After several days of dry, sunny weather, we got socked in with three days of rain, some of it hard rain. Today, we woke up to fog as it’s supposed to warm up and get sunny again. So, being forced inside for a few days, I got all the beans shelled out. On Friday, just before the rain, our friend, Sherri, came and picked beans for a few hours. We are astounded at how many very nice beans our trellis of Aunt Jean’s dry pole beans produced. We all love them as a baked/soup bean and they’re so pretty, being bright white and brown, nice fat, round beans. I shelled out a big box full and there are still a lot more on the trellis that weren’t quite ready to pick.
The bags on the sweet corn ears have worked very well, so far, even with the rain. And the birds haven’t attacked any of the other patches — yet. We hope they’ll hold off for a while longer, so I don’t have to bag them too. It’s kind of labor-intensive, but it does work.
This afternoon (after the sun comes out again), I’ll be seeding out more tomatoes. When Sherri went home, I sent her with a nice crate of tomatoes to can up. She told me she got 40 pints of salsa from them yesterday! Sweet! Later on today, I want to trim up the onions I have had curing in the greenhouse, cutting off the dry tops and roots. They’ll go into crates and be stored away in the basement to over-winter. I’m sure I’ll also be using some for salsa, canned tomato sauces, and dehydrating too.
How grateful we are for such a bounty, even in this, a very hard gardening year.
— Jackie
