So I planted green beans

The past couple weeks, I've been planting the last of the green bean seeds for a fall harvest.In three beds, green beans were all I planted, and in all three of those beds what I have growing is ... tomatoes.  In one of the beds, it can be explained by the tomato plant in the corner of that box, but the other beds either didn't exist or didn't have anything planted over the spring and summer, so these little tomatoes-who-could must be from the compost pile that I've started using now.

Talking to my mom this morning, she actually asked if I knew the difference between green bean seeds and tomato seeds!  LOL Yes, and yes I know the difference between the seedlings that sprouted as well.  This mainly means my compost isn't "cooking" on the inside, even though it both looks and smells like nice compost.  It should be interesting to see which varieties these volunteers are, as the volunteers tend to be the most vigorous tomato plants.

Now, for an actual recent picture of me for friends and family:

planting green beans for fall

That's my new straw work hat, as opposed to the "Florida tourist" straw hat I bought in St. Augustine's Old Town a good five years ago or so.  St. Aug is a lovely little tourist trap, and we plan to go in November when they have the pirate festival.  Yes, those are my old garrison BDU bottoms as well, and they are more comfortable to work in than they were back in the spring.

When the weather clears up again, I'll need to do up a post with pictures for my experiment along the fence line.

Fall planting

Being this far south, gardening is a year-round sport.  That said, I didn't do so hot over the summer ... pun intended.  I'm down to about a handful of tomato plants left alive between the hornworms, the heat, and the sporadic rain.  I had thought I was doing pretty decent with my pepper plants, until I went next door and saw her three and four foot tall plants loaded up with ripening peppers.

So now I'll get a chance to do better with the fall and winter gardens.  So far I've planted green beans, snow peas, and carrots in the past couple weeks.

Hornworms

I can't call them just tomato hornworms after the ghastly devastation overnight.  After supper last evening, I was admiring my ripening and soon-to-ripen peppers: cubanelles, gypsies, anaheims, and carmens.  I had lost one cubanelle pepper to an unknown varmint that took a big bite out of the middle of it before it had completely turned orange.

This morning, I woke to carnage.  I am now down to one gypsy sweet pepper, no cubanelles, no anaheims, and lost a good half-dozen carmens in addition to a handful of my beloved datils ... and the culprits were hornworms.  Big, fat, juicy hornworms ... yes, the chickens have had a great morning as I found hornworm after hornworm and put them through the chicken wire.

For the record, hornworms are even more difficult to spot on pepper plants than they are on tomato plants.  It took me four or five times hunting to find the one on the datil pepper plants.

Right now, I feel discouraged, as if I am simply growing hornworm bait in my garden boxes.

Don't even get me started on the battle to keep the lawn tamed.

Another round of green beans

The green (bush) beans I planted in the 4th garden box are now ready for eating or preserving, along with more varieties of tomatoes.  Here's a quick picture in between search-and-destroy patrols for hornworms.

garden fresh green beans and tomatoes

Actually, that pic is from a day or two ago; I'm too busy hunting hornworms this morning.  I have noticed them early, and they are small ... but the white pullets seem to think they are 5-star gourmet.

New tomato varieties now that have ripened are the Mortgage Lifter and Black Prince.  I now have Marglobe and Mr. Stripey starting to turn color, and the German Johnson has definitely set at least one tomato, if the (*BLEEP!*)in' hornworms leave it alone.  I have at least three Cherokee Purples munched/ruined by hornworms already, and a couple of Black Prince tomatoes as well.  In fact ... between cracking from too much rain and now the hornworms, I still have yet to harvest a Cherokee Purple 'mater.

As for the green beans, I put four different bush varieties in the 4th garden box, and am pretty pleased with the results.  In fact, overall I am doing quite well with bush green beans.  Here are some notes on what I've planted.

• Harvester (American Seed Co) - decent enough yield in the 2nd garden box, but I have run out of seeds and am waiting for the remaining plants and bean pods to give me more to try in another box.
• Top Crop (American Seed Co) -so-so yield, also in the 2nd garden box, and also waiting for some pods to dry out on the plants as again I ran out of seeds from the pack.
• Tendergreen Improved (Ferry-Morse) - absolutely impressive yield in the 2nd garden box ... yet very much less-than-impressive in the 3rd box.  The main difference between the two boxes is amount of sunlight, especially midday sun.  Looks like these need to be planted for morning and late evening sun, with midday shade.
• Contender (Ferry-Morse) - excellent yield in the 4th garden box!  These make up most of the beans in the sieve pictured above.  Like the Tendergreen Improved, these bloom purple instead of white.
• Kitchen King (Burpee) - also a great yield in the 4th box, although these are shorter and skinnier than the Contenders, they are also a shade or two darker/deeper green.
• Heavyweight II (Burpee) - less than stellar sprout rate, so I had to resow and have not harvested much from them (in the 4th box).
• Tenderpick (Burpee) - worst sprout rate in the 4th box of the four varieties.  I have harvested some beans off the two initial plants, but there are no qualities that were memorable.

I bought some more lumber to make a couple more boxes over the weekend, although the current build project is an add-on to the Rampart, making it into a duplex.  I am hoping to make green beans a year-round idea here.

Tomato varieties ripening

A few quick pics of some of the tomato varieties ripening right now:

Black Prince heirloom tomato

Homestead heirloom tomato

Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomato

Rutgers heirloom tomato

Not yet ripening are Mr. Stripey, Cherokee Purple, and Marglobe (all heirloom varieties) while I am hoping the German Johnson has finally set a tomato.  One of my neighbors asked me, "Why so many varieties?"  I said I need to find out what works best for both my yard and my style of gardening ... and besides, we have not been able to try most of these until now.

I'll be saving seeds from all of these, of course.

Rooster! and his lady's...

I wasn't sure If We had posted pic's of the birds we got from our neighbors..

Sorting out my pic's and videos. Nice update over the weekend! Stay tuned in!

Early cherry tomatoes

First up, the mea culpas: We have been bad bad bloggers.  Not just mediocre or even single-bad, but double bad since there is two of us doing this blog and it's gone over three weeks without an update.

Last week in sewing chat, Val asked if I had tomatoes yet.  She actually meant tomato plants, and I replied that the yellow pear (heirloom variety) cherry tomato was about to ripen.  Since then I had harvested four little yellow pear tomatoes off the vine.

yellow pear heirloom cherry tomato plant, about four foot tall

There are certainly many more, as this plant just keeps on setting new fruit.  I bought it as a started plant, in the Bonnie peat pots, from either Lowe's or Wal-Mart.  Along with having 100% success rate in rooting cuttings off it, I also plan to save seeds as this is obvious a strong specimen!

Now, for the only tomato plant I won't be saving seeds from, the husky red ("hybrid") cherry tomato.  "Hybrid" is in quotation marks because it is not a true hybrid like a rutabaga is, but more of a tomato-mutt/crossbreed.

Husky red "hybrid" cherry tomato plant that survived three hard frosts

This was the first tomato plant I put in the ground back in February, and it got frost-bitten pretty badly once (out of three hard frosts!) which seemed to serve as a pruning.  It may not be tall, but boy is it husky.  While an insect or worm got the first ripe tomato before I did, I did pick three lovely ripe ones off it this morning.

Well, we've both had our bowl of cereal, and the outdoors beckon.  Hubby is burning the fourth downed tree, which like the third one shattered before it even hit the ground due to insect and woodpecker damage.