Sunday, August 17, 2014

Down They Come

After Removal

I had one huge wall of beans, but the Kentucky Wonder beans started with rust and it was just getting worse. They were producing, but not a lot. I decided they needed to come out along with the yard long beans next to them (they too were infected badly, in addition the KW beans had sent over vines and were mixing into them). I left up the Golden Gate beans. I've liked those beans. They keep putting out more flowers. It probably isn't enough to make much of a meal now, but we will see.

As you can see the chard in front of the beans now gets a lot more light. Well some of it at any rate. I noticed its production had dropped. I think with the less light due to the season and due to the beans was a bit much for it. I'm also detecting a bit of rot on the stems that isn't normal. This is the first time I've tried to grow chard with beans to the SE side of them. I knew it might hurt their production, but before this it hadn't. Behind the beans was some scraggly lettuce that I tried to grow over the summer. Not very well either. I figured the lack of light in the section would be enough to keep it going, but I'm not sure it got enough water. Now that some beans are out and the lettuce is out, I might rip out some of those onions as I'd like to use the section for some baby Asian greens. If so I'd better get to seeding them soon.

Right next to the bean bed is the cucumber and zucchini bed. I keep getting way, way too many cukes. So I figured I'd pull half the patch. That will also give more light to the area so my Asian greens will grow better. I've given away a lot of cucumbers. I'm getting sick of eating them every day and I love cucumbers. It is weird that I want to take down my beans and cucumbers because they are two of the veggies that I can count on every day. I guess I'm ready for a change. It is almost that season.

Maybe tomorrow I'll finally remove the hoops from the zucchini section now that I can reach it better. I really don't need those up. Funny how I don't notice it in the garden, but it is glaring in one of the photos.

The third thing I took down this weekend was the tarp that covered my drying onions. They looked very good. So I trimmed them up and braided them. They are now stored in the basement. I looked over the numbers and I did very very well in onions this year. I'll be more detailed about that in my Harvest Monday post.

Again I still left some work for myself. I haven't taken down the onion rack. But I'm sure I'll get to it this week. Then maybe I can deal with the compost. It won't be long before I need it to put over the beds in the fall.

4 comments:

  1. Getting ready for fall already! It's interesting how our different climates promote different diseases and pests, I've never seen rust in my beans, onions yes, beans no. It's generally spider mites that do my beans in.

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  2. Those onions do look gorgeous. My first harvest was pulled last week and is drying on newspaper in the garage but I am definitely eyeing your onion curing contraption as I do have to come up with a different solution. And isn't it strange how things often look so different in photos?

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  3. I love the onion drying rack. That's a great space saving idea!! I need to get mine outside too, they take for ever to dry in the garage!

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  4. Our onions were drying well on net hammocks in the sunshine but after the heavy downpours they are wet again and now have been taken into the dry greenhouse

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