden tends to start a little later than others across the U.S. We get COLD over here in the winters! This spring was extra wet and long as well so planting started a little late.
March Progress:
June Progress:
By far our biggest harvest this month was from the cherry tree. It produced the most it ever has, so I guess it was okay with the wet spring.
We’ve been snacking on cherries since about mid June.
Besides cherries we’ve also had a good lettuce harvest going. I’ve haven’t purchased lettuce in over a month now which has been so nice! I have a secondary batch growing for when the first bunch stops producing.
Also growing great are our radishes! I’ve been having them all sorts of ways: With hummus, just raw, in salads, etc. They are so good. Who doesn’t love a satisfying, crunchy veggie? I planted two more rows a couple weeks ago so I’ll have lots more starting the end of July.
Our herbs have also been doing great! Cilantro bounced back from it’s early chicken attack, (chickens LOVE cilantro. Who knew right?) and is thriving now. We also have fresh basil which I always throw into my salads, parsley, sage, and mint. I’m going to attempt to freeze/dry some of these for the winter. Anyone have tips or attempted harvesting herbs before?
Basil
Cilantro
Mint
Parsley
Also just coming on the end of last month were the raspberries. I don’t think we’ll have enough to harvest for jam this year, but the kids sure love picking fresh berries and popping them into their mouth while playing in the backyard.
Coming soon are peaches, tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, and squash. I didn’t think we’d have any peaches this year after our tree had a bad case of leaf rot brought on by the super wet spring. But, a few treatments later and it bounced back great! Our yield will be a quarter of what it was last year, but I’ll take all the fresh home grown fruit our little tree will give!
And that’s about it for our harvest report so far! We are planning on heading up to Green Bluff soon to pick strawberries and make jam. I haven’t been strawberry picking up there since before Tyrion was born, and that’s just unacceptable!
What have you harvested so far? How healthy has your garden been this year? What have you struggled with? I’d love to hear!
Hope you have relaxing day recovering from all the 4th fun!
I hope you’re feeling better! Your garden is thriving! I love it…I’d be making guacamole around the clock with all of that cilantro! Cherries are so expensive…I’m sure you’re thrilled to have your own. My parents have some trees, but the birds always seem to get most of them. Any advice I can pass along to them?
It’s kinda a race with the birds for us too. They get the top third, there’s no helping it. I go out daily and the minute they are ripe I pluck them off before the birds get a chance. We also have a dog that’s bird obsessed and runs and the tree lunging to try to get them, so that helps. 😉
Eryn, your garden is coming along beautifully!!! Mine is starting to look as beautiful as it is producing and both seem to be as important to me as the other:-) my advice about your mint though is to plant it in its own raised bed or a pot because it spreads like wildfire and will take over everything! Same with cilantro:-/ It looks awesome though! Your lettuce is amazing!
Jillynn
Thank you!! Last year was not the greatest for our garden so this year I’m super proud of how well it’s going!
It looks beautiful! I’m jealous of the fresh raspberries! My kids eat berries like they are going out of style. I have to look into how to grow them in our climate!
Raspberries grow so well here! They like slightly acidic soil. I bought a small one stem shrub three years ago and it morphed into a whole berry patch! Amazing!
Love this. There is nothing quite like home grown hens and produce. And so jealous of the cherry tree!!! Can’t wait until we’re able to have a little garden. Love the the printable she too. I’ll definitely be signing up.
Looks great! I love to follow you on Instagram stories and see all the progress you are making in your garden. My “garden” is a plastic kiddie pool with banana peppers, kidney beans and 1 corn stalk lol These are all from my kids science experiments from school. So fun to grow your own food!
In our h season at the garden, we delivered 1,740 pounds of produce to the food pantry.
That’s crazy amazing!!!!! What a blessing to others! Such a good idea for any extra produce!
Beautiful garden! I’m hoping to have a thriving garden like this some day. I grew up with one and a home isn’t complete without one, in my mind!