Anyone have a garden going this year?

Picking the pods is the most time-consuming part. Shelling the pods goes quickly.

I put the harvested pods in large paper bags, and leave the bags just inside a large south-facing window of my house or on a bench in my little greenhouse. With tepary beans, you can occasionally hear a pod shatter as the pods dry out completely.

After all the pods are very dry, I take the bags outside on a windy day and lay out a tarp on the ground. I used my gloved hands to break all the pods open in the bags, and then winnow the contents of the bag on the tarp. I rub each handful between my hands as the wind blows the pod fragments off the tarp, leaving mostly beans on the tarp. I usually winnow the beans twice if the breeze in not strong, and that is sufficient to remove about 98% of the chaff. Then later, when I cook the beans in my instant pot, that little bit of chaff floats on top of the cooking water where I skim it off.

I used to raise dry beans as a large scale commercial field crop, and of course, I used a combine for harvesting. But at the garden level, hand picking pods works OK and gets me out in the early autumn mornings when the desert is at its finest. I've found that growing dry beans on a trellis makes pod harvesting a lot easier and prevents the pods from getting moldy.

 

My aim has been to hang hog fence panels on the porch awning but need to find a way to keep the dogs away, 4-5 times the vines made it almost 3/4 up, then the dogs would get nosey and end up breaking them off near the base..

 

This year, Gambel's quail attacked my young bean plants. I had to replant inside a bird exclosure. Next year, I'll put some sort of hoop structure over the seedlings until they get established. Once the summer monsoons start, the quail find other salad bars.

Can you fence your plants off from the dogs?

 

I was thinking an aviary would be nice given all the pests and predators we have around Tucson but then this is a rental so I don't want to get elaborate till we grab land of our own.

Thought I was going to have some nice tomatoes a couple years back till the Saguaro wrens fixed that...

 

Yes Mother Nature has been hard on us in midwest. This year rain early, then dry, then heavy rain got our tomatoes. Since retired spend lots of time in garden, but I look back and remember planting seeds, and weeds taking over. Seems we got more produce back then. I plan to keep trying, Weed less garden looks so nice.

 

A couple inches of shredded leaves help keep weed down a lot. Plus they add to the soil and help make it nice mellow dirt. helps tp pre start your plants so they are ahead of the weeds.

 

We add leaves to compost pile. This year we put newspaper down then mulched, with compost. Maybe the wrong thing to do? Some one told me, we should have pulled compost back, when the heavy rains came. and add peroxide?
The plants had nice fruit, when all the leaves died. We let them ripen and canned, just not he flavor of fresh picked.

 

Peroxide is really helpful. My x and me got into 35 % food grade use years ago. Don't recall how much we deluted it but had some beautiful gardens. Been thinking of doing it again. Used to add it Christmas tree water and before we took the trees out they'd have 8-9 inch long new growth on all the tips. Looked through old pics but couldn't find a pic of one.

 

Peroxide is the bomb for soil, literally, kills off all your anaerobic bacteria and basically acts like an aerator.

I'm imagining at 35% a gallon would last a pretty good while as I would use just 10% to water using the 3% by volume stuff, much more and it would start burning stuff up.

Also makes a nice foliar spray if you run into powdery mildew

 

Interesting, will have to try that on my driveway and see if it'll kill off the camomeal and bluegrass that has invaded for the lawn.

 

I've noticed vinegar is getting pricey lately
And while I've not tried to kill weeds with it, I have seen it kill things very effectively when misused, and it doesn't leave any residue

17 Super-Simple Natural Weed Killer Tips & Recipes.

 

On another note, the squash baby grew up and has a couple siblings.

 

Almost dinner



And the plant is still going strong-is despite continued attacks by my dogs in their Neverending pursuit of the lil' lizards.

Next round I think I'll definitely be adding some sort of barrier fencing around my plots.




The thing I love most about this particular plot is that it evolved naturally from a heap of raked up yard waste and some randomly tossed seeds (there looks to be a mater plant trying to appear, or perhaps an eggplant? Hard to say this early but it may inspire me to set a cold frame up.)

 

i went to the local garden center where my mom goes, secretly holiday shopping...

I concluded that I'd best not - it's her thing, I don't want to interfere, and I'm not sure what she'd honestly value.

Because gardening is incredibly personal for her, she might interpret my gifting as a serious intrusion (though she isn't really that type of person... she's pretty easy going).

Anyway, lawn gnomes and garden décor couldn't be hip-per.