More garden ramblings

I have pole beans growing everywhere! For all of that plant, I picked a small amount of beans a few days ago and promptly made potato soup like my mom used to make. Potatoes, fresh green beans, onions, milk, butter, salt and pepper. I love that soup and it’s a good thing because I just ate it for four days! Today I picked a few more and decided it was an adequate amount to freeze for just me. Probably enough for another batch of soup.

In the hopes of salvaging my tomatoes from all their afflictions (fungi and slugs) I am now bringing them in not quite ripe. They only seem to get bad at the very end so these look great. I did can two quarts of them last night but I had to cut a lot of bad off the tomatoes.

I watered again and I think I had let it all get too dry. My mom said you didn’t need to water later on like this but I’m thinking I should have been right along. I have new blossoms on my squash now so I’ll be more diligent about the watering. It’s been quite a dry summer except for very early on. I’m not liking to do the watering. My water bill was $20 higher last month and I clearly didn’t water enough.

My poor corn, I thought it was looking ripe but they are so small so today I checked one. It’s a beauty isn’t it? The cob is exactly 3 1/2 inches long. They are all like that and the stalks never got tall. So I am supposing that is also a lack of water. I’m just going to pick them and enjoy what little there is. When my kids come this weekend maybe I’ll serve them corn on the cob like they’ve never seen before

I believe I might have found a winter squash plant, but I see no squash on it. It is a vine one and has run across and through the pole beans with no poles and into the tomatoes and beyond. I hope it grows some squash!

This garden hasn’t been a huge success produce wise so far but it has done wonders for me. I’m totally attached to it, it’s my baby It’s gotten me outside, given me a great project and really helped my mental health.

I’ve been doing some reading and I know what I’m going to do next year. No till gardening. It sounds so healthy for the soil, you don’t have to dig the garden up, controls weeds, adds lots of yummy nutrients to the soil. I’m not sure I have enough waste to make a good compost pile but there seems to be a place in town I can get that and mulch for free. I’m already looking forward to next year. I’m sure my garden will be tons better than this one was. Then I visited a friends blog with a new post about saving seeds. That hadn’t even crossed my mind so  I’m going to give that a go. She did promise an article on saving seeds for tomatoes, squash, cukes and peppers, all of which I have in my garden. I’m stoked about the idea of saving my own seeds, and hey, even more money saved if it works!