June blooms with gardening expert Meg Cowden

CATHY WURZER: For gardeners, it is a time of watering plants and watching them start to emerge out of the ground. Meg Cowden is back to talk about gardening tips, what is in season, what she is planting, growing, and cooking right now. She's the author of the book Plant Grow Harvest Repeat, founder of the website Seed to Fork and the advice group Modern Garden Guild.

Hey, Meg. Welcome back. How are you?

MEG COWDEN: Hey, Cathy. I'm great. Happy June. Thanks for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Happy June, happy June. So we just got done talking to Paul [INAUDIBLE] about drought. I'm a little worried about this. How is your garden growing, even though it's been a little of toasty out there?

MEG COWDEN: It's dry.

[LAUGHS]

I mean, my lawn that I finally mowed is getting crisp. We have drip irrigation in all of our raised beds, in our food garden. It's the only part of our property that we irrigate.

[CHUCKLES]

Put the water where you want things to grow, I guess. And so things are OK. But, I mean, the top couple inches, our irrigation lines are actually covered under our compost mulch. So the top layer is a little dry. So whenever I'm trying to germinate seeds right now-- like, I'm germinating a cover crop, I have to water that a couple of times a day.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, wow. OK. By the way, does drip irrigation work better, say, than putting out a traditional oscillating sprinkler?

MEG COWDEN: That's a great question. So yes. If all you have is an oscillating sprinkler, it's probably better than nothing. I would set it on at, like, 4:00 in the morning or something like that, just to make sure that water gets down to the soil level.

But really, we don't need to water the leaves of our plants. We need to water the roots of our plants. And so you want to really get in there.

I have a wand that's a nice, long couple of feet long. So I can really reach in there and just water the root zone of the plants. The water should be going into the soil, not on our plants. That's the best advice I can give people.

CATHY WURZER: Right, exactly. So you mentioned that, of course, it is not only dry, but it's been warm-ish. How is the hot weather treating your crop so far.

MEG COWDEN: Fantastically.

[LAUGHTER]

I heard you and Paul. You're lamenting, and there's half of me, or more than half of me, that's lamenting climate change that is downright stressed about the smoke that is now really a part of our seasons here. And Paul's right. As a gardener, gardeners are amateur meteorologists.

We could have our own little society. We are so in tune with the weather. I knew that a nice snowpack did not mean that we were going to have a wet summer. I knew enough to know.

And yeah, this is our third year. We went from four or five years of flash floods at this property. And then it switched after 2020 to now. We're in a drought cycle.

But in terms of what is growing, things just took off. Winter was long. Spring was short. And then I feel like summer arrived about the middle of May.

And our strawberries are really coming into season. My husband snacked on a few last night. I snacked on one this morning.

My snap peas have flowered a couple of weeks ago, and I've got some snap peas, kohlrabi, tons of lettuce, tons of cilantro. Radishes are thankfully slowly dwindling now. Broccoli is ready to harvest. I've harvested my first couple of cabbages. And so my garlic scapes are just about ready. And we've got tons of fruit set on things.

Oh, I harvested a few tomatoes yesterday too that I let flower inside. So these are my cherry tomatoes, my sun golds. And when I plant them in the end of February, inevitably there's a cluster of flowers. And if you don't cut those first flowers off, you'll have tomatoes in June here. So always do that.

And the rest of my tomato season won't really ramp up until after the 4th of July. I've got a lot of fruit set out there, but a lot of them are larger tomatoes. So they're going to take a while to come into season.

CATHY WURZER: So you're cooking with what you're harvesting, obviously.

MEG COWDEN: Yeah, we love to stir fry. I mean, it's the fastest way to eat, honestly. We have a great wok that was a hand-me-down, so tons of, like, bok choy stir fries, cabbage stir fries.

I love to use my kohlrabi raw as, like, a slaw. We're going to do fondue for dinner tonight, so that head of broccoli is going to get dipped in some delicious cheese. So yeah, we are for sure enjoying and sharing and doing tons of cooking.

CATHY WURZER: So can you still throw some seeds in the garden right now?

MEG COWDEN: Oh yeah.

CATHY WURZER: Can anybody do that?

MEG COWDEN: Please do. Yes, there's always time to throw seeds. We can throw seeds in the garden from now until when the garlic gets planted in October some time. So right now, windows are closing on some things.

Like, some things won't grow well right now in terms of radishes and spinach. It's getting to be a little too hot for those. But corn, beets, carrots, beans are great to sow right now. If you've got space and you don't know what to do, you could throw in a quick buckwheat cover crop. And give yourself, like, a six-week little breather until you figure out what to do.

Herbs are great and grow great right now-- so basil, dill, parsley, fennel. I'm still sowing basil and fennel. I've sowed a couple of successions of parsley.

And then all of your cucumbers and melons and winter squash and summer squash, they all love this. This is their climate, this nice, warm weather-- warm nights, warm days. I'm going to be putting my peanut seedlings in soon.

CATHY WURZER: That's the last thing to go outside.

MEG COWDEN: Yeah, there's so much. I mean, but if you want to grow tomatoes and peppers and eggplants, and things like that, pick up some starts from a garden center, instead of putting seeds in the ground. Yeah.

CATHY WURZER: Better idea. Meg, thank you. I appreciate it.

MEG COWDEN: Yeah. Thanks so much, Cathy. Take care.

CATHY WURZER: You too. Meg Cowden, author of the book Plant Grow Harvest Repeat.