Bright Ideas

After fencing, putting a pickup load of sterilized beef manure on the garden, marking new rows, tilling, and eventually planting, we waited for green plants to shoot up. We waited, and waited. Volunteer lettuce was first up and first garden crop we harvested. The green and yellow beans came up; they have big leaves and looked impressive. The corn came up. It’s short and already has ears; we just hope they fill out.

We didn’t have anything to put in our salads then, so we started using sliced water chestnuts. When we had radishes, they went in our salads for awhile. We’re back with water chestnuts and store tomatoes; they don’t taste like tomatoes, but they’re the right color. We plant two kinds of beans: a yellow bean and long, straight green beans. The yellows ripen first, and we’ve enjoyed them for several meals.

The volunteer lettuce finally went to seed, but the lettuce we planted this year is growing well. First Brice thinned the new lettuce, bringing entire plants to the house, now he’s picking lettuce leaves.

Everyone knows about Brice and his peppers. He plants a few bell peppers, but the rest get progressively hotter. The least hot, and first to produce are the yellow, Hungarian wax pepper. They grow pointing up unlike most peppers which point down. Brice puts them on BLTs, and every other sandwich he eats. The jalapeños are small, and don’t look like they’ll be productive; some bells won’t produce either.

Our best crop is purslane, a type of ground cover distantly related to moss roses and actually edible. But we don’t eat it; Brice pulls it out, and tills it under, but it persists. We’ll soon have green beans, 6-7 inches long and straight. They make perfect dilly beans, fitting in quart jars. We still have six quarts from last year with one in the back of the refrigerator where I tend to forget about it.

Brice picked our first zucchini on August 1; other little zucchinis grow to three inches, dry up, and die. We don’t have any cucumbers, only blossoms that don’t show anything setting on. Why? They have plenty of water. The tomatoes have enough green spheres, ranging in size from grapes to tennis balls. When do they change color and ripen? Other people report the same thing.

Everything is moist enough; Brice had to use a board to stand on the mud between rows of recently watered beans in order to pick them. It must be high temperatures slowing everything. Now with cooler days, will plants come to life?