Post-Season Analysis

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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