At 5:14AM this morning (June 21st), we left Spring behind and started into Summer 2022. It was a bit over 50° when I left the house for work. Summer in the North Country!

Seeing as it’s exactly one month since the brassica was transplanted into the garden, and just shy of four weeks for almost everything else, it’s a good time to take stock of the various plants’ progress. As always, there are disappointing results combined with encouraging. I’ll start with the former.

Over the past weeks I’ve chronicled how the wind has played havoc with the broccoli and cauliflower, and right now it’s obvious that I’m going to lose at least half of the fifteen broccoli plants I started with a month ago. They’re not all dead yet, which is the disconcerting part of this occurrence. Several plants are fine, while the majority fell over and started dying from the bottom up. This is the first year using the Green Magic strain of seed, so perhaps that has something to do with it? Previously I’ve used Fiesta, and before that Acadia seed, only switching due to availability.

In the “Good News” department, the cauliflower showed great resilience, and is again looking good. Only two plants failed, one each of the purple and white varieties.

Two other crops concerned me early, the tomatoes and winter squash. I only put in a few tomato plants, as they’re strictly for eating as the fruit ripens. We do not can or freeze them. As always, the seedlings once planted immediately began looking sickly. Having been through this cycle every year, I’ve learned to just leave them alone, as they inevitably rebound. This year is no exception- the four plants now look fabulous.

We grow Butternut squash as a winter storage item, and this year was the first year I’ve started the plants indoors. Once transplanted they scared me as they lost some color, blanching around the edges a bit. Again, time and patience solved the issue, and the transplants are strong and healthy. The “backup seeds” I planted near each of them have also sprouted. I plan to let it all rip and see how the harvest pans out.

The Brussels sprouts and cabbage rarely look this good this early. I hope it continues! The onions are nothing short of fantastic for the first day of summer.

The carrot bed is looking good for a month since planting. My wife thinned each of the four varieties a couple of weeks ago, and I think we’ll see a nice yield. We eat carrots as the harvest matures, and also chop, blanch and freeze them for future use. Here’s a photo of the carrots leading off a slideshow of the rest of the veggies:

The last highlight of this post are the strawberries. More “Good News”. In the last week they have come on extremely strong, and there are new fruits to harvest every day. Along with the lettuce and radishes, the strawbs are what’s being eaten from Garden 2022.

Lastly, it’s been a little over a week since the second planting brassica seedlings were started. They’ve all popped!

I hope you find these posts interesting and informative. Next Garden 2022 update should be in a week or so. Thanks for stopping by!