Wonderful Harvests Continuing with Strawberries, Lettuce, and More

The garden has been quite well and it looks like I am just about done planting all my summer crop plants for the season. I have already had several harvests of different fruit and vegetables and I have been enjoying their flavor through the past month. There are just a few things I need to do like stake my tomatoes, possibly add mulch to my corn and other plants that would benefit from it, and set up my bean trellis which shouldn’t take that long.

Now that all my plants and seeds have been planted in the soil it was time to start picking some harvests that were ready for consumption. First came my strawberries which were had been for quite some time, but I like them to wait until there are plenty of them ripe enough to harvest. I have had three harvests of strawberries and it looks like that will be all for this season. This is actually the best season for strawberries since I first planted them a couple of years ago. I had two four pounds harvests and one five.

Lettuce was next which I like to wait until they get plenty of leaves and I have time to give
them much lime in order to prevent them from being bitter. After planting seven types of lettuce the last thing I need is to have bitter tasting lettuce leaves. Since it has been raining quite often I haven’t had to give them any manure tea or fish/seaweed emulsion. They seem to keep producing and I will continue picking them until the heat makes them go to seed.

Yesterday I picked the first batch of pea pods. I was going to just give them some kelp meal until I saw that many of the plants had fruit that need to be harvested. Two pounds is good for a first harvest and I plan on getting many more especially with the addition of kelp meal which will help them to produce flowers.

At the moment it looks like I will be picking lettuce for the foreseeable future along with pea pods while waiting for everything else to mature and produce fruit for the summer.