Snow peas are fantastic little veggies with a very short season. They have started producing so get out there and start picking! The more you harvest the more the pea vine will produce. If you don’t have any snow peas, you can attach your tomato plants to the trellis right away by wrapping the growing tip around the trellis string.
Make sure to remove any suckers (extra vines found in the crotch between the main vine and the leaf) so that the tomato plants don’t over run the garden. Each plant needs enough sun to grow. We had a bit of trouble with transplant shock on some of the tomatoes, but most of them are recovering nicely with lots of water and some fertilizing (fish emulsion is best for this). Take a look at my video for more instructions.
For the peppers and eggplants to grow well and produce, they need to have clear space all the way around them. Harvest any plants or leaves that are getting too close. You should harvest any larger outer-leaves of broccoli, kale, chard, cabbage or any other plants that aren’t respecting their square foot. As soon as your beet greens are big enough, you can start harvesting them for salads! Simply pick larger outer leaves allowing smaller inner leaves to continue to grow.
It is important to keep up with watering. If your plants are still small, or don’t seem to be growing well it is probably because of a lack of water. Since we haven’t gotten much rain this season, it has been very hard especially for varieties that we need to start from seed such as beets, carrots and beans. Your soil should be moist just under the surface all the time. If you are having trouble keeping up with watering, installing a simple irrigation system on a timer will help a lot!
Tomatoes should be coming along. We had a bit of trouble with transplant shock on some of the tomatoes, but most of them are recovering nicely with lots of water and some fertilizing (fish emulsion is best for this). Once tomatoes are dark green and bushy, you should start removing suckers. If your tomatoes are tall and needing support, you should weave them into the trellis. Remove suckers that do not fit onto the trellis. For more info, please take a look at this video.
If you have potatoes, you can hill up soil around the stems so they don’t flop over. Ideally you would add a bunch of extra soil to bury them deeper. This is supposed to increase harvests.
Remember to weed a little bit everyday, this way you can stay on top of the weeds. Happy Gardening!