Bountiful Harvest

September arrived with an overflowing garden! I spend as much time harvesting as I did on some earlier days of tending the young plants. And it is worth it... behold:

Patty pan squash, yellow and purple string beans, cucumbers, zucchini, bell peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and hot peppers.

Corn 'n Beans

Stuff is growing! Transplanted corn is happily growing, though it remains to be seen if all that seed-starting and transplanting efforts will really be worth it at the end of the summer. Beans are happily climbing their bamboo tipis. Crossing my fingers the Japanese beetles will not find them this year.

Weeds Taking Over...

Visitors from out of town meant I abandoned the garden for 5 days. And wouldn't you know, it rained almost every day! Fantastic for the veggies, but also for the weeds... which sprang up all over. Thankfully rain makes the ground soft and easy for pulling weeds.

Here's a before and after of the beans, which now have plenty of breathing room!

Pole Beans Doing What They Do

Here's my favorite thing about pole beans: when they are big enough to finally latch onto the pole and start winding around it!

Bush Beans

After two full days of rain, the beans are starting to emerge!

Pole Beans

To support my pole beans I chose 6-foot-long bamboo poles and lashed them together with twine. I could easily have chosen 8 foot poles but a) there's a significant cost jump in that extra two feet and b) even though I'm tall I don't relish the thought of picking beans overhead.

So now my supports are standing in slightly raised hills about 6" high, with 4 beans planted around the base of each. The poles are slender enough that the wind should not catch them while they are bare, and by the time the plants are big enough to pose a problem I hope they will also be sturdy enough to keep the supports grounded.

You can see I didn't water the freshly planted beans much. It's supposed to rain tonight so this was just to firm up the soil in the meantime. I also have six more hills to prep and plant... as soon as I get some more poles!