Was awakened from a sound sleep last night at 3 AM by a coyote yipping and howling nearby. We also have a cat and kittens in the area. They have been hanging out but stay out of sight. Neither of these animals is vegetarian, which is good for the garden and none of my plants have been touched. There were lots of rabbits earlier in the year, but they are gone. The groundhog is also gone.

The temperature climbed into the eighties during the week and was in the nineties by Sunday. After a cool wet spring, the rain abruptly stopped and the humidity has been less than 30%. Fortunately, we haven’t seen a single mosquito. The spinach and arugula totally bolted and I need to water heavily each day.

I finally got some landscapers to come and till the garden on Monday, June 5. They didn’t do a perfect job but it is ready to plant with a little raking and breaking up of some large clumps. I had them till a bag of peat moss into each of the beds by the firepit, the one next to the compost structure and the area on the west end of the garden. They also dug out a couple rows of horseradish on each end of that plot, freeing up some of that prime, sunny, soil for more productive crops. I got most of the planting done on Wednesday and Thursday, with the remaining few plants on Saturday.

Here’s the tomato rundown, first in the bed next to the firepit. These were all from Goebbert’s. The Romas were the small 4 per container size and the others were the larger ones in the 4-inch pots.

15 – La Roma (planted 3 across instead of 2 since that worked well in the past)
2 – Beefsteak
2 – Celebrity
2 – Primo Red
2 – Brandywine

I also took a trip to Countryside Nursery in Crystal Lake. for heirloom tomatoes, I bought and planted the following, from 4-inch pots, in the west end of the garden past the horseradish:

1 – Cherokee Carbon
1 – Cherokee Purple
1 – Aker’s West Virginia
1 – Mortgage Lifter
1 – Mr. Stripey
1 – Oxheart
1 – Rutgers
1 – Green Zebra
1 – Lemon Boy
1 – Chocolate Sprinkles Cherry Tomato
2 – Romanian tomatoes that Jared started from seed

2 — Goebbert’s Purple Eggplants
1 — Countryside Rosa Bianco Eggplant
1 — Countryside White Star Eggplant

Peppers in the second bed by the firepit:

10 — Sweet Banana
4 — Melrose
9 — Lady Bell
8 — Early Sunsation
5 — Hungarian Hot Banana

Peppers in the bed by the back fence

8 — Jalapeno

Next to the compost structure:

1 — Sweet Heat Pepper
1 — Pepperocini Pepper
3 — Hills of Goebbert’s Zucchini
3 – Peter Pan Summer Squash