Everything's Climbing and Everyone's Eating in My Seattle Kitchen Garden
- Jackie
- Jun 23
- 8 min read
A late June walk through the beds, from the trellises holding everything up to the critters eating it back down.
It is late June in Phinney Ridge, and the Seattle kitchen garden has done two things at once. Everything that can climb is climbing, leaning on whatever support I gave it back in spring, and everything that likes to eat a garden has shown up to do exactly that. So here is the walk, bed by bed, the things going up and the things going missing.
Veggies and Herbs
The climbers are the whole story this month, and trellising is not decoration, it is operations. Sending a plant up a support does three real jobs. It keeps the leaves and fruit off the soil, where the slugs live and where disease splashes up every time you water. It opens the plant so air moves through it, which in our damp climate is half the battle against mildew. And it saves floor space, so a small Seattle garden grows a lot more than it looks like it should.
The biggest mistake I see is waiting too long. Put the support in at planting time, not in July when the plant is already a tangle and you are trying to stuff it into a cage without snapping half of it.
I use whatever fits the crop. My black ornamental trellises hold the peas and beans (and one ambitious squash that decided to climb one too). For the heavier lifting I use what I call the cow fence, which is really galvanized welded-wire panel, the same cattle panel you can buy at a farm store, plus some leftover remesh, the steel grid sold for reinforcing concrete. Peas, beans, tomatoes, and nasturtiums all grab onto that. The metal arch over the path carries nasturtiums and cucumbers, the A-frame is for more cucumbers, and for the lighter stuff I still tie up a simple bamboo teepee, the old reliable. The peas and beans grab on by themselves, and the tomatoes I train up with soft twine, tied loosely so the stem can still move and thicken.
You will also spot old CDs and strips of foil hanging off the trellises in these photos. That is not garden art. That is my bird defense, and I will get to why in a minute.
Fruit and Wild Fruit
Summer berries want to be used the same day, and a few herbs from the garden turn a bowl of them into something. Honest note first: the strawberries are mine, and I have a few raspberries I pick and eat on the spot, but I am not growing berries in recipe quantities. For that I walk down to the Phinney Ridge farmers market. The herbs, though, those are all from my beds.
Strawberries and basil belong together. The simplest version is basil sugar, where you mince fresh basil into a little sugar and let it sit so the herb perfumes it, then dip the berries. You mince about ten basil leaves into roughly a quarter cup of sugar, let it rest overnight, and dip the strawberries before eating (Parade). For the table, a strawberry, basil, and goat cheese salad with balsamic and olive oil comes together in minutes (Cookie and Kate), and on a hot afternoon, strawberry basil lemonade with the berries and basil blitzed right in is hard to beat (What's Gaby Cooking).
Raspberries love lemon balm, which is handy because lemon balm grows like it owns the place. Raspberry lemon balm jam is bright and a little floral, and here is the trick worth knowing: lemon balm leaves turn black when you cook them, so you infuse the herb into the sugar for a day first and pull the leaves before you make the jam (Food52). Tayberries, that raspberry and blackberry cross, show up at the market in early summer and cook down beautifully the same way, and a few sprigs of thyme steeped into the syrup give any of these berries a grown-up edge.
Flowers and Trees
The aronia is the quiet workhorse of the garden. Mine grows against the fence, and right now the berries are still in tight green clusters, weeks from the dark purple they turn by late summer. So this is not a harvest update, it is the slow part of the year for this one, which makes it a good time to talk about why it earns its corner.
Aronia, also called chokeberry, is one of the highest fruits there is for antioxidants, and that alone is reason enough to grow it. The name chokeberry is a fair warning, because they are mouth-puckeringly astringent raw, which is why most people cook them down into syrup, jam, or juice, or hide a handful in a smoothie.
It is also one of the easiest shrubs you can put in. It is hardy, it shrugs off our wet winters, it does fine in full sun to part shade, and after the first year of regular water while it settles, it mostly looks after itself. Mine is either Nero or Viking, I lost the tag somewhere along the way, and both are good reliable choices if you are buying one.
Animals, Critters, and Nature
A kitchen garden is never only yours. It feeds a whole cast of regulars whether you invited them or not, and pretending otherwise just sets you up to be surprised.
Start with the grapes, because the grapes are the running joke. My white Interlaken vine grows beautifully, mostly over onto my neighbor's side of the fence, and every year it gets right to the edge of ripe. Then in one single night the rats, or the mice, or whoever works the late shift out there, strips the whole crop. I have harvested exactly zero grapes. There is no shame in pulling a plant that feeds everyone but you, and I am close to that point with the grapes.
The raccoons are the clumsy ones. They knock over anything loose, transplant racks, unsecured pots, whatever is not weighed down, and they dig through fresh beds hunting for worms or anything else to eat. The lesson is simple: secure things, and protect a freshly planted bed for the first week or two.
The bunnies, I have made my peace with. They stick to the grass and leave my cabbage and lettuce alone, so around here they are friendly visitors more than a problem.
The coyotes pass through every now and then, but they leave the bunnies be. They are more interested in the neighborhood cats and the birds.
And the birds are why those CDs are hanging on the trellises. Right now they are working over my pea flowers and pea shoots, so I hang old discs and strips of foil to flash and spin and put them off. It is not foolproof, but it helps.
Knowledge Base: Veggie Myth Busters
A few things everybody knows about growing vegetables that are worth unlearning. Here is the myth, and here is what to do instead.
Myth: a crowded bed makes weak, leggy plants. Not if you feed it. I plant tightly, closer than most people would dare, because I fill my beds with compost, good soil, and worm castings and I keep feeding through the season. A well-fed dense bed shades out weeds and holds moisture. What not to do: plant tight in thin, tired soil and then wonder why everything struggles.
Myth: more water is always better. Watering a little every day trains roots to stay shallow and near the surface. Water deeply and less often so the roots chase the moisture down. What not to do: a daily splash in the heat, which is also how you get split tomatoes from uneven watering.
Myth: you can't grow much in cloudy Seattle. Our season is real and our summers are generous to the right crops. What not to do: give up before you have matched the plant to the place and the timing.
Myth: raised beds need sand mixed in for drainage. Good soil made for raised beds is already loose enough to drain well. What not to do: haul in sand you don't need and compact your bed in the process.
Service: Replenishing the Seattle kitchen garden in Summer
A raised bed is not a one-time fill. The soil settles, hard feeders pull a lot out of it, and by mid-summer the level has dropped and the nutrients with it. Topping up now keeps the second half of the season producing instead of coasting. Here is exactly what I reach for.
I scatter bone meal and potash across the whole bed and rake it in. Most of my beds still have onions and garlic sizing up, and I want to push the roots and the bulbs along, so the whole bed also gets mushroom compost, which is my go-to for general replenishing. When I drop a fresh transplant into a bed in June, it gets Bio-tone starter and earthworm castings to settle the roots. And for the beds carrying the heavy feeders, the tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and zucchini, I top up with Sea Coast Compost, because those crops eat the most and give back the most.
I get asked which products these actually are, so I put them all in one place. You can shop my summer bed refresh here: Amazon shopping list or at the Sky nursery here in Seattle.
I am stepping back from the blog for July, so this is the last garden walk for a little while. While I am off, the PNW Harvest Yield Planner is the thing to lean on. It keeps your succession planting and your harvest timing on track so the second half of summer does not get away from you. You can find it on the website.
Closing
That is where the garden sits in late June, climbing in every direction and feeding half the neighborhood's wildlife on the way up, which is about how this month tends to go.
Happy summer gardening. Let me know if you need help, I am here for you.
Jackie
Palatino Garden Adventures
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