75. We Have “Bean” Blessed

Happy 4th of July! Yes I know, it’s not common for me to release a blog post on a Tuesday but life has been crazy and this is the first time I’ve had to sit down and write about what’s been going on. Towards the end of June, we had a cool down and a ton of rain for about a week. The garden loved the rain and cooler weather even if I didn’t. After that though, we have heated up to normal temps for the season (90 degrees everyday) and the harvests have started rolling in. Let’s talk about what all we have coming out of the garden.

The first good sized harvest I get every year is always squash and zucchini. I had a couple of them accidentally get away from me in the rainy days and become baseball bat sized. For the most part though we have been either eating them or freezing them for later use.

The tomatoes have just began to blush and I actually had my first tomato sandwich the other day (YUM). So far I haven’t been dealing with near the amount of issues on my plants that I normally have. So far a couple of outstanding varieties are Black Beauty, Fireworks, Money Maker and Grand Marshall. The Grand Marshall tomato was a suggestion from another gardener and at first I wasn’t super impressed. It seemed to take the variety awhile to take off and grow. Even now, it’s smaller than the rest of my plants but it has made up for itself in the amount of fruit it has produced.

With the heat we have been having the past couple weeks, the cucumbers have started taking off and I’m harvesting multiple daily. I never liked cucumbers until I started harvesting them from my own garden. That is one thing that keeps me going with the garden. The taste difference from store bought and homegrown is a lot. There is also a sense of pride that comes with growing the food yourself, it makes you appreciate it more.

Last Monday, we had a bad set of storms come through. Lots of wind, hail and heavy rain. My garden definitely suffered some damage, especially from the hail. It’s nothing that the crops won’t be able to recover from but it’s still hard to look at. I’m just thankful no one was hurt and the damage was minimal.

All of my onions have been harvested at this point. I needed the bed space for okra plus a later planting of squash and zucchini. I am very pleased this year with how many onions I got and all of the larger sized bulbs. I am hopeful this will be a year’s worth pretty much again this year.

The star of the garden so far this year has been my green beans. I have canned 28 quarts of them so far and there are more beans coming behind the ones that have already been pulled. Last year my beans struggled with the early heat we had. Since we are just now getting heat and the beans had already began to form up, they were able to flower and produce a lot for me.

I hope you all have a great holiday and hopefully a short week. Until Next Time, Happy Gardening!