Unbased first published on 08/12/2015
First time ever in my garden. Purple podded beans. Darker vines and leaves with bright purple beans. Super easy picking. Purple pods easy to see against green vines. Pick em in half the time of regular beans. Soon as hot water hits them in the cook pot, they turn green like any other pole beans. Good tasting, easy to grow and harvest. I’ll plant a few of them again next year.
Another interesting thing about them. Apparently Japanese beetle proof. Beetles gobbled up green pole bean leaves adjacent to purple pods on same fence panel trellis. Both varieties received same treatment of diatomaceous earth and Sevin bug spray. Green bean leaves decimated. Purple beans barely touched.
Mountain Gold tomatoes are pretty, good sized, fast growing, meaty and nearly tasteless. Bright golden yellow globes are fine for show, but not so great eating. None next year. Two plants of yellow Brandywine adjacent to the Mountain Gold are another matter. Lobed and convoluted with some big wrinkles, they’re delicious. Can’t slice them. Gotta chunk them up. A handful of salted chunks make a grinning snack any time of day.
Good old reliable Rutgers. Flavorful and dependable. I plant a few with varying success every year. Pap liked them. Mom did too because they were right size to handle and pack in jars.
I have four West Virginias this year. Best luck I’ve ever had with them. Smooth and red. A pretty tomato. Great tasting. Not a heavy producer, but steady.
And then the Romas. Friend, Mary Wicks planted them. Wanted to make and freeze spaghetti sauce. She’s cooking some at home as I write. Boodles of small pear shaped fruits. Great exercise bending and reaching. Six plants this year, because plants came in groups of six. Four plants next year even if I have to just throw two away.
Squash borers killed yellow squash plants first. Long rainy spell when plants needed dusting most. Too much mud kept me away from rain washed plants. Dark zucchini plants almost all gone to same fate. Sun Gold patty pans, most borer resistant. We never raised Sun Golds before and I haven’t made much use of them this year other than some in goopy. Maybe a plant next year just for frying.
Eighty pints of veggie goopy in my deep freezer. Four batches from three crock pots. Each pot a slightly different mixture of fresh garden vegetables. cumbers, onions, green peppers, and one batch with okra all from garden. Red beans and tomato puree off store shelves. Salt, black pepper and Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce, the only seasonings.
Apple gourds this year. A sixteen foot trellis and a few on garden fence. Trellis is pretty. Big green gourds hanging down through woven welded wire panel are fun to contemplate. Mary will make great Jack-O-Lanterns out of them for next year’s Fall Festival sale.
Big new thing this year is my latest garden invention. Tomatoes. I’d given up on wire gone back to Pap’s tried and methods of simply letting vines run out on the ground with maybe a bit of straw mulch. Wire cages are hard to push into the ground and harder to pull out. No big mess to contend with than several wire cages top heavy tangled plants lying in a tangle after a big wind hits from a thunder storm.
My new cages are wooden. Build them up and fill in side plants grow. Sorta complicated but versatile and easy to handle. I’ve learned enough about them this year to make more improvements next year. When they p to be the big success I know are going to be, maybe I’ll wr column with pictures. Meanwhile you want to see their rudimentary beginnings, stop by my garden and take a look.
Gardening for fresh vine ripened flavorful eating is different from production and preservation for year round family feeding. Less pressure to produced and preserve gives better chance to try new varieties and methods, the part of gardening I enjoy most.
