June Planting List – 2009

It’s official, Make McKinney Weird is one year old. OK, it’s not official. It will actually be on 8 June. But the June planting list is the first month that I’m circling back on information already discussed last year. Pretty cool.

There are two references I’m using, in order:
Collin County Master Gardeners
Dallas Planting Manual, The Dallas Garden Club of the Dallas Woman’s Club

I’ve put an asterisk by the ones I think I’ll be planting.

okra*
pumpkin*
squash

If you look at last year’s list, you’ll notice this one is much shorter. That’s because over the course of the last year, I realized that two of the four resources I was using were too general to be very useful in our little corner of the world. The two sources we’re left with (listed above), combined with my experiences and those of my neighbors, leaves me with what you see here. So my planting lists are improving. Go with the most recent one.

And I should note that this month, CCMG actually doesn’t recommending planting anything. They say to get your okra in by 1 June. And wait until July to put your squash and pumpkin. So if you feel like it, relax! You could have a lovely month of harvesting, with no planting chores to attend to. That’s OK, you’ll be busy enough keeping up with the watering. I looked at our electric bill yesterday, and from May to June we go from using almost no a/c to using it every day! So prepare yourself.

I harvested one last big batch of shelling peas a few days ago, then pulled up the plants. I’ll be adding compost and planting my okra in that spot today. I’ve been soaking the okra seeds. They germinate so much better when they’re soaked first. If you don’t soak them, be sure to keep the planting bed moist every single day. Trust me. I had to replant the entire okra bed last year. But that’s OK. They’re so forgiving. And they won’t grow much anyway, until it’s hot, hot, hot.

I also harvested the entire garlic bed this week. 54 heads of garlic, in 7 different varieties! Last year we had only 14 heads, and ran out of garlic early. This year, I intend to get through to the next harvest without purchasing a single head of garlic from the store.

The onions are a different story. I planted most of the onion sets around the garlic this spring. I think they got too much shade from the garlics, so they have weak tops. I’m leaving them in the ground a bit longer to see if they beef up. Fortunately, I also planted some sets in other spots, and I have both Egyptian Walking Onions and Multiplier Onions in the ground from the fall. So we’ll be OK for our fresh onion needs, but I’m concerned about our storage onions. We made it almost all year from last summer’s harvest, so I’ll be bummed if I don’t get enough this year.

And finally – drum roll, please – I got my first tomato! I would love to tell you what it was, but I don’t know. I got half of my tomato transplants from my neighbor, and the other half from the Feed and Seed. Neither of those sources is big on labeling their transplants. So this year’s tomato fest is a total surprise. We’ll get what we get, and we won’t throw a fit (as my daughter’s teacher used to say).

Gardening between the rain clouds

We have had the most lovely, wet spring. After too many years of drought, this is such a relief. With all of the time I’m not spending watering, you’d think I would get around to writing more – but I’m afraid Jan and I spend too much time sipping wine on the porch, which just saps my productive energy right out of me. I’m afraid that’s why he brings me the wine; the Protestant work ethic makes him nervous.

Of course, the rain has not been such a blessing for some of my gardening friends. I have two friends gardening on one particular street, and their gardens both flooded. The weeks of standing water has done them no favors.

The first week of May, I planted sweet potatoes, Beauregard. What a great name. Makes me think of mint julips. I also got ahold of some gorgeous purple and white Dutch irises, due to the street construction that’s been going on since July. Of last year. 2008. Guh. Anyway, the city installed a sidewalk in front of a neighbor’s house, right through her tremendous iris garden. We all consoled her for a couple of minutes, then jumped in and swiped the uprooted irises. Next spring you’ll see them blooming all up and down our street. Heh.

sweet potatoes

To make room for the sweet potatoes, I pulled up some underperforming broccoli, broccoli raab, and spinach. All of these did well for me in the fall, but weren’t worth the time and space this spring. Maybe it was the multiple late freezes this year.

We’re currently harvesting:
shelling peas
snow peas (I’m not sure how I ended up with those; I don’t care for them.)
green onions
chives
stevia
strawberries (still mostly going to the mockingbirds, but Ella gets a few here and there)
banana peppers
jalapenos
marjoram
oregano
cilantro (the last of it was a week or two ago; the rest has bolted)

Our neighbors came over with new potatoes from their garden, but I haven’t dug into ours yet. A few potatoes go a long way in our house, so I can wait.

Everything else is going gangbusters. Even my corn looks fantastic. Last year it got bugs then blew over. That was Luscious. So this year I planted Painted Mountain. So far, so good.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be making my last harvest of peas, and pulling the plants to make way for the okra. Of the peas I planted, I would do Alaska and Wando again. I’ll stay away from Little Marvel and Oregon Sugar Pod. I’m not in any hurry to get my okra in, because everyone up and down the street seems to have planted some this year. So we’ll have plenty all season long.

Which reminds me, three of my neighbors (within a few blocks) have planted new gardens this year, including my next door neighbor, Rick. Who knows if having my veggie garden in the front yard has helped inspire anyone other than Rick, but it can’t hurt, right? I’d love to see everyone with at least a little patch of food growing. Maybe it’ll go viral in old McKinney. That would be weird. Good weird.