Garden Notes

Early this morning I picked a nice mess of green beans. Once again this year I planted the variety 'Provider.' A bush bean, Provider bean pods are long and straight with small seeds and a nice flavor. My only complaint is I wish the plants were a bit stronger and would hold the mature beans more upright. Even though it would be easier to pick the beans off plants that stayed upright, at least with the garden boxes the beans are held up off the ground and stay very clean. The beans are simmering now with some fresh onion and the aroma is nothing less than heavenly!

A few more tomatoes were also ready, and we now have pretty ones in addition to the less attractive heirlooms. Another discovery yesterday were some ripe cantaloupe. I didn't so much pick them as pick them up. They were lying in the garden already detached from their vines. I'm glad I decided to check on the melons and discovered the self-harvested fruit before they started to rot. The standard sized cantaloupe on the left I believe is Ambrosia' (although I can no longer find the plant tag) and the personal-sized melons are 'Loupey-Lou.' I can't wait to see how they taste!

Today I made a decision to remove the Brussels sprouts plants. All season long I have been fighting worms and bugs on these plants. The sprouts weren't growing very quickly, and I decided I didn't want to eat anything I had to put so much Sevin dust on anyway. I might try Brussels sprouts again next week as a fall crop, or an earlier spring crop, but I sure wasn't happy with them this year.

The garden box which had held zucchini and cucumbers earlier in the year now have some little sprouts of spinach poking up from seeds I planted about a week ago. I guess that even though some of the garden is winding down, I'm not quite ready to give up on gardening for the year.

Soon I will cut seed pods off the lettuce and radish plants I allowed to go to seed. I have also collected seed from the banana peppers and acorn squash. Can you tell I am already thinking about next year's garden?