Pole bean reseeding itself

Pole bean reseeding

One bunch of pole beans at the community garden weighed down their corn stalk poles so much that they bent over and touched the ground. They got moist enough after some rains that this happened. Very beautiful effect.

Jimmy Cracked Corn

Mirai sweet corn, dried

Seeds for another year

When I opened the packet of Mirai sweet corn seeds this spring, I thought I had gotten a bad pack. Each seed was wrinkled and flat and completely unlike any other corn I had planted or seen while dry.

It was a hybrid, so I don't know what I'll get next year.

Surprisingly, it grew. Very nicely too. I have to say, Mirai sweet corn was the most delicious sweet corn I have ever tasted.

How tasty was it, you ask?

So sweet that I ate every ear without butter or salt. So sweet that I ate some of it raw. So sweet that it was actually difficult to cook with…the leftovers would be too sweet to eat. It might as well be grown as a sugar crop.

Mirai produced small ears of corn on short 5 or 6 foot stalks. Most stalks had two ears of corn. This one ear of corn yielded about a half-pint of seeds. Supposedly hybrids don’t come true from seeds. I’ll have to try.

Whatever happened to the pole bean teepee?

Whatever happened to the pole bean teepee, you ask?

The pole bean teepee did not “fill out” the way I had hoped it would. In hindsight, I would say that I was too rushed to put it up and I didn’t prepare the seed bed well enough.  I did nothing more than strip off a 4 inch wide swath of sod, place seeds in the trench and then cover them with bagged compost. The grass and weeds were the victors of this fight for life.  Some beans grew, but they definitely did not thrive.

I think I’ll try it again next year.  Help me remember.

Green Thumb Mama Potluck

Scoot on over to Green Thumb Mama’s Potluck Friday post.  I contributed a recipe pair that I helped develop for an Amateur Chef competition.  My partner and I won with the contest with our fresh farmer’s market sweet corn fritter and tomato sandwiches, fresh salsa and peach empanadas.

Tell apart Blackberries and Raspberries

I guess we’re never to old to learn.  I didn’t know this.

Best friends and giant tomatoes

M & S have been inseparable summer 2009

M & S

They had lost interest in picking green beans.

Far more fun to explore the weeds and junk

To be that curious again...

Or even a fraction as innocent. *sigh*

A bit later they came inside to see how big this tomato was.

M. & S. pose with the scales

1.9 pounds / 870 grams

What the heck?

Well, I’ve been too busy to post!

I have canned salsa for 3 nights, pickles for 3 nights, fruit jam for 3 nights, ketchup for 1 night, sauerkraut for 1 night (plus 1 night to put it in the crock and nightly checks for 10 days), tomatoes for 1 night (so far), pizza sauce for 1 night, and . . .

We have been camping with good friends (completely sans rectangles, so no pictures), tending the garden and practicing for this weekend’s upcoming Amateur Chef competition!

I do have a few pictures of this and that, taken over the course of the last month. They’ll be posted eventually, but for now . . .

There is a bushel of peaches in my kitchen and I still haven’t saved seeds from any of my tomatoes.