Other than harvesting and watering, the garden has been somewhat neglected as I’ve been consumed with getting the mint garden done. The mint garden is done just in time, as the daily harvest is increasing and I need to make sure that the garden is picked and that I use the vegetables or give them away.

What’s in the mint garden? A lot of different mints for openers! My yard has been invaded by escaped lemon balm for a number of years and I’ve had a pot of chocolate mint growing on my deck for a number of years. But a couple of years ago, my good friend, Danielle, got me into drinking mint tea, or “weed water” as it is called in her blog post. <https://www.makeaheadofmonday.com/blog/weed-water> So, it has become our summer drink of choice, as opposed to regular iced tea. I am also working mint into different recipes.

I wanted to experiment with the different types of mint, and bought the varieties that were available at local nurseries. Here are the mints in the garden: Chocolate Mint, Sweet Mint, Spearmint, Mojito Mint, Apple Mint, and Pineapple Mint. I didn’t plant any lemon balm as it is already everywhere. The mint is planted in the steel rings that are buried 1 foot in the ground to help control unwanted spreading. I also have Lemon Verbena, Pesto Perpetua Basil, regular Basil, Mexican Tarragon, Bronze Fennel, and Pineapple Sage, as well as a few ornamentals for some color. Cucumbers are planted along the trellis at the back of the garden.

This area was overgrown with invasive plants and neglected for a lot of years so I am happy to finally have it beautiful and productive.

I pulled up the larger beets today, which was about half of them. We made a beet salad with goat cheese and arugula from an Ina Garten Recipe. It was not bad, but I’ve had better beet salads. We saved the leaves for future salads.

I got started on the “Mint Garden” a couple of days ago. I bought four galvanized steel fire-rings from Tractor Supply on Wednesday to contain the mint. It required two trips, as I could only haul two at a time.

On Thursday, I got the first ring installed which was a real pain as I ran into a stump and roots from a maple tree that we removed about 4 years ago. I was able to cut through them with my trusty Ryobi reciprocating saw, but it was a lot of work. I planted it with sweet mint and planted the three clumps of ornamental grass to the east of the ring.

We had a lot of rain Thursday night and Friday morning, but I went out in the mud on Friday afternoon and got the second ring installed and planted two pots with trailing petunias that were 1/2 price at Goebbert’s. There were some roots, but they were old and I was able to cut through them with my shovel. I needed to add more soil to the ring but ran out of time and energy.

I am designing as I go. I’ll have a path through the garden and in front of the cucumbers with 16 X 16 pavers. Hauling those is going to be a pain. I am guessing it will take at least 3 or 4 trips to Home Depot to get them all. But I have two more rings to install first and rain in the forecast every day for the next week.

I picked the first couple Zucchini today, the smaller one went into my breakfast omelet along with another tomato, some basil and a jalapeno.

We had a series of thunderstorms move through last night. I sat on the front porch and watched the first one roll through about 9:30 last night. The lightning bugs were also out in abundance and they didn’t seem to mind the rain.

I heard another heavy rain roll through as I was falling asleep later. I went out to check my rain gauge first thing this morning and noted that we had received 2.5 inches of rain overnight. We really needed it. There was a small tornado around Naperville and possibly others. We missed the winds as there were no branches down this morning.

I picked the first tomato today, three days earlier than last year, and this was a Countryside Champion tomato from a garden plant rather than a container plant, like last year. The pepper was a Bounty banana pepper. There are also a couple of Gypsy peppers ready to pick. These were from the larger Countryside plants.

We also had a salad from garden lettuce. Goebbert’s Red Romaine and Bonnie plants Oak Leaf. They are all bolting in this heat, but the flavor is still good.

I got up early on this Father’s Day morning and was out in the garden by 6:30. I installed the reinforcing fence posts behind the trellis and planted (from left to right) 1 trellis length of “Crystal Apple Cucumbers”, another trellis length of “True Lemon Cucumbers”, from Terroir Seeds, 5 “Burpless” plants from Goebbert’s on the 3rd Trellis and finally 3 “Summer Dance” plants from Countryside on the last trellis. I also cut up the elderberry, buckthorn and other invasive trees that I had removed on Saturday, and filled up the garden recycling bin. I had cleared and rototilled on Saturday.

I caught a nasty cold the week after Memorial Day which kept me out of the garden for the better part of two weeks, except for watering. The energy and motivation has returned so I got out early and hit the rest of the Canadian Thistle with Roundup, mostly in the front, and weeded and string trimmed the back half of the garden, that is, everything but the three new raised beds. Then I planted the 15 San Marzano tomatoes and staked and watered them. We are in a severe drought with temperatures in the 90s. Severe thunderstorms are predicted for early to mid-afternoon and I am really praying for some much-needed rain. I finished up around 10 AM as the temperature had already hit the mid-eighties.

I need to plant Delicata squash and more zucchini, but the big thing this weekend will be to erect the new cucumber trellis and get the cukes planted. I’m at least a couple of weeks late on those. It is supposed to be a little cooler and less humid as we go into next week.