Squash summer

I still have hopes that this will be the summer of the squash, and not ALL of it will be summer squash. The sections of the garden that were submerged  yesterday aren't visibly wet, although the water probably isn't far from the surface.

I finally planted the lettuce-leaf basil (13 plants).

I thought the butternuts had drowned, but they seem to be alive, albeit perhaps on life support. We're not expecting any more heavy rain, just the occasional pop-up thunderstorm, for the next ten days, so they may still have a chance. I may plant some more seeds anyway, just in case, but we're bumping up against the deadline to have enough time for them to ripen before the first frost.


Here's the first squash (yellow) of the season, which should be ready for eating in the next week, followed by the first pepper I'm targeting for next week (I want to remove the first harvest while they're still small, so more will set), and a particularly curly garlic scape:

Onions by the hundreds

We received and planted somewhere between 250 and 300 onions. Two-thirds of them red and a third of them yellow storage onions. I think the grower sent us extras, though, because we should have had 180 red and 60 yellow, and I'm pretty sure we have more than that. The birds are unplanting them in their search for breakfast, so we may end up with fewer than what we have now.

Asparagus is doing well. Ate several stalks with my neighbor a week ago, brought some to a friend at work a few days ago, and picked a whole bunch of them yesterday. At least some of the newly planted roots survived their first-year neglect and are coming back, albeit as scraggly little shoots, only visible if you know where to look.

Lettuces (green simpson and a red variety) and tatsoi are thriving on both my deck and my neighbor's. Hers are a bit further along, and I did some weeding and thinning yesterday. In the process, I got to eat the first lettuce of the season. Not exactly a whole salad. More like three one-inch-square leaves. But, hey, the first bites of the season are always the best.

I may be making rhubarb crisp tonight. I'd like to see if harvesting some branches now will, in fact, spur the plant into producing more branches than it would otherwise. I've already removed the flower stalks. I really want to make blueberry-rhubarb jam again this year, as soon as blueberries come into season.

Meanhile, I'm craving broccoli. I love broccoli, but mostly I love it raw. And I can't eat it raw any longer, because I have thyroiditis, and raw broccoli makes that problem worse. So I swore off broccoli. Until recently, when I decided that lightly cooked broccoli (which is okay for my thyroid) is better than no broccoli at all. I'm hoping to pick up the plants today and stick them in the ground today or tomorrow.

Basil seedlings have sprouted in duplicate. I thought I'd killed the first batch of seeds, and put the pots outdoors to be composted, but a week later (I tend to be slow about getting stuff out to the compost bin), there were sprouts in the pots. Both the outdoor pots and the follow-up pots indoors. So, lots of basil this year. Except I have no idea where to put it. I'm aiming to set new records for overly intensive planting this year.