The May Garden

Goodness have we had rain! I’ve only watered twice so far this spring which is a huge time saver for me and the plants love the rain water. It’s been wonderful! Everything in our May garden is so green, such a contrast from previous years. 

Our lemon tree is doing great! It’s even blooming again since we’ve had some extra rain. That’s a funny thing about citrus, they don’t really have a dormant season. We should have plenty of lemons this year and quite a few cara cara oranges. 

One of our grape vines has a cluster of grapes. It’s so exciting. A friend rooted two more vines for us so we now have six. 

We have one plum. But since we just planted this tree last year, it’s still pretty exciting. 

And we have peaches for the first time. We planted four peach trees in 2012 and three of them have peaches this year. 

Our beans are doing great. Were harvesting enough every other day for dinner. The squash vine is a volunteer and I just have a hard time pulling plants that are thriving ;-). So I just left it to run all over the walk ways to see what it would produce. 

Well, this is what it’s producing. I do believe that these are wild gourds that Esther used for her Christmas presents last year. Man, are they prolific! 

Our summer squash is doing well, although I’ve noticed a few vine bore moths flying around, so we’re keeping a close eye on the squash. 

We’re having summer squash in some form daily. 

Our big tomatoes aren’t ready just yet. But we’re supposed to get 90° temps this week, so it won’t take long for them to ripen. 

You know how I just let stuff go to seed for the bees. Well, sometimes it replants itself. So, I have several chinese cabbages growing in a walkway. I think I’ll make pancit this week and add them to it. 

We have seven beds that each have two tomato cages in them with four tomato plants each. We use strips of old t-shirts to tie the plants to the cage. These cages are industrial tote cages, they use them to hold plastic totes that have chemicals in them. The cages were free and they are super sturdy. 

We’re collecting a handful of cherry tomatoes each day, both yellow and red.

Our okra got planted a little late, but it’s doing well and it won’t be long before we can add fried okra to our weekly menu. 

The moringa is about four feet tall. I’m going to just let it grow and see how tall it gets and see if it produces pods. Homestead Lady is giving away 4 small trees and 10 seeds, be sure to enter. 

We’ve been seeding the back around the orchard with wildflower seeds. So many have come this year because of the rain. It’s been so wonderful to see! Our hope is that one day it will be covered with flowers for the bees.  I found this guy hanging out on my bean plants. Any idea of what it might be? I caught it but it promptly poked me hard in my finger, so I let it go. An evening harvest from last week. I know this amazing weather won’t last. We have about 6 more weeks of temperatures under 100°. Then we’ll be struggling to harvest anything other than okra and peppers so I’m trying to enjoy every moment in the garden. 

Don’t forget to keep notes in your gardening notebook. You’ll be happy you did. 

What’s going on in your May garden? (If you blog feel free to leave a link to your garden update in the comments. If you want to post a photo of your garden on our facebook page, I’d love to see it.)

This post is shared at Tuesday Garden Party. 

Thanks for sharing with your friends!