​     These low- to mid-70s temperatures for weeks on end - with nary an afternoon break with sun - are continuing perfect transplanting weather, but I’m waiting momentarily for that sudden shift to “real” late spring and early summer temperatures closer to the mid- to high-80s and brilliantly blasting sun.  In the meantime, I’m putting in another couple of tomatoes that will extend my eating season beyond the end of August, if last year’s yield timing will be the guide for this year.  And I’m planting another batch of beans and squash.  I’m even buying a packet of Wando peas to plant since it’s heat-tolerant and I’m already missing this year’s scrumptious harvest. 
     With previous hot summers starting much earlier, with a week of over 100 degrees in early May, I’d pretty much given up planting another batch of anything after mid-May just because I didn’t want to pay for the water it’d take to get newly-planted plants to survive – much less thrive – through the summer heat. 
     But this year, this extenuated coolness is shifting my perspective, so I’m trying again.  You never know what the weather’s going to do, so I decided I might as well try something.  Of course, this may be precisely the reason that the weather will suddently turn into summer with a vengeance.  Ah, well.  As gardeners, we just have to do whatever we can whenever we can, and suffer or succeed with the consequences.
     Here’re some other things I’m doing in the garden now that may also be good for you to consider:
 
Plant the Last Corn
Later plantings will probably have smut problems (those big, gray and black puffs of fungus in place of kernels) when harvested in September.  Of course, during our Master Gardener program, I learned that many of our Hispanic community gardeners relished this fungus as “huitlacoche” and actually inoculated their corn with it. Yay for different cultures sharing their culinary treasures and enabling us to redefine “good” and “bad”!
 
Feed Blossoming Plants
Tomatoes, peppers, squashes and eggplants need this extra nutrition now to continue growing foliage and also blossom, set fruit, and mature the fruit.
 
Keep Tomato Foliage Corralled
Pushing tomato foliage back into the rungs of their cages accomplishes two things – keeping the vigorous foliage corralled and growing upright instead of sprawling, and also pollinating blossoms by your inadvertently flicking each bloom as you tuck in the foliage.  This is best done just prior to watering the plant, since the stems are more pliable and less likely to break as you tuck them in.  For this hand-pollinating, big plants can be taken care of with one or two shakes while holding onto their cages or stakes.  The pollen is naturally sticky, and this helps spread it. 
 
Harvest Celery Stalk By Stalk
Instead of pulling up the entire plant, harvest celery from the outside, and only the number of stalks you need.  I usually remove all the stalks except the innermost four or five that are very pale green.  I love growing celery because I use all the foliage – more than half the plant – in soups and stews and salads. 
 
Keep Veggies Harvested At Least Every Other Day
Vegetables that aren't harvested soon enough will produce a chemical that inhibits further blossoming.   Check plants at least every other day during the summer.   This is especially true for beans, cucumbers, eggplants, squashes, and tomatoes. 
 
Don’t Refrigerate Tomatoes
But if you must, then pick them early in the day, when they’re still cool from overnight and are less sensitive to chilling injury – that disappointingly flavorless mushyiness.
 
Thin Fruit Trees Ruthlessly

• Thin fruits on trees and vines to what you realistically expect to consume.  More than a couple dozen is ok only if you’ll be making jam or some such.
• Thin tree fruits to opposite sides of branches for balanced and more complete development with less strain on trees, especially on those bearing fruit for the first or second time.  Leave at least three inches between apricots and plums; and five inches between peaches, nectarines, pears, and apples. 
• Thin grape clusters to produce bunches of fewer but larger individual fruits, rather than many tiny ones.  

 
Put Netting On Fruit Trees
Discourage birds and squirrels from visiting your trees by putting netting on individual fruiting branches two or three weeks before the fruit begins to ripen.  Otherwise, you know that they’ll decide the fruit's ripe the very day before you do, so they get them first!   Tie loose ends of the netting so birds don't get trapped inside.

For more of what to do in the coming month, see June's monthly tips.  

​     I garden because my Mom gardened, in the garden where I now garden.  I feel her every day, I visit with her every day, I garden with her every day, in our garden.  Her nurturing our family through our garden is why I for more than 20 years nurtured Master Gardeners in their own gardens and all the gardens they helped Los Angeles residents garden.  And I continue to do so through chatting about my Pasadena garden – her garden – on this website and in my presentations to gardening groups throughout Southern California. 
     Since I was 2 years old, we lived in the home that my Dad designed and built, and my Mom created a vegetable and flower garden between the fruit trees that my Dad planted, all up a hillside lot anchored by a heritage oak tree. 
     Those first years they spent terracing the hillside and planting the fruit trees.  Then came the roses and dichondra lawn by the house, and the beds of vegetables, melons, corn and boysenberries up the hill behind the house. 
     I grew up eating mostly what we grew, with only in-season purchases from the local Preble’s produce market on Green Street in what is now Old Town Pasadena.  Mr. Preble went to the downtown Los Angeles produce market early every morning and then displayed the wooden crates full of whatever was ripe. 
     But we always purchased from the sale section at the back of the store – the Thomson Seedless Grapes that were so ripe that they’d fallen off their stems and turned ochre yellow with sticky sweetness, the too tiny but most-tender green bean, corn that hadn’t filled its kernels completely, the watermelons that were so ripe that they’d cracked open merely through handling them. 
     Between our own garden’s produce picked on a daily basis only when it was absolutely ripe, and the Preble’s bargain-priced almost-overripe treasures, I learned what it meant to eat exquisitely flavored produce -- according to the season and harvesting at the perfect moment of ripeness.
     This is an exploration that today’s gardeners can experience in their own gardens, harvesting several times during the development of the portion we eat to see when they’d like the flavor best. For example: 

• Removing the older outer leaves of lettuce and spinach and kales, and harvesting the inner tender leaves, leaving only the tiny innermost leaves to continue developing.  The same plants continue growing for up to 9 months, providing enough of those most-delicately delicious leaves for the whole time.
• Picking peas when they’ve just set from their blossoms, a week later, another week later, and yet a week later.  The gardener gets to decide which moment offers the greatest texture and flavor, so they know when to harvest that variety in the future.
• Harvesting squash blossoms, tiny fruit, larger fruit, and even too-mature fruit just so you can decide when you like them best.

     This is how you can have “baby” and “gourmet” vegetables and fruits from your own garden.
     There’s nothing so delightful and fulfilling for the gardener-- and that that says “I love you” – more than pronouncing at dinner time – all of this came from our garden!
     From my Mom to me to you!