May 26, 2017

First Harvest of the Year, as well as Germinated Beans and Squashes

First harvest of the year is Mizuna and Tatsoi greens, and there's lots more where that came from.
The 2 fifteen foot beds of bush beans have come up. There's Bluelake 274, Bountiful, Golden Butter Wax, Romano, Stringless, and Cherokee Wax bean varieties.

The bush beans were planted 3 to 4 inches apart in the beds. Normally we grow them in rows a foot apart with just a couple of inches between plants, but last year most of the seeds rotted in the ground. My thought was that the troughs used for the rows held too much water during wet years, especially with our heavy clay soil. With the new way, the beds filled out nicely and hopefully we'll get some snap beans in 4 to 5 weeks.
The pole beans are up although there's sparse germination in places which have been reseeded. The three varieties are Cherokee Trail of Tears, Greasy Grits (although the seeds don't look right), and Meraviglia Venezia a yellow bean.
On the left is a row of Queensland Blue winter squash and the row on the right is a row of Beck's Big Buck okra.
Thai Rai Kaw Tok pumpkin looks healthy.
Black Futsu winter squash is up.
Lunga Fiorentino zucchini. (And if you're wondering, that is a pair of child's footprints)

I plant lots and lots of seeds for each variety of squash and zucchini because squash bugs and especially squash vine borers usually kill the plants. If the borers don't kill the plants outright then they'll really weaken them and limit production. This year I'll be trying spinosad as an organic method of control.

4 comments:

Margaret said...

Hurray for the first harvest of the year - always so exciting! My squash and cucumbers are looking a little worse for wear after suffering through some bad weather, esp. heavy winds, before they were transplanted outdoors. Hopefully I start to see some signs that they are recovering over the next week or I'll likely have to reseed.

Sue Garrett said...

We are hoping to plant out our climbing beans next week as hopefully the danger of frosted nights has passed.

Phuong said...

Hi Margaret,
You've been having a very cool stormy spring which can be really hard on summery crops. At least squash and cucumbers grow really fast once the weather warms up, if you need to reseed.

We're having a cool spring for us and have been enjoying every minute of it, last year it had reached 100 degrees by now (38 degree Celsius).

Phuong said...

Hi Sue,
A frost this late in the season would be terrible, hopefully it's past that. I've actually tried growing runner beans here but they never set any pods, probably to hot for them. I might try again with some self-fertile varieties.