One of my favorite things to do during June evenings is to stroll through the gardens looking at the crops. These walks are especially magical this time of year because of the late evening light and the dancing of the fireflies. Of course, I also like to check on the way things are (or are not) growing.

For the most part, I’ve been pleased with our spring crops this year. The spinach and lettuce crops, in particular, have been large, vigorous and abundant. However, I am even more excited about the potential for the crops coming up. Our onion crop looks like it will be large and diverse. The cantaloupe vines (muskmelons actually) are healthy and loaded with fruits. The sweet peppers look very good and I’m very excited about the 30 plus varieties of tomatoes we’re going to have this year. I’ve made an effort to grow a larger number of people’s favorites from years past (e.g. Speckled Roman, Wapsinicon Peach, Green Zebra). They are really taking off now and I’m trying to get them all “caged” quickly before they get too large. Most of the tomatoes look extremely vigorous.

Not all is roses (or tomatoes) of course. I’ve talked to few of you about my trials with sweet corn this year. I prepared some of the richest, most friable ground that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with this spring (just east of the potato patches where I have no irrigation) with visions of a beautiful and abundant sweet corn crop. The only glitch that I could foresee was if we didn’t get the regular rains that we are accustomed to this time of year. Well, that fear proved justified. My planting was followed by 5 weeks without rain and I was forced to till that planting in and start over.

Subsequent plantings have been a little more successful but for a number of reasons I haven’t been able to get a solid and regular stand of plants. The result, I fear is that we are likely to have very small and sporadic harvests of sweet corn. There is plenty of time for new crops, but the later the crop, the more prevalent that corn earworm and other similar caterpillar pests become. In the end, if we don’t get several inches of rain during June or early July we just won’t have much sweet corn this year.

I encourage you to walk the gardens yourselves and see all of the changes that are taking place. It’s a dynamic landscape this time of year as the beds of spring greens give way to the heat loving crops (and vines especially) of the hot summer months.