The joys of June in the garden

Just before the last rain I picked a peony (Paeonia lactiflora) blossom from my garden. In late May and early June, this wonderful perennial blooms year after year. One old plant in my garden produced 32 blooms a few years ago.

The flower I picked measured 5 and one-half inches across, only a bit larger than most of the peonies in my garden. 'Karl Rosenfeld' is a deep rosy-red, and this is the first year it has bloomed so magnificently. I cannot imagine how striking it will be when it is 10 years old.

Unfortunately, because the peony flowers are so large, with double petals, a rainstorm may bend the flowers to the ground. Some gardeners provide support systems, but I prefer to grow a plant with very strong flower stems. Minimizing compost high in nitrogen, and maximizing the application of organic phosphorus seems to do the trick. This year my plants are strong, and holding up well with the late rains and even overhead irrigation.

Nearby, but in a drier section of my flower border, Oriental poppy (Papaver orientale) competes with the peonies for attention with bright red-orange single flowers. This perennial also gets better year after year, especially when it is not crowded by other plants. And the bigger the plant, the more flowers you will have, opening for three to four weeks in June.

This morning I counted seven honeybees in a single peach-colored blossom of Oriental poppy that had just opened. Plenty of room for all of them, this flower is so large. I rarely pick the flowers because they are short-lived. In the garden each blossom will last for a few days.

Another hub of honeybee activity is my Japanese snowdrop tree (Styrax japonicus), now 15 years old and loaded with fragrant white flowers. The hum of the bees as I stand under it is a treat not to be missed! The flowers have been opening for two weeks, and there are lots of buds yet. These bees have some work to do.

The deer wander back into the main garden as I head for the vegetable garden. They never bother the peonies or poppies, or even the delicate branches of the Japanese snowdrop tree, but they may browse on the penstemon I just planted this morning. Not all penstemons are "deer-resistant."

In the vegetable garden, I have more tomatoes and peppers to plant. My peas need be mulched with straw. Seeds for many vegetables may be planted now. And of course there are weeds to pull. Time to regain my focus and get to work. In the weeks ahead I plan to harvest a lot of produce from this garden.

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Carolyn Singer has gardened in the foothills for 28 years. She is the author of "Deer in My Garden, Volume 1: Perennials and Subshrubs." She will be doing a book signing at The Book Seller in Grass Valley on Thursday, June 15th, at 6:30 p.m.



Summer vegetable garden

• Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, and squashes may still be planted in the next couple of weeks.

• Small succession plantings of lettuce, bok choy, mizuna, and raab will allow a continual harvest.

• Continue to plant bush beans.

• Keep "cool-season" crops (peas and greens) mulched with 3-4 inches of decomposing straw.

• Seed leeks for fall harvest.

• Take time to watch the bees.