The vegetable garden is hitting its stride this month, and I’ve been making meals with produce from our own beds — which is my favorite part of having a summer garden. So today’s selection comes from the veg garden, though as you’ll see, the beds host plenty of non-vegetable inhabitants too.

One — Spinach, Round Two

I’ve talked about my spinach woes before — spinach is sensitive to day length, which means most spring-planted spinach here is doomed, what with the midnight sun and everything. The bolting is unavoidable. So this year I sidestepped it: I planted my first round, ‘Matador’, with the intention of only ever cutting baby leaves. I got three cuts that way, the second one landing just as the stems were starting to lengthen — and a few weeks later I cut the whole bed to the ground and froze it for smoothies. They never got to flower, but it was a close call.

Now that the days are shortening again, I’ve sown a packet of ‘Géant d’Hiver’ that should mature right as things cool off and the light fades. It might just make it through the winter with some protection. Worth a try, at any rate.

Two — More Dahlias

First bloom for dahlia ‘Diana’s Memory’. It’s lovely — but I have no idea why that middle stem is so stout when long ones are popping up all around it. The dahlia knows something I don’t.

Three — So Much Stir Fry

This is my amaranth bed (Amaranthus tricolor ‘Green Giant’, ‘Passion’, and ‘Red Army’), planted solely for the leaves, which I love with some garlic and soy sauce in a stir fry. That’s exactly what we had for lunch today — made doubly special by the fact that you can’t really get the Asian greens I grew up with at normal supermarkets here. Growing your own also means cutting them young and tender, with the bonus that cutting stimulates them to keep growing right up until frost.

Four — Beds of Gold

It’s been several years since I managed to grow corn big enough to actually eat. It looks like it’s finally going to happen again — the mild, moist weather has made a lot of my plants happy, and I’m already seeing silks on half the stalks. With a good two months of decent weather left, I’m excited we’ll have a real crop of fresh sweet corn this year.

Five — Tiny Multitudes

Common starwort (Stellaria graminea) grows in large patches along the banks of the swale, and it’s looking really pretty right about now. Its cousin, chickweed (Stellaria media), was growing in my spinach bed as well — I just chopped it up and bagged it with the spinach for smoothies, because honestly, they taste pretty much alike.

Six — Bodyguard

When I put my brugmansias and pelargoniums into this planter, it was just a convenient way to keep the summering houseplants in one place. I didn’t know I’d end up running a small companion-planting experiment. As you can see, this lemon-scented pelargonium has pretty much surrounded my brug — and though it has a few holes in its leaves, the pests have largely left it alone. My second brug sits next to a much smaller red pelargonium with barely any scent, and that poor thing is getting mauled, though it’s soldiering on. The two pairs are about two feet apart, so I can’t really come up with any other reason for why this is happening. But I’m taking notes, and next summer the strong-smelling bodyguards may get hired for the whole planter.

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Six on Saturday is hosted by Jim at Garden Ruminations — go see what everyone else is up to!