Early Light, Cucumber, More Turnip and Mexican Bean Beetles

I walked into the garden, the usual Thursday, camera in hand, visit. I usually go to thee garden after work on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, skip Wednesday because of pottery class and return on Thursday with Georgia to do the photographs. This week I also went at 6:30 Saturday morning. Critter watch. I pick salad greens,herbs and leafy green vegetables every day, extra on Tuesday to get me to Wednesday. Early in the season, when there was constant rain, which was great except for the aching in the morning, I'd bring seeds and do succession sowing of lettuce, arugula, and radicchio. Now I usually do some watering in spots and a good soaking twice a week. I'll walk in start on the driveway side check out the herbs how is the tarragon doing, it's its second season. we used to have an established tarragon patch but the sage and Greek oregano over-powered it. I started these plants up front. The big competition is the lambs ears. They reseed and grow everywhere. I live the fuzzy texture and sagy green color. They are a great contrast to the nasturtiums with their tropical bright flowers round funky patched leaves like unusual geometry lessons. Anyway, the tarragon seems to have settled in alongside the marjoram and lemon thyme. I can never figure out what to do with these lemon-this and that herb. Not very thymey a little lemon pledge like. I like the yellowish varigated leaves though. the dill is coming along nicely,Ill resow somemore soon. There is parsley patches in two places and they seem to be thriving. The perilla, the perilla is aggressive, dark magenta and crinkely the leaves are almost iridicent. they are growing through the bamboo strucutre I built last year. It's weathered now, The Vietnamese coriander (Rau Ram) is pretty established under the shade slats. I go herb by herb then. In the chris plot the walking onions by the big boulder are rooting, creating the next generation. The chard is looking fine, the lettuce that I transplanted from the Elliot plot was doing well almost ready to start harvesting until... The cucumbers are flowering and climbing like crazy. I had a small one with dinner last night, tender and sort of sweet. I keep trying to train them up the trellis and they march across the plot towards the radicchio. Soon the red noodle beans will be climbing. The tomatillos are filling out their husks, the tomatoes are still green. They are at the stage where I need to carry strips of rags to tie them up anchor them to posts they are beginning to spraul. The tying and anchoring begins and goes on all summer.

In the Elliot plot the beans are flowering and the dreaded Mexican bean beetles have arrived. While I don't have as many plants as I like I still want those beans. I find that I need to do daily inspections to squash the beetles and their larvae, or else they chew away the leaves until all that's left is a lacey shadow of a leaf. The leaves turn brown the gardener gets frustrated and yanks the whole mess out. Gives up. I want those beans. I've pulled lots of turnips in the past week. One big bunch I roasted with lemon, garlic and fresh bay leaves ( my next door neighbor topped her bay plant to get it to branch, it was so tall that it touched the ceiling when she had it inside for the winter- I put the top in a bottle of water and I've been using the fresh leaves. Tonight I made another batch of Japanese pickles, Asazuke. Easy as pie. slice the turnips thinley rub with a tsp and a half of salt and half a tsp of sugar I crushed a dried red chile into the mix rubbed the spices in, put it into a jar and refridgerated it for an hour. Very crunchy and fresh. I'm doing succession sowing of bush beans as I pull out the turnips. Next I'll plant more chard and radicchio for the fall.
Georgia met a cat at the garden who didn't even wink when she did her grr woof, not quite a bark thing. the cat just sat there.