Garden, Mid-August

[leahbobet]

There hasn't been a huge amount of action on the garden front this month -- or what action there's been has been eclipsed by the job-hunting, job-landing, and job-working. I did go out to pick beans tonight, though, so a brief picture post:





The windowbox, from whence cometh most of the beans. Although the crazy huge one was actually on one of the smaller original plants. Go figure.




Tonight's small haul: a half-dozen beans big enough to tear from their mother and murder. I'm going to keep them in the fridge until their siblings grow up and make enough for a salad.

Next to that, what will surely be the Prizewinner of this farm: HAND-SIZED GREEN BEAN.




I saw a bee lurking around these, so all goes well and the sex works out, I may well have late cucumbers.

Comments

[feed-your-muse.livejournal.com]

Looks good! My runner beans haven't done well this year - I planted them in a new spot and they don't like it - too much clay in the soil. But, the broad beans I planted (in last year's spot for runners) are growing like nobody's business. I picked so many I've had to freeze them.

What else do you grow?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Oh man...radishes, snow peas, red chilies, cucumbers (hopefully!), carrots, Boston lettuce, and spinach, as well as a bunch of herbs that just go year-round. That's everything that's gone in the ground. Everything that's actually come out is a different story... *g*

[lotusice.livejournal.com]

"Some beans!"

(Or a very small casserole...)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

*BlackAdderloff*

[clarentine]

You know you can hand-pollinate the cukes, right? Q-tip, collect pollen from male flower, dab around female flower?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I do -- I did that for the other plant, but no cucumbers resulted.

I am a bad turkey baster. :(

[clarentine]

Hmm. Do you know anyone else who has cukes, or another garden with cukes, you can get some more pollen from? It should survive transportation pretty well, given how it's naturally transported (on the back legs of bees).

You can also try, next year, planting some bee-attracting flowers like Queen Anne's Lace and chamomile and the like. Borage is another great one for bees that's easy to grow from seed.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Yeah. I suspected that flowers are the solution, and they're going into the plan for next year's space.

(Yes, I'm already planning next year. It involves hanging tomatoes, more plants in windowboxes on the railing rather than back in the too-much-shade, and a radical change of approach in what we're putting in the dirt.)

[seabream.livejournal.com]

Apropos of nothing, the long diagonal leaf in the lower left hand quarter of the last picture looks very much like a leaping fish of some sort.