Mid May Garden Update

Our garden is progressing fairly well this year. Our weather has been a little weird with very hot weather for a few days and then back into rainy, cool weather. But often that is just how it goes here. One minute sunny and warm the next minute rainy and wet.

But the plants seem to be tolerating it all right. Our peas are really growing tall. It won’t be long before I’ll be harvesting some for our dinner table or right out of the garden snacking.

We have some tiny strawberries forming on our plants. I’m hoping they don’t get waterlogged with all the rain. Our strawberry season here in Oregon is really short. Throw in too much rain and all you have is moldy berries on the plants. So I’m hoping for some good dry weather between our showers to keep the strawberries happy.

We have a few raspberries starting to come on too. The bees were buzzing around when we were out taking pictures. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a good photo of one of the bees. 🙁

Our rhubarb plants are really taking off. I harvested some of the stalks to use in a few dishes. If you have rhubarb in your garden you will want to try rhubarb custard crisp. It is so delicious. Or maybe some roasted rhubarb jam, another favorite of ours.

We have a few flowers blooming in the garden. These small blue flowers attract the humming birds to our yard. They have grown into the succulents and juniper and make a beautiful carpet of flowers this time of year.

With all the wetness we have, our ferns grow very nicely. My husband cut this one back two weeks ago but it is really taking off again.

This Hosta is getting flowers early this year. Usually they don’t come on until later. It must have been the hot weather that triggered it to start blooming.

I love it when we can harvest lettuce right out of our garden for salads. But our lettuce has been a little slow to take off this year. But I planted a second planting of lettuce this past week. So I’m hoping they will all start taking off soon. So we can start enjoying so  lettuce out of the garden.

Our radishes are doing better this year than last year. Last year they just didn’t take off at all. But this year they are looking good. I’m hoping to harvest a few for salads in a week or two.

The mint is starting to grow well. Soon we will be able to harvest some to make mint water. It so refreshing on a warm day.

My seedlings seem to be thriving in the cold frame. I’m hoping to be able to transplant the tomatoes into the garden by the end of the month.

A few of my poor cucumbers were attacked by something and cut right off at the soil line. I saved them from the cat just to be killed by some unknown creature out in the cold frame. I pretty sure it was a slug.

I took some precautions and sprinkled rock salt in the bottom of the cold frame but I still caught a slug in there the other day. How it got around the salt without turning into a puddle of goo, I will never know.

We battle slugs every year. I read about using potato slices to trap slugs at The Coupon Project. I might have to give it a try. Before I resort to some slug bait.

How do you combat slugs in your garden?

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