Plant Labels
Whenever I buy plants, the little markers that come in the pots are thrown into a bowl on my potting bench in the garage. Of course, there’s always a plan to do something with them, or to start a database of all the plants in the garden, but that never really materializes.
They are handy to have around, I find myself occasionally forgetting the name of a specific plants and sorting through the labels to find the tag. I also like to look through the bowl every now and then to see what plants haven’t survived.
The previous owners of this house often planted the tags along with the plants in the garden. They usually blew away, or got buried. Sometimes, when I’m planting something or working in the garden I’ll find one for a plant I didn’t purchase and it makes me smile. Kind of like a relic unearthed in excavation. It gives me a small glimpse into the previous gardeners that lived here.
What do you do with the tags that come with plants?
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Stocking The Larder
Yesterday, I spent some time cleaning the ‘Red Zepellin’ onions that were harvested a few weeks ago. They’ve been drying in the warm garage and it was time to move them to the basement pantry. These plants were grown from plants purchased from Johnny’s Seeds.
While trimming the roots and stalks off the bulbs, I was thinking about the security that growing your own food provides. Knowing that you can provide at least a small amount of nourishment for your family is truly priceless.
Sometimes when people mention that they can buy food so cheaply at the grocery it’s not worth the effort of growing it, I just shake my head. Sure, you can save money tending an edible garden, but the money saved pales in comparison to the other intangible value it provides to our lives. Besides peace and relaxation, the feeling of security is what I notice most when I’m tending the garden and harvesting food for our table. Knowing that I can keep food on our plates from tending the earth is deeply satisfying.
What intangible benefits of edible gardening do you value the most?
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Sunny Volunteers
Last year I ordered a number of different sunflowers to plant in the lower garden. The chipmunks dug up the seeds and feasted on them. Any that survived this gluttony were scooped up by crows when they germinated. I still had a few sunflowers in the garden, volunteers planted by chipmunks and birds.
Since we provide a feeder for the birds, we always have a few volunteer sunflowers scattered throughout the garden each year. Funny thing is, this year I have a few really nice ones in the exact place I tried so hard to plant them last year. I guess nature often gets the last laugh.
What’s your favorite volunteer in the garden?
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Survival
I’m constantly amazed by what plants will do the survive (at least some of them). If you remember, I purchased some lovely succulents earlier this spring. Whenever I notice that a leaf has fallen off a succulent, I often try to root it. When my ‘Black Knight’ lost a few leaves I scooped them up and brought them in the house. With all that is going on here, I completely forgot about them.
I was just telling Mr Chiots last week that I remember gathering these leaves but I had no idea where they’d ended up. A few days later, I discovered them in a drawer. Amazingly, they had sprouted roots and leaves.
A tiny pot was filled with potting soil and I laid the little plants on top. Hopefully they’ll root and I’ll end up with a nice collection of these beauties! The wonder of plants will never cease to amaze me. We certainly can learn a lot about tenaciousness from our gardens!
Have you ever had surprise propagations like this?
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Pole Beans vs. Bush Beans
This week, I’ve been reading Vertical Gardening: Grow Up, Not Out, for More Vegetables and Flowers in Much Less Space. I do a fair amount of vertical gardening here at Chiot’s Run because I like the structure that vertical features bring to the garden. They also take up less space, a very important thing when you’re short on garden space for all the things you want to grow.
On Tuesday I read that pole beans outproduce bush beans and decided to see if this was true. Luckily, I have both pole beans and bush beans growing in the garden. The pole beans are growing on a teepee in the lower garden and the bush beans are growing in a row beside the asparagus. I have about the same number of each, perhaps more bush beans than pole beans. The pole beans were planted a week or two after the bush beans.
After harvesting both types of beans, I weighed my harvest. The bush beans produced 11 ounces and the pole beans produced 1 pound 6 ounces. (pole bean harvest on right, bush bean harvest on left).
The nice thing about pole beans is that they produce continually over a longer period of time than bush beans, they will be producing until frost. The bush beans are just starting to bloom for a second time and will probably fade soon after I harvest this batch of beans
I also prefer pole beans to bush beans because they’re easier to pick. The beans are easier to spot and higher since the vines grow vertically.
I always love learning little bits of information like this. Even though I will have more garden space next year, I’ll still be trying to maximize that space in any way that I can. There’s just something about pole beans scrambling up a trellis in the garden.
Do you grow bush beans or pole beans?
