The first zucchini, the last peas

Despite being a long-distance garden, our community plots are doing fairly well --plenty of mesclun, blackseeded simpson lettuce, arugula, radishes, dill, cilantro. The chard is big enough to harvest now.

It's been several years since I grew anything from seed, and the contents of seed packets seem to have shrunk considerably since then. I got only about 5 feet of a double row of sugar snap peas, undoubtedly planted too late because of all the rainy weekends in May. We got two whole meals worth... So I harvested the last overripe pods Saturday, tore up the vines, and planted beets and more dill and cilantro. The arugula had bolted, so that came out, to be replaced by what Burpee promises is summer lettuce... we'll see. The spinach, alas, definitely went in too late, and went from germination to bolted without a pause. We'll have to try a fall and maybe a winter crop.

The first two Raven zucchini were the size of fat cigars, so I snipped them off, to enjoy with plenty of herbs and olive oil. I also planted more radish seeds (that packet was very generously full) and a few more zucchini. We used to have terrible problems with squash vine borers, so I'm hoping the late sowing will give us plants that yield late.

My inspiration for the replanting is probably my favorite gardening book: In the French Kitchen Garden: The Joys of Cultivating a Potager by Georgeann Brennan. Illustrated with charming water colors, it's partly a how-to, mostly a why-to. So much of our American gardening tradition seems to be of the "plant rows of beans, squash, tomatoes, corn, melons when the weather gets hot." So learning a few years back that it's possible to keep replanting was an eye-opener. That, and doing away with rows, in favor of raised beds makes weeding and bed prep so much more manageable.

Meanwhile, the pole beans are in bloom, and the tomatoes are loaded with fruit. 'Sungold' is usually the first to ripen, but the 'Carmellos' are bulking up beautifully. As usual, I'm tieing the plants up 7ft poles, and pinching out as many suckers as possible. There are some signs of problems -- spotting and yellowing lower leaves -- I snipped off all that were affected and am keeping my fingers crossed that it's not early blight. The tomato bed was fallow last year, but I'm sure had tomatoes the previous year, since that seems to be the most popular crop.

The biggest disappointment of the season? The flower seeds from Renee's Garden. The mesclun, pole beans, beets and herb seeds were great, but we got zero germination from the zinnias, cosmos, and sunflowers. The Burpee zinnias that went in to replace them had poor germination, too, but not zero. There are relatively few wholesale seed growers, so I'm wondering what's up-- is it me, or are there crop issues this year?