Gardening, the lazy way

I'll admit it, I'm a lazy gardener.  I pretty much stick the seeds in the ground once the temperature warms up and then besides an occasionally watering, pretty much ignore them until they're bearing fruit.  This year especially it was tough for me to get over the May doldrums and actually put some effort into getting the whole process going.  You see, here in the Pacific "North-wet" the past few years we've experienced this lovely new weather phenomenon meteorologists affectionately coined as June-uary.  Simply smashing weather for gardening or any outdoor activity, let me tell you.  And being as we tend toward wetter cooler summers anyway, unseasonably low temps and extra rain in June does not help the backyard gardener get too enthusiastic.  Last year, summer never really showed up so pretty much no tomatoes, few cucumbers and even a sour zucchini crop.  So couple the cool weather with my tendency towards inherently lazy gardening plus the hyper-focus on being a chicken farmer, it took me a bit to actually get going this year.

Tomatoes under their quasi-green house

This year we're sticking to the basics:  peas, carrots, swiss chard, leaf lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, cauliflower, pumpkins, zucchini, garlic and tomatoes.  We also have a couple of rhubarb plants and two strawberries gardens.  Fingers crossed, so far so good with everything up and growing heartily except zucchini (zucchini!  who in the NW fails at growing zucchini??!?!).  I didn't plant until the end of May, following the wisdom of my father who swears there is no point in putting anything in the ground until Memorial Day.  The ironic thing is he was sowing his garden by the beginning of May and had most of it in before Mother's Day.  Go figure.  Usually I'm the one putting in cold weather crops as early as March, but he's the one who jumped the gun this year (and quite successfully too as my parents munch happily away on peas already).  Even with the late start we've been eating a large crop of juicy strawberries - they didn't mind the extra rain and seemed to have gotten just enough sun to ripen to plump perfection.  I also expect we'll harvest spinach and baby lettuce this week and potentially have peas by the end of next. 

Garden - I'm spoiled, the husband built some rocking raised beds