The summer bounty is beginning. Get there early for the first beans, cucumbers, luscious beets, fresh fruit, and cucumbers; eggs have been selling out early, too. Try unique varieties of zucchini and squash, as well as the freshest spring onions, lettuce, baby potatoes, kale, Swiss chard, cabbage, and aromatic and culinary herbs. Don't miss the canned goods, baked goods, fried pies, artisan crafts, locally roasted coffee, vanilla extract, beautiful flower arrangements, and the best barbecue and smoked meats in town.
It's still not too late to put out a summer garden! You can plant beans, cucumbers, squash, sweet potatoes, sunflowers, even tomato, pepper, and eggplant transplants.
If you have some bare soil where an early spring crop grew, throw down some buckwheat seeds. This amazing plant will germinate quickly, often without rain, and put on substantial growth that smothers out weeds. Pollinators love the flowers, and buckwheat adds large amounts of organic matter to the soil and makes phosphorus and calcium available to subsequent crops.
Because of our long growing season, you can grow at least two rounds of cover crop out of one buckwheat sowing. Let the seed heads develop before cutting the stalks. The mature seeds will germinate, and you'll get another round of growth for no labor. Cut the stalks just after flowering to avoid reseeding. You can work the litter in with a tiller, but we leave it on the soil as a mulch. The earthworms and soil microbial community do our turning for us.
Our buckwheat germinated May 31st and bloomed June 12th.  As I harvested our garlic, I sowed buckwheat and sunflowers. The flowers will feed the pollinators and songbirds this summer, and the stalks left behind will protect the soil and feed the web of subterranean life that supports our crops. We may plant late fall crops there, like broccoli, cabbage, or lettuce.
Next to ripe tomatoes still warm from the sun, sunflowers are my favorite part of the summer garden. We grew “Mammoth” sunflowers that reached over 12 feet tall last year! Our honey bees join the native bees and bumble bees in utter revelry in the showers of yellow pollen on the giant flower faces. Once the seeds have ripened, the birds get busy.
The heavy seeds make the sunflowers' heads droop, and the birds use the droopy heads as a table. We enjoyed watching juvenile cardinals practicing their acrobatics and seed extraction. It was deeply rewarding to know our farm was supporting not only the people who enjoy our produce but the next generation of our wild neighbors.