Your peas! They're huge! 💚 The garlic and cabbage (brassica? on the left) look fantastic. You have a superbly beautiful garden @jbosmith , I just love the look of hay mulch. I'd use it more myself, and have a lot in the past, but after a vole problem last year I'm terrified to put it down. 🐀
Aww thank you, @heirloomgal ! Those pea varieties are some of the ones I found after we talked last winter! The cabbage is a mix of Brunswick, which is my most reliable variety, and Ruby Perfection F1 which made it to the start tray as a last minute backup. It's been a pleasant surprise.
Lookin' good flowerbug!in an effort to discourage further deer predation on the bean gardens outside the fence i've changed my habits and plugged up one of the deer access runs that they were regularly using. yesterday i pulled out the comfrey plants that they've been chomping on (they smelled like squash plants to me so i can see why the deer like to eat them). i hated to pull them or to keep trying to remove them, but they're attracting the deer and from there they eat the clematis and anything else they can find in the front gardens and also they get right into the beans too.
instead of watering in the evening the seedlings have all been sprouting well enough with me watering in the morning and once in the mid-afternoon so there would be less smell of water attracting them in this very dry time we've been having. so by the time night comes around there's nothing giving them the signal that there is nice tasty fresh bean sprouts anywhere.
i've also been emptying the birdbaths in the evening right before dark so the deer aren't able to get easy drinks from those. it's not like they don't have two running ditches they can get water from around us...
so far the last planted bean garden (along the crushed limestone pathway) has not been raided nearly as much as the North Garden and i'm hoping things remain this way for the next few weeks, but i really can't get too attached to these plants as they might also get grazed...
this is a picture from 2021 but this year it looks much the same other than wider rows (double rows) and i've finally gotten a lot of the gravel removed from along the one edge where it was in the dirt. i still have more screening to do sometime, but i'm not sure when i'll get back to it.
the North Garden i don't even want to take a picture of as it looks so bad right now. i'm weeding it from all the purselane and oxalis, removing all the dead stuff from the daffodils that Mom hates when i leave it alone and getting the low growing creeping thyme weeded too. one part done and much more to do, it will probably take me a week to get it all done.
i already miss the comfrey. it was a nice background plant and nice and green (when the deer would leave it alone). it also helped keep other weeds from growing in those two spaces so it is going to mean more work for me to weed along that edge. it covered up a lot of space... ah well... some year when i can get a proper fence put up then i can put it back in how i'd like it. it definitely makes an excellent green manure plant and was growing really well even in a primarily clay raised edge that wasn't being particularly watered and never fertilized.
Karachaganak hasn't been stabilized as to growth habit. I got some crosses Russ had from Will Bonsall one year and one that those produced was Karachaganak. The first year it grew as a climbing bean, right at the half runner-pole break, could have called it either. I sent some back to Russ and he offered them to others as he did with all the other Will Bonsall segregations with the warning that they were not stabilized. Many people took them.
You did very well with most of the network beans last year. I think you have your technique of prestarting plants then transplanting them to the garden when it's warm enough down very well. You know the length of your growing season and turned in really beautiful seed last year. I think there were a couple of varieties you wanted to regrow again this year as you weren't satisfied with 2021's results. So how is Greek Cypriot, Nona Agnes, and Rose Creek Beauty doing this year. Am I accurate on naming those three?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you under a tornado warning at one point? Any damage to your gardens?
