We’ve been having rain every couple of days, and the mosquitoes are unbelievable. It is impossible to go into the garden without a heavy slathering of DEET.  I did manage to get the peppers and tomatoes weeded today, but any other work was impossible between the heat and bugs.

I picked the first two grape tomatoes and we had a salad for lunch of arugula, radishes, Lolla Rosa lettuce, kale, mustard greens, and green onions; supplemented with purchased avocado, red pepper, shrimp and croutons.

I pulled up the radishes — extremely poor yield and the spinach which had bolted. The bottom branches on the early girl tomatoes are starting to die. Too much rain, and not enough sun.

The Lovage survived the winter and has vigorous new growth.

The cold winter killed all of last year’s blackberry canes. Since blackberries set fruit only on the year old canes, we won’t have any berries this summer. Fortunately, vigorous new canes are springing up, so the roots weren’t damaged.

The Lovage that took almost all summer to finally spring up from seed wasn’t damaged by the cold. It appears to be doing very well. Now, I just need to figure out what to use it in.

The lightning bugs seem a little early this year, I saw the first ones tonight. I guess summer is here

Despite the mosquitoes, I tilled a couple more areas of the garden and planted collards plants, kale plants, broccoli plants and cucumber plants on the back of the compost bin. I have pretty much filled the available space and there is no room left for beans.

I need to get the lemon cucumbers planted along the back fence, get some more arugula and lettuce in and sunflowers behind the barn. I have 4 red kale plants left that I’ll plant over by the herbs.

Spinach is bolting so I need to pick what is left in the next couple of days. Some of the radishes are ready and the arugula is yielding well. The Lolla Rosa lettuce is up but I didn’t plant a lot. What’s there should be ready by next weekend. Lacinato Kale is ready and the mustard greens should be ready in about a week. The Pak Choi is taking off and probably needs a week or two. We’ve been eating spinach, arugula nad kale for a week or so.

The mosquitoes have been ferocious. Even in broad daylight in the sun, I can’t even stay out long enough to pick a few greens without slathering myself in DEET. This is the end result of all the rain.

However the plants are lovin it. the Grape, cherry and Early Girls tomatoes have set fruit already. The early planting of large plants has paid off.

Today, I braved the mosquitoes long enought to prepare and plant two hills of Spineless wonder Zucchini plants and I hill seeded with Lebanese zucchini. I’ll plant more seeds in a few weeks as succession planting for zucchini seems to be the way to go.