June is one of my favourite gardening months, not just for the organic vegetables which I have grown and started to harvest, but also for sheer burst of colours in the flower borders, and the wildlife activity going on right here.
Greenhouse in June
I particularly enjoy the evenings when I come back from work and go straight out to check if there are any strawberries ready for harvest.
We’ve had our first pea harvest which was so tasty that you can actually eat peas uncooked, but the quantity was rather disappointing – a big shelling job for a couple of handfuls of peas. I am considering sowing some snap peas next time.
We are finishing up the last of the green cabbage this week (much to everybody’s delight!). The rest of it has been ravaged by the white butterfly caterpillars and will probably end up in the compost bin too.
One of my favourite vegetables which I can hardly find in supermarkets: the artichokes have done really well this year. I have started to harvest a few heads and had to scrub off the black flies from a few heads but otherwise they are very tasty.
Artichoke Plant
The roses are looking great at this time of year and my flower borders are filling up nicely. My favourite rose this year is called Jude the Obscure, for its delicate scent and lovely shaped flowers.
My red oriental poppies all came up and now have gone very quickly so I didn’t even have a chance to take a picture. But I did finish planting all the flowers which I had sown indoors back in spring including the asters and more recently some zinnias which I have simply placed along the garden path.
The coming week is forecast to be a hot one, so I shall give the diary a rest to go and water my vegetables.
This is my first year growing peas and I am not sure when to harvest them. Do I wait until all of them are plump and how plump is enough? One more question about oriental poppies. My neighbor’s gave me some seed pods from her spent poppies and I am wondering could I plant them this year? Do I need to dry out the seeds first, or can I just plant the whole seed pod in the ground? Thanks for your blog! I learn an quite a bit just from reading it! Kate
Hello,
I am glad to hear that you find this garden diary useful to you . With regards to the peas I think that it is likely that they are ready now. If the pea pods are roughly the size of your little finger in terms of thickness then I suggest that you open up one and taste it. They are actually quite nice eaten raw and some chefs do serve them in salads. You can then see if they are the size of normal peas or a bit too small.
Last year I left my peas for too long and some of them became hard and full of worms. So I definitely recommend tasting them now.
With regards to the poppies, I guess it depends on what type of poppies they are. Standard poppies and Californian poppies are easy to grow from seeds and are usually sown in spring. I’ve also got some Oriental poppies but I bought the plants from a nursery.
Poppy seeds are normally quite small so I personally would be careful about not covering with too much soil. It may be worth saving a few just in case the first lot does not germinate.
I hope this helps! Enjoy the garden! Sandy