
Oh, where did the summer go? Intellectually I know, but somehow I’m flabbergasted that the garden is wrapping up, the days growing shorter, but my season’s to-do list is just as long as it was in June!
The garden was amazing (except for a little tomato problem). After years of floundering, we’ve hit on a winning strategy. The raised beds performed–producing bumper crops of lemon cucumbers, potatoes, and squash (winter and summer). The beets and carrots, yet to be harvested, are also looking bountiful. We managed three full rotations of salad fixings and greens–several kinds of lettuce, radishes, bok choi, and chard–without the usual waste and bolting, mid-season. The green beans were a bust–but not because they weren’t plentiful. We tried a new variety this year, pole beans, (which required constructing a whole trellis affair, and, after all that, they have no flavor–they’re absolutely tasteless. So the success of the green bean harvest is heading straight for the composter! Next year it’s back to bush beans.

All season, I kept admonishing myself to pull out a camera to report and blog the effort, but my heart wasn’t in it.
Mostly, the summer was consumed by larger issues. My Mum spent the summer with us, a welcome event, except that it was inspired by our proximity to quality healthcare facilities–Mum in need of treatments for cancer. The process was painful to watch, as it always is when one’s loved ones suffer. It makes you feel helpless. A chunk of every day was the to and fro of treatment, dealing with side-effects and shielding personal autonomy and dignity, and the hand-wringing that goes with worry. The prognosis is good–so the result of that part of the summer’s effort will yield years of loving harvests. Still, the season has been a blur, with little of our regular kind of productivity to show for it.
Usually, when one of us is preoccupied, the other can pick up the slack. But Rick has had his own family traumas this summer. There is no treatment plan for the kind of interpersonal toll taken by long-distance family anguish, especially when it’s being served up with a side dish of betrayal. Leaning together we feel like we’ve barely survived the summer, even as we wonder where it went!
And the tomatoes! We cannot yet report on them, because though they appear to be thriving, they are not getting ripe. There they are, big, lush, lovely… and green. Even the cherry tomatoes are tardy. What’s up with that? I suspect it’s related to the high-altitude, Western smoke that’s colored the summer’s light, and sometimes left us in a shadowless haze. Will they ripen before there’s frost? Will they be outliers–to be harvested only after the rest of the salad fixings have come and long gone? I suspect I’ll be canning in October!
These distractions are not yet over–but there are ends in sight. In the meantime, winter is coming. There’s wood to split and stack, orchard trees to check and bees to tend.
Somehow, I’ll get back in the groove of blogging…I always do.

I think your garden looks luscious, and I look forward to a time when I can garden again. My own garden is going to die when we take off for 2 weeks without any watering . . . the container garden conundrum without drip.
I am sorry to hear about your mother, as well as Rick’s family issues. Watching our parents, or children, struggle is painful, but despite that, we remember how much we love and care, even when we can do little or nothing.
Enjoy all you have, however fleeting. Gardens always remind me of this. And there are always seeds for a new cycle . . . ❤
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Glad your mom’s prognosis is good. That is the best sort of news! Have you ever had Mother Stollard green beans? they are an heirloom stringless bean that also makes an awesome soup if you let them dry in the pod. Been planting them for the last several years. My go -to bean. Think I originally got them from Seed Savers just because they were so pretty. I’m betting your tomatoes will eventually turn. Always good to read your updates AV. DM
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Are these a bush bean or a pole bean?
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they’re pole. BUT they are worth it!
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Well, we already built the trellis.
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Started writing this earlier. Finally finished it to make sense (I hope?)
I have had Kentucky Wonder beans that weren’t ‘worth’ harvesting in the fall… They were the first to come along, so were growing close to soil level, gotten rain-splashed and had mildewed pods; then winter came early and they hung on the trellis (below snow level?) until presumably falling off and being tilled under in the spring(?) Only to pop up well before soil temperatures were at the supposed minimum temperature of 50°F required for planting bean seed to avoid rot. Serendipity at its best! (Tough characters: ) N.B. We are Zone 5a…
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So these were supposedly Blue Lake pole beans–which I’ve grown in the past with good results. But though they grew well–no flavor. I have done seed saving with them before–but won’t this year. I am willing to try another pole bean, but I could as easily use the trellis for cucumbers, and do bush beans. I’ve never had any issues with early seeding of beans or peas.
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Peas adore cold, damp soil (my grandmother would plant hers as soon as she could get her pointer finger in up to the first knuckle, lol) but I’m guessing you’d tend to have less fungal issues with your sandier soil there (and especially in combination with raised beds) in comparison to the soil here with its tendency toward clay loam?
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Yes, I remember gardening in Essex County, where the soil had so much clay that you could have used it to throw on a potter’s wheel!
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Good grief, from one extreme to the other! Glaciers have left quite the jumble behind, hey? Thankfully there’s a ratio here that’s amended without too much trouble….
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Well, in defense of nature, I think the reason that the soils of my childhood were so bad is because the developer stole the topsoil–and then sold it back to the poor homeowners who found themselves perched on a slippery slide of clay.
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Ah yes, piracy at its best:/)
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Oh dear, you have had a bad summer…..what a lot to cope with….no wonder you haven’t felt like blogging much. Family worries are the worst, as often there’s nothing you can do, but cope day by day and wait. Glad to hear your mum has a good prognosis. I’ve hardly spent anytime in my garden this summer, but it fed me salads regularly all summer….I haven’t had to buy lettuce at all…..and all from four different types of seedlings and two packs of seeds! My tomatoes are ripe but the beefsteak seem small this year. My pole bean came up, but didn’t make it – I think the grasscutter weedwhacked them by mistake, but I didn’t have the heart to mention it to him.
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I’m not sure about a bad summer, I just can’t remember having a summer at all. It is, however, healing to fetch dinner from the garden–no matter what else is happening.
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I think it has been a year like no others all over the world, and compounded with your personal problems, it has knocked us all out of our regular way of life. I am glad your raised beds are working. Strangely we were able to grow lettuce this year with more success than usual but I started them off in little pots and planted them out when they were larger. Amelia
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Because of our short(ish) season, at the beginning we start everything in little pots. Then, as things get rolling, re-seeding (for lettuce and greens) can happen direct to the beds. Our faith in gardening is renewed by this seasons successes. Ooooh we have plans, now. Maybe even a greenhouse in a year or two.
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Time is short so just going to throw em as I think em today: re pole beans don’t give up just yet (be a shame to waste your new trellising, right?) next year try Scarlet Runners and Kentucky Wonder. Not an endorsement, just a good description: https://www.wildroseheritageseed.com/store/p196/Bean_-_Kentucky_Wonder_Pole_.html
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If you think you’ll get frost – pick all the tomatoes. Wrap in newspaper, store in a cardboard box or paper bag. Check every few days. They will ripen. My season is too short for vine ripened tomatoes- I’ve done that for years. Toss in the freezer as they ripen. Skins slip off in hot water when you’re ready to can. Aren’t raised beds the best? I wouldn’t garden any other way any more.
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Right now, I’d even go for frost. Muggy, muggy, muggy….
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Though our raised beds came about because of poor soils, I agree that it is a step up from my old way of gardening. (Forgive the double entendre) We used to “keep” apples by wrapping them in newspaper. Tomatoes had reservation space on the windowsills. We had the first of the tomatoes yesterday, cherry tomatoes, quartered and tossed with feta and pasta. A late addition to the summer menu–but welcome. I’m still watching the brandywines and the amish paste tomatoes, all of which are stubbornly green.
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Our soil is heavy clay. It only took a couple of years of trying before I gave up on the idea of trying to grow food in it. Shorter daylight hours this time of year likely means your paste tomatoes wont ripen on the vine. I used to get bumper crops of Roma’s. Always had to ripen in newspaper.
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In my life’s travels, I have rehabilitated at least three heavy clay gardens. Always the optimist, I poured never-ending amounts of amendments, and, for the most part, got good results. Here, I have the opposite challenge–sand, and worse, heavily alkaline soils. Maybe I’m getting old, but raised beds was the solution. I cannot amend my way out of reality. So, I’ll watch my lovely green tomatoes, and my nighttime temps, and save my newspapers….just in case.
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I think it’s a work smarter not harder thing for me. (The getting older part plays into that) I also finally started to pay attention to what already grows and thrives in this dirt – and although some of it is edible (pigweed/pineapple weed/plantain/clover/etc) as much amending as it did, I couldn’t compete with my vegetables. All my raised beds are about 3 feet deep – I call it the ‘stand up and save my back’ gardening method.
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Yes – this summer has flown, indeed! Best wishes to your mum – have you considered medicinal mushrooms? Turkey tail and reishi can help to boost the immune system during cancer treatment.
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Her doctors frown on such things, and she’s not one to break the rules. As for me–we have a forest full of turkey tails, and I use them for broth when feeling peaked. (And elderberry.)
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I’m happy to hear about your mother! And don’t worry about blogging….you’ll get back to it when you have the time, and we’ll be here when you do.
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The tomatoes not getting ripe seems a mystery. I planted $1.50 worth of tomatoes this year. 4 plants. Just Better Boy, I like The taste, size and yeild. I am notching and so have much more than I need. The pictures you have look like an Italian variety i grew years ago with mixed results. I don’t recall them not getting ripe though.
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I grew a couple of black cherokee cherry tomatoes, four brandy wines and eight Amish paste tomatoes. The cherries are finally ready to eat. The Brandywines finally are starting to get a pink blush–but the Amish canning tomatoes are still stubbornly green! (It is September, after all.)
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“Not Canning” this year is what meant to say. I don’t grow determinant varieties unless I am canning. But with little trouble, watering now and again, pruning back the vines in thee beginning, I have more than I can use for a buck and a half. I do like those cherokee black , they are tasty.
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