This time of year, the McKenzie Seed displays are everywhere, including the grocery store I do my mother’s shopping at. Today, she just gave me her list and stayed home, so I took the time to take a quick look at the display.
I should have known better! 😄😂
I ended up getting these.
What caught my eye were the Royal Burgundy bush beans. I grabbed their last package. We grew these back in 2021, and of the three types of bush beans we grew that year, they did the best. In fact, everything we grew that was purple seems to do really well. We’d ordered them from Veseys, but they don’t carry them anymore. Last year, I ordered a different purple variety, but those were sold out and not replaced, so we got the Red Swan beans as a substitute. We still have lots of those. What we really wanted, though, was more of those Red Burgundies! So I snagged them.
I didn’t want to be buying just one packet of seeds and nothing else, though, so I looked for some edible pod peas. We have plenty of the Dalvay peas, but no edible pod varieties. We had tried growing edible pod peas before, but they didn’t do well. We aren’t growing vegetables in that area anymore, so I expect them to do better planted somewhere else.
Just not at the chain link fence again. The deer ate everything that grew through to the outside of the fence! The next time we plant climbers at the fence, we’ll have to make sure there is protection on the outside of the fence, as well as the inside!
Corn and beans, in particular, were things we had so many seeds for, in so many varieties. Especially the Red Swan beans, though that was a mistake. I’d ordered a different, purple variety, because purple everything seemed to do quite well here. When I got Red Swan, instead, I contacted Veseys and they sent me another package.
Of Red Swan.
That happened a couple of times before I finally read on the website somewhere that they were out of the purple variety, and Red Swan as what they were sending out instead!
Oops.
When it came to beans, I’d hope to plant both bush and pole beans, in a variety of colours. I also wanted to try the beans my mother gave me, that trace back to what she used to grow here, when I was a child.
That didn’t happen. We simply didn’t have the space to plant many beans at all this year.
It was much the same with corn. We had many varieties to choose from. Mostly, I just wanted to have three types. The purple Montana Morado, the Tom Thumb popcorn, and one of the short season sweet varieties for fresh eating.
Well… two out of three is pretty good.
The purple corn.
As much as I’d like to grow the kulli corn, the seed source I’d found was out of stock. We’d grown the Montana Morado before a couple of years back (though we though we were getting an acclimated variety of kulli at the time), and they did well until something destroyed them.
This was all that survived from our 2021 garden.
The kulli corn we’d grown last year did absolutely amazing, growing into massive tall stalked that looked so strong an healthy – though high winds did try to take them down!
We had to add a lot of supports to the kulli corn and yellow pear tomatoes, after strong winds.
What they didn’t develop, however, was corn! Not a single tassel or cob!
So we went with the Montana Morado instead.
The Montana Morado got their own bed in the main garden area. I ordered a couple of packets of seeds, because there weren’t many per packet. It still wasn’t a lot, as far as corn goes, but this is an experiment for us. While the plants certainly didn’t thrive like the kulli stalks did last year, they at least produced cobs that we could harvest!
I waffled back and forth about interplanting beans with the corn as a nitrogen fixer, and did end up planting some Red Swan with them, late in the season, but more on that later.
Bonus for wanting the corn to use for flour is, no harvesting until the very end of the season.
There are a couple of things I wanted to do with purple corn. One was to make and try chicha morado, as the very concept of a drink made out of corn fascinated me. The other is to try making corn flour. For this year, the goal was just to have corn to try making flower, though we did try a few cobs for fresh eating.
We got almost exactly 1 cup of kernels. Just enough to try to make into flour, though we don’t have a mill. We were debating where to try the spice grinder in small batches, or the Bullet processor we’d been given, but were concerned the hard kernels would break them.
Then, one night, I heard a terrible crashing noise and went to investigate.
I found the container of kernels on the floor. A cat had somehow knocked it down.
We lost them all.
Every. Single. One.
*sigh*
Final thoughts on Montana Morado/purple corn:
Yes, we plan to try again but, gosh, that was disappointing to lose them all like that! We might wait another year or two before trying again. My source for the kulli seeds has them again, but they are insanely expensive – and in US prices, so quite a bit more, plus shipping, in Canadian dollars.
So that will wait.
The popcorn.
We got the Tom Thumb variety, which only gets a couple of feet tall. This is actually the second year we tried to grow them, but the location we grew them in last year, flooded. This year we planted them in a completely different area, both from the flooding and the purple corn. The two types of corn pollinate at different times, but the extra space reduced the chances of cross pollination, should we want to keep seeds.
When it came time to build frames to cover the raised beds, a priority was put on one that could go over the Tom Thumb corn, to protect it from deer or racoons. I’m rather happy with how it turned out, though I do want to stabilize the corners better.
As with the Montana Morado, these were grown to be harvested after they’d dried on the cob. These didn’t even get taste tested for fresh eating, so it was a very low maintenance crop! One we got a surprising number of cobs out of.
After they had their chance to dry on the cob indoors some more, we got a surprising amount of kernels.
We got almost exactly 6 cups out of them!
Final thoughts on Tom Thumb popcorn
We did a test pop, of course.
They didn’t pop. They just burned.
So we left them to dry longer, and stored them with a desiccant, before doing another test pop.
They still wouldn’t pop.
They’ve had more time to dry out and I’ll try again, but they should be dry enough. I’ve looked up about how to harvest and process kernels for popcorn, and we’ve done all that. The only thing I can see that might be the problem is that they still have too much moisture in them. Yet, they do need to have a bit of moisture in them, as that’s basically what makes popcorn pop.
I don’t know what to make of it!
I think we still have seeds left, but I don’t think we’ll try them again. In a way, it was a waste of space to grow these two varieties of corn, instead of a sweet corn that we could eat, freeze or can. We just didn’t have the space available to grow a third variety.
In the future, I think we’ll try a flour corn again when we have more prepared spaces. If we do find that we like having flour corn and actually use it, we would need to have a much larger space available to grow in, to make enough flour to be useful. That is still years in the future. Until then, we will continue to try small amounts as testers.
Next year, I want to focus more on growing a good, short season variety of corn, and we have seeds for at least two different varieties that fit that bill, ready and waiting to be planted.
Bush beans
In previous years, we have had great success with beans. The first year, we grew three types – yellow, green and purple – in rows about 25 feet long. The purple beans did especially well!
This year, I wanted to grow some bush beans, for their earlier harvest, pole beans for their later harvest, and shelling beans for dry storage.
Once again, we just didn’t have the prepared space for them.
In the end, we planted yellow and green beans in the high raised bed, which is only 9 feet long.
The yellow beans did okay, though a lot of the green beans in particular did not germinate. Most seeds were planted to fill the gabs, they they grew all right this time.
Then… this happened.
Turns out this bed is the perfect height for a hungry deer’s buffet!
We rigged a cover for the bed with poles and netting. Amazingly, the beans recovered, and we actually got some harvests!
Not a lot, but enough to include in our meals. Nowhere near enough for freezing.
Eventually, we were able to cover the bed with one of the garden bed covers we build this summer.
This worked out really well, as the netting could be lifted, and the openings of the fence wire used in the cover were wide enough to fit our arms through, so we didn’t have to remove the cover to harvest the beans. The only down side is that this netting is insane for catching on things!
One thing I found was that the slugs managed to get up into that bed!
This was a very bag year for slugs, but that will be covered more when we talk about the squash.
Still the beans did remarkably well under the circumstances!
Final thoughts on bush beans
While we will probably continue to experiment with varieties until we find ones we really like and can save seeds for, bush beans will probably be a staple crop for us. Especially purple ones, which seem to do best for some reason. Bush beans don’t need much done for them, and they are ready to harvest earlier than pole beans. Since we planted so few of them this year, we may not buy more for next year at all, and just go with what we already have.
The Red Swan beans.
There was some confusion when we got these, as I’d forgotten what I’d ordered, then realized what I ordered didn’t come in, and then… well…
I think we ended up with three bags of them, in total, by the time it was figured out!
These are a variety of bean that can be used for both fresh eating, and as a dried bean. They are also climbers. Since we had so many, when I decided to go ahead and interplant beans with the purple corn as nitrogen fixers, this was the variety I planted. I honestly did not expect them to have enough season left to produce edible beans, so it was a real surprise when they did!
They even got big enough to harvest!
They do turn green when cooked, rather than keep their red colour.
While they managed to grow pods, there was no chance they’d reach full maturity for harvesting dried seed pods. Which is okay. Having any pods at all from these was unexpected! They never even got big enough to climb the corn stalks.
Final thoughts on Red Swan beans, pole beans and dry beans
We will definitely be planting these again, with some left to mature for dry bean collection, and some for fresh eating, so we can figure out if we like them enough to keep growing. After all, there’s no point in letting all those extra seeds go to waste!
As for pole beans in general, we still want to try other varieties to see what we like, though for next year, we’ll probably go with the ones we got for this year, that never made it into the ground! Pole beans start to reach fresh eating maturity about the time bush beans are done, so having both will keep the harvests coming.
I also want to plant dry bean seeds we saved from last year that we didn’t have the space to plant this year, as well as experimenting with other varieties. We won’t go in that direction too far, though, as none of us enjoy dry beans quite enough to warrant having a lot of them. Mostly, having them will be part of our food storage and self sufficiency goals.
Peas.
Finally, we get to the peas!
This year, we planted a variety of pod peas we’ve grown somewhat successfully before, Dalvay. Previously, we’d grown them on trellises near the pole beans, way off in what will be our food forest area, as part of our efforts to amend the soil. Peas have yet to do very well for us, though they were growing in far from ideal conditions in that location. We didn’t plant in that area this year. Unfortunately, we didn’t have an alternate location ready for this year, either.
For the peas, though, I decided to plant them along the chain link fence this year, so they already had something to climb.
This area had had tomatoes growing in it for two years previously, and I felt it was time to switch up to a nitrogen fixer.
They did… okay. They certainly didn’t thrive in this location, which I found a bit strange. In fact, nothing did really well in this bed this year.
The peas did start climbing the fence, and we even got a few pods to harvest. Mostly, though, there were just a few pods I could snack on while outside.
Then one morning, I came out to do my rounds and discovered all parts of the pea plants that grew through to the other side of the fence, were gone. They all got eaten down to the same height, for the entire length of the fence!
Yup. It was the deer, again.
They did somewhat recover, only to get nibbled on again later on. We aren’t feeding the deer anymore – it’s just too expensive – so we don’t get the number we used to, but there are still a few that regularly come by. Usually, they just raid the compost pile, but every now and then, they help themselves to our garden.
*sigh*
So not only did they struggle in the new location, but with being eaten by wildlife, too!
Final thoughts on peas.
I like this variety of peas – the few times we were able to harvest them. At some point, I’d like to have enough pod peas to be able to can or freeze them!
As for why they didn’t do well in this location, when things had done well there before, I think the answer is above them.
We’ve been trying to cut back the branches on the Chinese Elm inside the fence, but in some places, that just resulted in new branches growing back even bushier. They are also too high to reach with our extended pole pruning saw.
Basically, that bed no longer gets as much light as it did over the past couple of years and, for the peas, that was a problem.
Since these trees also drop damaging amounts of seeds every spring, they are on the hit list. At some point, they are going to be taken down completely. They do, however, shade the yard and are among the few trees that are a partial wind break for winds from the south. I would rather not take them down until we have something to compensate for what we would lose when they’re gone.
However, given how much damage they are doing, we might just get rid of them and deal with the other issues later.
As for peas, I hope to plant them in different beds next year, and I’d like to try edible pod peas again. Eventually, I’d like to have both as staples in the garden.
In the end, when it comes to peas, beans and corn, the main hurdle we have is prepared beds to plant them in. We need to build a lot more raised beds of varying heights. We do have plans to build pairs of raised beds joined by trellis tunnels that has been started, and will continue to add more as we are able.
It’s the “as we are able” part that’s the problem.
Well, we do what we can with what we have available.
I found a little round cucumber lying on the ground and picked it, leaving the others to get a bit bigger. There were a few peas to pick, as well as some carrot thinnings. I would have thinned more of the purple carrots, but they are a very long variety, and our soil just doesn’t want to give them up!
I grabbed some of the smallest Red of Florence onions for today’s cooking, and decided to grab a few little turnips, too. There was one Magda squash I went ahead and grabbed. There was also a single green zucchini, and one large-ish sunburst squash, that I left to get a bit bigger.
The yellow bush beans are almost done. I couldn’t see very many developing pods left as I picked these. The purple Carminat beans are very prolific! There are so many more of them, compared to what’s on the green pole beans.
In that pile of green pole beans, however, there were two extras.
They are from this one little bush bean plant, grown from a leftover seed of our first planting of green bush beans under the sweet corn. The second planting of green bush beans are starting to develop pods, while this lonely original had a couple ready to pick.
I’m happy that this year, we at least have plenty of these two varieties of beans. The Red Noodle beans still show no signs of blooming, though they are at least starting to climb the trellis more. I’m curious about how the shelling beans will turn out, given how incredibly small and fragile the plants turned out to be. There are a lot of pods developing, too.
We planted so much this year, with hopes of having lots of food, in many varieties, to have over the winter. I always expect to have at least some losses. I didn’t expect to have so many total, or near total losses! Which makes me extra thankful to have what we do have.
I’ve been training the cucumber up the trellis netting, but somehow missed one big cucumber that was lying right on the ground. I’m glad I spotted it this morning. Not much longer before it would have started to be over mature. Which would be okay if I were wanting to save seeds, but I won’t be for these.
With last night’s rain and an incredibly humid morning, things were still soaking wet outside, and my glasses were fogging up! The squash are loving it, though, and I’m seeing increased growth. Even the one Zucca melon that’s trying to survive had a noticeably growth spurt.
The sweet corn and the popcorn are both sending up tassels! The popcorn is still really small, but has had a growth spurt, too. They only reach about 2 ft high to begin with, so there is hope for a crop, yet!
There are squash blooming all over. Whenever possible, I am hand pollinating. There has not been a lot of opportunity to do that. Still, if we have a long, mild fall like last year, it will help ensure we have fruiting plants that can take advantage of it. We shall see!
I didn’t get a photo of the finished squash patch last night, so I got one this morning.
All the paths are now mulched, too. There’s no carboard under the paths, so I expect things to start growing through, but at least it will be more sparse.
The plants themselves are seeing new growth and lots of flowers. It’s a race against time and the weather to see if we’ll have anything to pick this year.
I love that you can see the giant pumpkin from so far away!
I swear, this thing is visibly bigger, every day.
Of the two other pumpkins spotted, this one is making it and growing fast. The other did not get pollinated, and withered away. I see no other female flowers, so we’re probably just have the two.
In checking the Red Kuri squash and Apple gourds, I found both male and female flowers blooing at the same time, so I went ahead and hand pollinated. The Red Kuri is doing well, but with the Apple gourds, all the female flowers so far have withered. This morning, I found a female flower on one plant, and a male on another, si I made sure to hand pollinate
Thankfully, tomatoes are self pollinating.
The are so many of them changing colour right now! I have to check myself, to make sure I don’t pick some of them too early.
The one big Sophie’s Choice tomato I recently picked was enough for the girls to make a tomato salad out of it. I’m glad they’re enjoying the variety.
I finally picked the one bigger golden zucchini this morning. There were not a lot of yellow beans to pick, but there were more of the pole beans, with many more little ones on the vines. There will be more peas for a while, too. There may not be a lot of quantity from each of them, but altogether, it’s pretty decent.
The only down side this morning are my pain levels. I over did it yesterday, while pruning the trees. I was so distracted by the heat, I missed my other “time to back off” warning signs. Frustrating.
Ah, well. That’s what pain killers are for. Today is going to be a hotter one, with possible thunderstorms, so it’s not going to be a day for significant manual labour, anyhow.
There were very few yellow beans to pick this morning. The bush beans seem to be winding down. There were more of the green pole beans to pick, though – and our first purple beans!
There are still a few peas on the first planting, while the second planting of peas are getting into their prime. I found more cucumbers than expected. Enough to make a decent size cucumber salad.
I finally picked the one Sophie’s Choice tomato that was looking like it could have been picked a while ago. It didn’t seem to be getting any redder, so I went ahead and grabbed it. I also grabbed the reddest Cup of Moldova tomatoes. The one that fell off while I tried to get the clip loose has ripened indoors, so there are two of them for my husband and the girls to taste test later on.
I picked what seemed to be the largest of the turnips to taste test as well. They are not a large variety and golf ball size is supposed to be when they have the best flavour. I also pulled a couple of the largest looking beets, to see how they are, and… they’re not doing well at all.
But we have something. And something is better than nothing!
I had done some recordings to make another garden tour video in the morning, but after going over them, I went back out to re-record most of them in the early evening. The final video will have a mix of both. I have this terrible habit of using the wrong words for things and not even noticing. Like saying “purple corn” when I meant to say “purple peas”. That sort of thing. I might have time to work on editing it this evening, but I’m not sure just yet. It depends on how things go after I get back from my mother’s, this afternoon.
It’s coming up on noon, and we’ve already reached out high of 27C/81F, with the humidex at 29C/84F. Usually, we don’t reach our high until about 5pm! They’re also predicting rain, though, so hopefully that includes our area, and things will cool down a bit.
Some things seem to like the heat, though.
That one giant pumpkin is noticeably bigger, every day!
I put our very first tomato that I just picked, and a Magda squash, down for perspective.
Those ants were all over the tomato, immediately!
I have since placed an ant trap at the hill. The main part of the hill is next to the other giant pumpkin plant, and it’s looking like the ants are finally starting to damage it. I put traps next to two other ant hills as well. Usually, I prefer to leave them since ants are pollinators, too, but these ones have to go. There are plenty of other hills in the area, so it’s not like we’re making much of a dent in the population by doing this.
Here we have this morning’s harvest. Our very first tomato – Sophie’s Choice. I will leave the family to taste test it, since I can’t do raw tomatoes. They make me gag. Which, I’ve learned, is a thing, similar to how cilantro tastes like soap to some people, but not others!
Those pea pods are the first peas from our second planting. Remarkably, the first planting of peas is still green and trying to produce.
I didn’t pick any yellow beans tomorrow. There should be a good amount to gather tomorrow, though.
On another note, I got to pick up and pet the black and white kitten with the black splotch by its nose. I was happy to see it, since I did not see it at all, yesterday. It did not run away when I came by, and had no issues with being picked up and cuddled.
This morning was our date with the vet, to get Potato Beetle, Big Rig and Tissue spayed and neutered, as arranged by the Cat Lady.
I had a chance to text with her last night, as she reminded me to have them fasting. She herself was going back to the hospital today. The poor thing has been in and out of hospital all summer, and yet she still manages to help with cats. She just brought home a couple more because they were sick, and no one else was willing/able to take care of them. She is so awesome!
She did warn me that there is a shortage of vets, and there was a possibility of cancellation. So when my phone started ringing while I was driving with the three cats, I had a sinking feeling. Of course, I couldn’t answer while driving. It started ringing again, then I suddenly started getting notification noises, one after another. *sigh*
The calls were from one of the staff from the clinic – but she was calling from home! When she couldn’t get through to me, she called the Cat Lady, and both of them were trying to text me at the same time, letting me know that the vet wasn’t coming in today. All surgeries were being cancelled.
I got all these when I parked in front of the clinic.
After responding to both of them, the lady from the clinic said she would call me when she got into the office to reschedule, then I headed home.
The cats were not happy with all this. I was concerned about Potato Beetle. He’s already been stuck in the sun room for over a week. Yes, he has cool places to lie down, and we make sure there’s a frozen water bottle in his water bowl, the ceiling fan is going, and the small box fan I found the the garage is set up. Still, it gets quite warm in there and, as much as we try to go over and pay attention to him, he’s mostly all on his own.
Thankfully, the clinic was able to reschedule us for this Friday, so tomorrow night, we do the fasting again.
Since we no longer to dash to and from town to deal with the cats, I took advantage of the change in plans and decided to do our Costco trip today, instead of next week.
But first, I had to do my morning rounds, switch out the memory cards in the trail cams, and check the garden beds.
The Carminat pole beans finally have pods forming!
The one giant pumpkin is growing so fast!
I looked around and finally saw another pumpkin forming. Just to be on the safe side, I hand pollinated it. The vines of the two plants are overlapping each other, but as far as I can tell, this one, plus another female flower I found that is still just a bud, is on the same plant as the pumpkin that’s growing so big. The second plant has lots of male flowers, but I can’t see any female flowers on it.
I’ll keep checking and, as I find them, I’ll hand pollinated them, just to be on the same side.
Which I am also doing with the Red Kuri (Little Gem) squash, in the south yard. These are doing really, really well here. I have hand pollinated several female flowers already, and I can see more budding. I’m happy that these are doing so well, because these may be the only winter squash we get this year!
The cherry tree by the house is doing well, too. This is the most we’ve seen on this tree since moving here. The other trees at the edge of the spruce grove have nothing. Being close to the house seems to be providing the microclimate it needs. I don’t know the name of this variety; only that the original tree was from Poland, which has a longer growing season than we do.
The cherries at the very top look ripe, or close to it. We’ll have to bring over the step ladder and start picking them!
Speaking of picking things…
This is this morning’s harvest. Along with the bush beans, there was a single pea pod from the row that was planted first. That row is almost done, but the ones that were planted later have quite a few pods that should be ready to pick in a few more days.
I also picked our very first two cucumbers! I picked this variety as it is supposed to be good for both fresh eating and pickling. Whether or not we’ll have enough to make pickles, I’m not sure yet, but we at least have these ones to taste test now!
There was also a few raspberries to pick. Maybe 3/4’s of a cup in total.
It’s not much, but it’s enough to enjoy with a meal. Certainly better than nothing at all!
That done, I was off to the city to do the last of our monthly stocking up, but that will get it’s own post. 😊
While checking on the garden (and putting back cardboard mulch that was blown around), I spotted some new growth.
This is an apple gourd! I’m hoping it was pollinated and will continue growing. It looks like 3 of the 4 apple gourd plants are going to be productive, but this one is definitely the largest and strongest. The fourth one remains barely visible!
We have two more Baby Pam pumpkins developing! I hand pollinated these ones myself, just in case, and it seems to have taken. That makes a total of 3 of these pumpkins trying to grow. As these are a small, short season variety, we might actually have ripe pumpkins to harvest this fall.
The kulli corn is getting nice and tall! It’s time to take the net off and see if we can wrap it around the side, leaving the top open, for the corn to reach its full height.
Those bean plants are huge! This bed was made with trench composting, and it seems to have made a difference.
Rearranging the net will give a chance for some weeding, too, but it doesn’t look like this bed is having weed problems! 😄
The nearby ground cherries are getting very robust!
This is what ground cherry flowers look like. :-) I’ve finding quite a few flowers, and developing fruit. I’m looking forward to these!
I was finally able to settle in and weed this overground bed. The netting around it may keep the groundhogs away from the carrots, but it prevents casual weeding, too.
Unfortunately, I did end up accidentally pulling a couple of purple carrots in the process. It’s really hard to pull up crab grass next to carrot greens!
There aren’t a lot of the one type of turnip, but at least there’s something. The Gold Ball turnip are simply gone. They were the first to germinate, and disappeared almost immediately. I’d hoped that, while weeding, I might find some survivors, but there’s nothing. I don’t know what ate them, any more than I know what is leaving so many holes in the other turnips. We planted 3 types of turnips, but only one has survived – so far.
I did manage to have a sad little harvest this morning. A handful of the shelling peas, and a few raspberries.
Which is better than no harvest at all!
While at my mother’s, yesterday, we went looking at the garden plots outside her apartment. She has one little corner with some low maintenance plants in it, but some of her neighbours have better mobility and are growing a remarkable amount of vegetables in those little plots. One person has peas. They are pretty much twice the size of our own peas even though, from the stage of the developing pods, they had to have been planted later than our own. Even so, they were smaller than pea plants should be.
It’s been a hard gardening year for so many people!
My daughters were sweethearts and took care of feeding the cats outside for me, as I’m still feeling pretty unstable, so the cats weren’t out and about by the time I headed outside. I did get to briefly pet a kitten, though! :-D
While checking out the garden, there was some new progress – and a bit of deer damage – to find.
The Carminat beans are reaching the top of the trellis, and you can see their flower buds. At my fingers, however, you can see the stem of a missing leaf! There was a vertical row of missing leaves, a few feet along the trellis. Right about deer height! Time to find more noise makers and flashy things to set up.
On this side of the trellis are the Seychelles beans, which are starting to get pretty tall, too. None of them show deer damage, which is good, since less of them germinated. In the foreground are the self seeded (or should I say, bird-seeded) sunflowers that I left to grow. The beans can climb them, too! With the flooding this spring, we did not plant any of the Hopi black dye or Mongolian Giant sunflower seeds we’d collected from last year, so I don’t mind letting these one grow. These would be the black oil seed that we put out for the birds in the summer. We’re finding them all over the place, thanks to being spread by birds!
The first sowing of shelling peas may be about half the size they should be, but they are loaded with pods. At least on the north end of the pea trellis. Towards the south end, the sugar snap peas are barely surviving, and the shelling peas on the other side of the trellis are much weaker, too. The entire trellis gets an equal amount of sunlight, so this would be a reflection of soil conditions.
This should be the last year we use this spot for growing vegetables. Next year, they’ll be moved closer to the house, and this area will be made available for planting fruit or nut trees. We haven’t decided what to get next, yet.
The cucumber row is a mixed bag of plants that are growing nice and big, and filled with little cucumbers, and others that are barely bigger than when they were first transplanted!
I had an adorable find at the big trellis.
We have a first Tennessee Dancing gourd developing! It is so cute!
The beans on the same side as the dancing gourds are the red noodle beans. The plants are pretty large, but they are still not at the point of climbing. The shelling beans on the other side, however…
The are much smaller, but have tendrils climbing the trellis, and have even started to bloom!
The most adorable little pollinator showed up just as I was taking the picture.
I startled a bee when checking out this HUGE pumpkin flower.
Yes, it’s on a giant pumpkin plant. 😁
I’d seen some female flowers previously, but now I can’t find them, so there are no pumpkins starting to form, yet. While we are not shooting for super big pumpkins, and won’t be pruning them down to just one pumpkin per plant, it feels like it’s too late in the season for any giant pumpkins to mature. We’re near the end of July already, and none have formed, yet!
In the south yard, we finally have Chocolate cherry tomatoes! Just this one plant, yet. Of the 4 varieties we planted this year, the Chocolate cherry have been the most behind – and they are planted where tomatoes had done so well, last year. The plants themselves are getting nice and tall, and we’ve been adding supports and pruning them as needed, but there are much fewer flowers blooming, and only today do we finally have tomatoes forming. Thankfully, the other varieties are much further along.
I also spotted some ground cherry fruit forming! These plants are doing remarkably well, given how much water they had to deal with this spring. It took a while, but not they are quite robust plants, and I’m happy to see them setting fruit!
Hopefully, it won’t be too much longer before we start getting actual food from the garden. Everything is so, so behind, I am extra happy to see progress like this.
The Re-Farmer 