Last Bit of Catching Up

written by Yvonne

Here's the last bit of catch up, then we should be back on track with up-to-the-minute vegetable news from TYs Veggie Patch

Now this is a harvest!

On one hand, we had success with beans this year. We planted them in a new spot on the side of the house which expanded our growing area. That was great. The plants actually produced beans, which was also great. But we didn't do a great job of harvesting and eating them. They didn't produce enough at one time to constitute a full meal so they'd end up going bad before we had enough of them to eat them. (It didn't dawn on either of us until LAST WEEK that we should have frozen them as they came up! DUH! That's the whole reason we bought a big-a$s freezer.)

Where we didn't have such great success was in keeping the little yellow, fuzzy bugs away. This was not a new occurrence; these bugs got to our beans in previous years when they were grown in the beds, so the issue wasn't due to the new location. The little buggers take no time in turning otherwise big, healthy green leaves into lace. These just got decimated.

Of all the melon seeds we planted, this looks closets to the Swan Lake. It's not exactly the right shape, but it's the right color.

More melons on their way.

It wouldn't be honest to report only the good things, so here's our dirty laundry. This is what's become of our beds. Nightmare!! Yes there are tomatoes in there...

and yes the peppers (right) and cow peas (left background) are producing quite well, but we let everything else go to weed and it's quite embarrassing. But after a long, long span of ignoring the garden, we got back to it.

Tom cleared out all of bed one and I worked on the left half of bed two. He planted more tomatoes, kale, collards and peppers in bed one. We figured it being the beginning of August, there might still be time to get a late summer crop going.

Tom embarked on an experiment. He took a tomato that had fallen off the vine and had broken open and he planted it 'as is'. He didn't harvest and/or dry the seeds, but just planted the tomatoes directly into the ground. His theory being that we get so many tomato plants that come up all on their own (in the beds and in the compost pile) that they are likely seeding themselves when they fall off the vines. So why not just plant the tomato instead of buying new seeds? After all, we're using heirloom varieties and they seem to want to produce just by falling off the vine. We'll see.

The bell peppers are taking off! That's $6-$9 of peppers right there, my friends.

And the banana peppers produce three for every one I harvest. Not complaining, mind you.

And even though they are buried in the weeds, the tomato plants are producing. We got lots of these small, round ones and lots of cherry-type tomatoes, but not as many large tomatoes as I'd have liked.