I Picked the Last of the Artichokes

Bob Bauer

June 21, 2017 (Last Updated: March 06, 2023) | Reading Time: 1 minutes

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June 21, 2017

I picked the last of the artichokes today so it's time to cut the stalks back down to ground level to encourage the production of a fall crop. Some of the chokes were wilted. I'll add artichokes to my list of wilted veggies. The heat came on early this year, or I wasn't paying attention, but I haven't kept enough water in the ground. When temps go up, watering should too. I soaked the strawberries yesterday and this morning they were all gone..

Even the green ones. I don't know if it was the raccoon or possom, but since they've been depositing cherry and plum pits in the garden for years, I shouldn't be too surprised that they checked out the strawberry patch. I am surprised that they ate the green ones too. I feel like I've been pranked..

June 22, 2017

The door on the raccoon trap was closed this morning. The bait was gone, the varmint was gone, and there was a pile of scat in it. Pranked again. He was able to pull the door back towards him by bending down the door stop I had installed. Outsmarted again..

He had come back after eating all the strawberries, and I noticed the ripe peas I picked today we're right next to the strawberry patch. If he ate green strawberries he would love sweet peas so I wired the door stop in place and put a fresh can of cat food inside the cage. Time is on my side..

June 23, 2017

OK so maybe you can have too much lettuce. My jaws got tired of chewing it this morning. It's free, healthy and plentiful so I keep shoveling it in by the handful. Too much of a good thing, and I still have half a pack of seeds left. Fall crops planting time is just around the corner but this heat wave keeps me in the shade. 101ÃÂ° today so I mainly just kept moving the sprinkler around..

Harvested lots of Kale seeds and noticed that as soon as the pods dry the birds eat the seeds out of them. I have to pick green pods and dry them in the greenhouse. Never had to before. Can I blame it on global warming..

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