It is bush bean season at last. Mike and Shelly planted a bed of bush beans around Memorial Day and theirs are now ready to eat. I, on the other hand, wait until later to plant mine. I've had lousy luck planting them in May. The later I plant them, the better they do. Mid-June is plenty of time. In fact, anytime before the first of August will work just fine. Therefore, they end up being the second crop after the peas. I've even planted them as a second crop after potatoes. They will produce until they are frozen out.
My bush beans are sharing space with the second planting of cucumbers and both are doing very very well. By the time I run out of frozen beans from last year, these will be producing. Then I will enjoy bushels of beauteous beans.
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| A day's picking 2005 |
Also in the mid-summer planting are the black beans. They are so easy to grow and these seed I bought for 2012 all germinated and are growing fabulously.
The Beauregard sweet potatoes I've put in my large pots are growing fabulously as well. They took weeks to make so much as a start but now they are off and running, healthy as can be.
Cucumbers are coming along nicely. We've been picking at least one a day for a week.
And here's a little surprise. A week and a half ago we stopped at our good friend Sandy's greenhouse to pick up some half priced annuals for fill ins. This time of year, greenhouses are planning to dump any unwanted bedding plants. I got some Marigolds and Lantana to change out some tired Pansies and Nasturtium. I felt so sorry for the scraggly, unwanted pots of watermelon, I grabbed two pots on a whim. They were going to be thrown out anyway.... And LOOK! A melon the size of a jawbreaker.
Something tells me this is not a good year for melons. It's barely a good year for tomatoes and squash. My zucchini plant died because of the wet weather and stink bug damage. And my Sungold cherry tomato plant...
It barely has the will to live. It looks like a Charlie Brown tomato plant. It consists of one miserable stem with no suckers and no new growth for over a week.
It should look like this...
All my other tomato plants are doing just fine, growing, blooming and setting fruit. It's a mystery. July has been every bit as wet as June. We've had 5.75" of rain so far, and today's high was 69 degrees.
It still consistently amazes me how much difference a couple hundred miles north or south, a few hundred feet of elevation and proximity (or not) to a Great Lake make such a large difference in growing seasons. We could've happily planted beans any time during the summer but the chances of seeing beans on anything planted after July 1st were so low as to make it not worth doing. Glad to hear the black beans are looking good. Phytopthora root rot is one of the biggest challenges with those. As long as you don't try growing them in the same place more than one year in three or four it shouldn't be an issue.
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