Summer Harvest and Winter Planting

A couple of weeks back I did a post in which I mentioned that I had added SuperPhosphate to my veggie garden because I was getting lots of vegetation and very little in the way of blossoms and "fruit." I also mentioned that a week later I had my first bean blossoms.

Since that post, I've gotten a lot more bean blossoms and, yesterday afternoon, I harvested my first beans -- along with three zucchini and two scalloped squash.

This morning I leaned my 10' ladder against the fence so I could reach over the top to harvest the beans that were mocking me from the other side of the lattice-work at the top of my 7' fence. The beans in the photo are about half the quantity I harvested this morning.

When I planned to put the ladder up to deal with the beans, I had planned to tease them back over to this side of the fence, but no-o-o-o-o-o! They had mostly intertwined through the lattice-work then with each other, so there was pretty much no going back. (Add this to Lessons Learned pages.) But, while I was up there, I harvested a bunch of beans and took note that there aren't many baby beans or flowers left on that side of the fence. I'll only have to lean the ladder back up there once or twice more.

In the meanwhile, the various squash plants are slowly producing squash at a rate that is comfortable for a human to consume. The tomato plants (especially the cherry tomato) have suddenly put on prodigious quantities of tomatoes. But they're mostly green. Only a couple have started to turn a little yellow or orange. I can hardly wait till they all suddenly turn red at once.

The cucumbers continue to maniacally produce semi-mutant cucumbers far faster than I can consume... even while giving massive quantities away. (I'm getting really tired of cucumbers. Another item to add to Lessons Learned: one 6-pack of cucumbers is plenty; two 6-packs are wa-a-ay too many.) By "semi-mutant" I mean that the half of the cucumber closest to the stem is very much ripe cucumber-esque. The blossom end, on the other hand, continues to look like a baby, not-ready-to-pick cucumber. If I let it go till the blossom end enlarges, the stem end gets way over-ripe even before the blossom end has ripened. Go figure. Probably has something to do with pollination or insufficient soil minerals or insufficient sun.

About a week ago, on a whim, I bought a 6-pack of cabbage plants. These things need 18" between plants, so they really need a lot of space. So far, I've planted two in 19" pots -- one in each pot -- so I really don't have room to plant anything else (maybe a ring of green onions). I think I can plant another in another pot I have out back. Yes, the first two are planted in the front yard.

Along the way, I have also planted a bunch of 6-packs of seeds for my winter garden. I have two 6-packs of Super Sugar Snap Peas (that are already sprouting) that will be replacing the cucumbers in another week. I also planted a 6-pack of Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach (no signs of sprouting yet) that will go in front of the peas. I planted one 6-pack each of two different kinds of heirloom lettuce -- one leaf-type and one heading-type -- and a 6-pack of Sweet Basil. I will have to figure out exactly where I can tuck lettuce plants here and there into pots and other spots in the garden.

So! My winter veggie garden has started on its way!