Bunches of beans!

The 2008 bean harvest has begun! This year I'm growing Haricot Verts bush, Gold Beans pole, Fortex pole, and Blue Lake pole. So far the HVerts are the most prolific producers, which I seem to remember is typical. I've pawned some beans off on a neighbor, and will probably eat, can, & freeze the remainder. When we get some sun tomorrow hopefully, I bet I'll come home to a whole new crop ready to pick. Also harvested today: tomatoes, peppers, & two acorn squash (winter squash).

Radish-eating dog

I have a nearly-constant companion in my vegetable garden; she's 13 years old and her name is Caddy. She's a rescued stray we've had since 1995 (our Christmas present that year!), and her antics cause me much laughter.

I started vegetable gardening in Wisconsin the summer before we got her. I don't remember what prompted us to give her a green bean from the garden, but one of us did, and that was the start of her vegetable-eating lifestyle. Her favorites: carrots, green beans, and potatoes (all raw). She'll also eat radishes (evidenced by the photo, not a setup by the way!!), canteloupe, raspberries, parsnips, tomatoes, zucchini, and probably more that I'm forgetting.



We used to go raspberry picking with her, and she quickly learned to strip the berries off the bushes. Now if I let her, she'll come into the vegetable garden and literally strip green beans off the vines.

More worm stuff

Have been picking and smashing cabbage worms (normally, I'm not a violent person, but I really don't want to relinquish another harvest to the critters). Obviously, I'm not averse to hand picking!

I have a neighbor on the next street over who also has several plants in the brassica family, and she has NO problems with these guys; I think it's a matter of them not having yet found her plants and focusing totally on mine!

We've had about about 4/10" of rain the past 24 hours so irrigation of the vegetable garden isn't necessary for at least another day or so; the mostly cloudy & coolish conditions are another reason not to water.

I'm including a picture of what I suspect is cabbage worm poop - don't know what else it is. Thought maybe it was eggs but their appearance doesn't jive with what I've read about cabbage worm eggs.

Rampaging cabbage worms

My house has an attached, enclosed space I call a "sunroom" or a "greenhouse" depending on my mood & the season. It makes a great workspace for working on gardening-type activities; it has a dirt floor, it's airy (sometimes too much so) and bright. On both ends it's enclosed partly in glass, and most of the reminder is separated from the outdoors by window screen material, so it's mostly free of mosquitoes. It gets hotter than Hades in the middle of summer because of the fiberglass roof.

Anyway, last year I lost my entire brusselsprout crop to cabbage worms, so I vowed to do something different this year. At first I was going to put row covers over all the plants to prevent the moths from laying eggs, but then I decided instead to put a bunch of my brusselsprout transplants in the "greenhouse". Well, the plants look beautiful for once because they aren't all riddled with worm holes, but the brusselsprouts themselves are these little teeny things, about pinhead-size. I'm guessing the heat has pretty much prevented them from getting to edible size--one of my books states that "cole vegetables are adapted to cool weather, growing best when temperatures are between 65 and 80 degrees F." Maybe they'll pick up when it begins to cool off more during the day?

The four cabbage plants I ended up planting outside in the garden have hundreds of holes and what I think is also a bunch of cabbage worm poop (see pics). I'm sure the worms are having a heyday burrowing into the cabbage heads.

MORE rain

This weather is not too common in the San Luis Valley - three consecutive days that are mostly overcast and have measurable precipitation. Feels more like the Midwest.

The rufous hummingbirds are madly flitting all around the front and back yards keeping one another from the feeders and seemingly spending little time actually sipping nectar.

We've resumed supplying niger thistle to the birds and are attracting house finches, gold finches, and lesser gold finches.

Three springs ago I transplanted some milkweed (not sure which species) from a nearby local fishing hole to a vacant area near the firewood pile in our backyard. As I sort of guessed would happen, it has moved beyond its original area and has to be periodically reined in. I planted it to attract monarch butterflies, which actually happened!!! For two consecutive late summer periods, I found several monarch caterpillars on my milkweed. It was so COOL to track their metamorphasis from larva (or caterpillar, see photo) to pupa to newly-emerged butterfly, all within the confines of my little gardens! Unfortunately, the first time I was lucky enough to observe this process, the monarch emerged during a bad weather period of cold & rain, and shortly afterwards it died. I don't know what happened to the monarchs last year, but I always hope for the best.

Wow, it's raining!

Yep, we're getting precipitation! A nice, steady rain to wet everything down. No watering of the vegetable garden'll be necessary tomorrow morning. (On second thought, since the rain only amounted to .09" .....)

Yesterday's harvest included radishes (big ones!), beet greens, & spinach. I look at some of my plants (tomatoes & squash) and wonder if I'll have any produce before the first frost. Yikes, don't think that yet!