A garden is every day, until it isn’t. We’re getting the last tomatoes and leafy greens out of the ground today, which means no more watering and tending, at least for now. We’re trying our luck at frost-hardy lettuces and carrots, so the winter season might be just a month or so away.
And so begins the eternal struggle of a Small Garden Summer: eat the peas as they appear, or freeze each set as they come in, saving up for a large pea meal. (Spoiler: we ate them.)
On the subject of pollinators...I’m not seeing nearly enough bees this year. I remember dodging bee-covered clover as a kid. A few decades later? Not so much.
At the beginning of the season I planted this “cover crop,” a mix of clovers and lentils and some peas, as a means of rehabbing some of last year’s containers. As it turns out, the results were too interesting to plow under, so now we’ve got some impromptu pollinator pots.
Continuing down the runner bean path (runner bean run?) this is a scarlet that my older son planted indoors in February because he just couldn’t wait. We’re in zone 6. As much as we loved having her indoors, a houseplant she is not.
No number of YouTube videos could teach me how to pollinate her by hand, so to the deck she goes. Child pointed out that her leaves arranged themselves into the shape of a heart, so I hope that means she approves.
