Yet another several weeks have passed. At this point, we are almost at the end of the growing season for what I’ve planted.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent countless hours in the garden picking green beans! There were two weekends where it took about an hour and a half each weekend to pick green beans. This past Friday, I picked another good helping – but maybe spent 45 minutes.
Then – after the green beans are picked, they all have to be snapped. There was another good hour and a half each time too!
Overall, we now have seven gallon-sized bags of green beans in the freezer. I’ve also cooked some up to put in some dishes lately too. The green beans are just about ‘pooped out’ with the height of the pickings now done.
I don’t have an updated picture of the front garden, but the tomato plants are really putting on a lot of tomatoes! Unfortunately…. there is a problem. Almost all of the tomatoes that have ripened so far have blossom end rot. The bottom of the tomatoes are rotted out. I did pick four or five tomatoes on Friday that had some rot, but was able to cut it out and use at least 3/4 of the tomato. Some of the others have been really bad and they were a loss. I’m wondering if it is because I put the green beans next to the tomatoes, which I’ve heard nitrogen can ‘seal up’ the calcium in the ground. And a calcium deficiency or improper watering is known to cause blossom end rot. I would like to think I’ve watered the plants regularly, so I don’t believe it is a watering problem.
Onions – what a fantastic year for them. Almost every one of the onions were in good shape. In year’s past, at least half or more of the onions would be rotted out before they were even ready to harvest. Because of that, I planted a significant amount more to make up for it. Well, nature surprised me by having plenty of onions! The Walla Walla onion variety seems to do well – but I think it is also because they were planted in the raised bed on the driveway. I did plant a few of the onions in the front garden – and some of those did rot.
The entire patio table is full of onions. The onions started getting picked about four weeks ago and the last of them were picked this weekend. They still didn’t have the tops drooped over, but I didn’t want them to rot so they got pulled.
There were two really huge, good-sized onions. The rest were about ‘average’ size of a few ounces each.
And lastly… I got myself into a job yesterday (Sunday). The raised beds are now quite a few years old. When I made them, I cheapened up on the wood that was used and purchased one-inch thick pieces. Well, being in wet soil all the time, they were rotting out. So the bed on the driveway needed some work.
This time, I purchased a 4×4 that was eight foot tall – and it was chopped into 10 inch sections to be used around the four corners of the bed to provide a good fastening joint. Two 2×10 boards that were eight foot long were purchased to repair the front side of the garden bed. The original bed was 12 inches tall – so I am losing a little bit of depth. But just those three boards were about $30 for pressure treated lumber! Cedar is way too expensive to make it worthwhile.
About three hours in the hot sun and the work was done. At least when I took the old boards off, the majority of the dirt stayed in it’s same position and didn’t cave in. I still had to remove some dirt for the new 4×4 posts in the corner.
I still need to get the PVC pieces back on but otherwise it is ready for next year. The opposite side of the planter will need replaced soon too, maybe next year.