Pulling and Planting

This morning I pulled all the Masai beans as they were done. They are in a 2'x4' area. So they have 8 sqft. They gave me 2.6 lbs in half a year. Not a great yield for beans. The Kentucky Wonder have about 5 sqft and have already given me 3.11lbs. Regardless I cleaned up the spot and replanted more to see if I can get a fall harvest or not. It would be nice to know for future years if I can get two beans crops out of one spot.

Then I went over to the spot I cleared before and fertilized and seeded some lettuce and beets for the fall. Usually I do rows. But this time I just tossed lettuce seed into the bed. And randomly pressed some beet seed into the soil. In addition I seeded with mustard too. This bed is filled with nematodes and the mustard out to help keep them at bay. The lettuce was really stressed this spring because of it.

While I was working on the lettuce, I noticed the brown mustard seed was starting to shatter. So I got some big paper supermarket bags and started to fill them up. After I had done a few plants my hands and arms started to sting. Whoops. The pods are furry and grab on to you and those little scratches combined with the mustard oils was not a good combination. So I washed up inside and then put on gloves. I tell myself I ought to wear them all the time, but I just hate them. I'd much rather have dirty fingernails and scratches on my hands. I filled up two large bags with seed heads. I'll let them dry a bit more in their bags then I'll stomp on them or something to remove the seed from their pods and winnow them out.

I still have the yellow mustard to go. It isn't shattering yet. It was entwined with the single tomato plant that I have. The tomato plant will make me sick if it gets into the mustards (I'm sensitive to nightshades), so while I had the gloves on I chopped the tomato way back. Then staked the mustards so they can't touch the plant. Tomorrow I'll be watering the garden and I'm hoping it washes off any contamination. Then sometime next week I'll harvest those too.

Then it was inside to the onions that had finished drying. I decided to braid them. Last year I harvested when the tops were green. So I could lay them all out flat and have nice flat tops for braiding. This year the onion foliage was half dead when I harvested. I think the heat and lack of water did that to them. But it meant that the leaves didn't dry flat. I was worried they would hold in a braid. But they seemed to do OK. I have two braids each about seven pounds each.

There is so much more to do. My main tasks are to harvest the rest of the onions and water the garden. I still need to get out and weed sometime, but Monday and Tuesday are going to be hot again. So I'll probably put it off until later in the week. Once the onions are harvested I need to seed the kale in that bed. I was going to do starts indoors, but I think I'll just try to direct seed this year. I hope it works.