Tag: legumes

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BEAN CENTRAL HERE WE COME

A very kind friend came over this evening and helped us attach a 100 ft roll of welded steel fence to our new wooden backyard fence. Now all I have to do is clear more of the non-bean plants near the fence base, and wait a few weeks for the soil to warm up sufficiently for tepary beans. I might start some runner beans in the shadier areas so they stay cool longer.

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How can things grow this much in a week?  Front yard edition

Wow!!

Rouge Vif d’Etampes squash seedling.
The Brunswick cabbage apparently had enough and has gone straight to flowering.
Dutch corn salad greens have bolted too.
I got wild after seeing soil temperature is above 60°F and planted some beans and all the basil.
Sedums are blooming! Thanks for these, Judy!
I found surprise kale seedlings (two, the second is not pictured). I believe they are Russian red but I had thought they all got eaten so there’s no label anymore.
Perennial coreopsis are big and just starting to bloom!
Black coat runner bean making good progress at the base of a crepe myrtle.
Mealy blue sage about to bloom.
So many strawberries and there’s still more flowers!
Sugar peas are blooming.
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Suspense

Did the tender plants (tomatoes, peppers, ground cherries, potatoes, and runner beans) make it yesterday??? Tuesday night into Wednesday morning it got down to 29F in Norman, apparently a new record low (the previous being 30F in 1918. SEE WHO WEATHERED THE WEATHER!!

Tommy toe tomato did not make it. Note how the leaves are a darker, mushy/soft green and drooping. Goner.
Both of my new tomato varieties, supposed to be better for canning, died. One was the Amish paste (not pictured), which I have more of in pots. The other was Hungarian heart tomato (pictured). I have planted some more seeds and put them in the warm plant window to sprout. The culprit is pictured on the left… oatmeal container cardboard does not insulate enough. I thought it would be nicer since they’re tall and big, but apparently you need more, like the air trapped in corrugated cardboard. All the survivors were under towels, glass jars, plastic jars, plastic pots with newspapers, cardboard boxes, or even leaves-as-mulch (one Peruvian ground cherry in the backyard). A few branches got frosted but they can be trimmed off.
One branch of this potato died when the box top fell in (I had set another bag of potatoes on top). But the rest of the plants were fine. An example of corrugated cardboard doing its insulation job. I was surprised that an uncovered potato in a raised bed did not completely die of frost. Only a branch or two was dead.

Three casualties of a late frost, and all due to poor choices of insulation (which I now know to avoid), are really not bad. I’m pretty pleased.

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A garden dinner in winter

Wes cooked up a very nice dinner with garden harvest storage and some ground venison courtesy of Paula!

Black tepary beans soaking this morning.
The food! Ground venison from Texas with achiote spice I brought back from Colombia a few years ago, corn, black tepary beans from our garden flour tortillas from scratch, and salsa verde from our garden tomatillos.
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Lunch time front yard raised beds garden check

This front yard cilantro survived while others didn’t. No idea why.  Unless it’s I’m wrong and it’s a parnsip. Mystery.
Walking onions in their usual winter state.
Sad garlic leaves.
Helper puts her face in my face as I lean over to look at plants.
I think the onion sets might make it.
Moss curled parsley might make it.  Backyard ones much happier right now.
Lettuce seems damaged but alive.
Spinach is fine.
Oregano may make it.
Goodbye, sugar snap peas.
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Snow and melting even at 18°F in the sun

The kale looks kinda wilted even under its glass cover.
Kohlrabi seems fine.
Spinach seems fine.
Not sure about the sugar snap peas.
Garlic has pretty snow and melted refrozen ce

Standing cypress seedlings look pretty wilty in the front yard but I have not checked the backyard ones yet. Lettuce, cilantro, and cabbages I’m unsure how they look (sort of like the sugar snap peas, they could go either way once it warms up).

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Spring planting! It’s going to freeze next week!

Paula and I were going to plant things tomorrow, but it’s looking quite chilly. It’s just gorgeous out right now. So we spent a half an hour or so and got two kinds of onions (yellow granex and white granex) from sets in the beds, two kinds of potatoes in containers (experimenting with burlap sacks, potting soil bag, and cardboard boxes to make hilling them easier to get more potatoes), and seeds of French breakfast radish, green wave mustard, and Oregon sugar pod II pea. The peas we already have a few little vines of but I figured another round wouldn’t hurt to replace some since they blanch and freeze well if we get a lot.

White granex onions with some moss curled parsley from last year.
Yellow granex bulb onions with some cabbage and chard from last year.
Paula had the excellent idea to show the Yukon gold potato (burlap sacks/top) and Kennebec white potato (box and plastic bag) with their planters. We’re having a big freeze forecast for next week, so I only used half of the seed potatoes in case these die. (Also, I ran out of containers for now.) I am putting potatoes in containers to make them easier to hill dirt around, and also because crop rotation when all you plant is Solanaceae is very challenging.
Briar says it was good sleepy sunshine to supervise in. She was pleased.