Garden Day 8

When I was planning on coming home, knowing that I would be coming home alone, I made some plans about how I was going to fill the petless void.

My plans included cleaning out my wretched attic, removing some loose stones from the driveway and cleaning out drawers  and closets throughout the house. This in turn was going to lead to a much needed trip to Goodwill. I was going to fill whatever additional time I had with a membership at the indoor pool and a vow to ride my bike at lunch.

And then I got home and got a look around.

The backyard is a jungle! I could spend days just trying to get it back into some sort of order! There is no floor space! You can not walk without stepping on a watermelon vine - Vines I want to point out that are not supporting melons. I looked through the mess and found two very, very young melons. I planted six plants! This is not a good outcome. The melons are only a small part of the jungle.

The tomatoes. Last year was a terrible year for them, I got very few and so In response this year I planted the hell out of them this year hopeing that if I planted more I might actually get some sort of harvest this year. It turns out that this year is a very good year for tomatoes. An outstanding year. I am going to have so many that even after I have drowned in them I will have buckets to give away.

I also planted a lot of peppers. I use them in cooking all year, I really like peppers. This year is not going to be a good year for peppers. I have gotten a total of two and that looks like the sum of it. The tomato plants  strangled my pepper plants and they are now gone, they no longer live in my garden.

The corn plants, stayed put and I came home to a single perfect ear. I'm pretty sure that those will be all I get off my plants this year but next year I will plant more and plant over time and I will have a better harvest. The fact that the plants produced at all made me incredibly happy and so they earned a place next year too. Growing corn  successfully in a container blocks from downtown made me feel like a farmer.

The green beans were working in my absences as well. Working in vain, but working. The pole beans must have been fab while I was gone because I pulled off a huge amount of over ripe beans, this made me sad. The bush beans however, produced a few days later and I was able to harvest all of those, they did a wonderful job and I have to rethink my pole bean bias and maybe plant both kinds again, this time on purpose.

And in the meantime, I'm going to sit in the front if the TV and clean out my DVR.