It's raining here today. Rain always makes me think about gardening, especially when there's been a long, dry spell, as there has been this year.
This year's garden was a flop. It started well. The garden plots were tilled and ready when planting time came, and most of what we planted thrived for a little while. But we lost many of our tomato plants, first to rain, then to blight, then to heat. We had a nice first picking of squash, then the vines - all of them, simultaneously - up and died on us. The green beans came up, looked great, ran up their poles, and then didn't do squat all summer. I never even got the butter beans planted. Our only successes this year were with okra and purple hull peas.
I planted broad beans (should've planted them earlier than I did). I had two packs of seeds; there were (maybe) 12 seeds in each pack. About half of them came up, and some of those withered and died. When it was all said and done, I had one or two massive bean plants. They produced big old pods, and I figured I'd let them dry on the plant and at least have some seeds for next year. The pods turned black and fell off before the beans matured.
I planted black crowder peas and purple crowder peas. There were precious few of those seeds, too, slightly less than enough for two half-rows each. They struggled, but made peas. Those peas dried up on the vines. Pop-Pop may have picked them dry and saved them for seeds. I hope he did.
The problem with all of these things was mostly neglect. I worked more than usual at the office, traveled a little more than usual, had more than the usual number of things demand my attention. And the heat...mercy, it was hot - weeks of temperatures near (and over) 100.
But I intend to do better next year.
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