The Three-Foot Long Green Bean

Cindy was off visiting family members in the Midwest for a couple of weeks, which left me nominally in charge of the garden.  She picked all the ripe tomatoes and green beans before she left, but I told her  there was no way I could keep up with the beans.

The problem with green beans is that if you don't keep picking them, the beans that are already on keep growing, but the plants slow down production and may stop producing altogether.  I told her she would come back and find they had grown so much they were three feet long.

I did pick some of the  beans and some friends came over and helped out, but there are probably some out there by now that are pretty big.

Maybe even one that's three feet long.

Aunt Cindy's Traveling Produce Stand

A Few Tomatoes

We knew when we scheduled our trip to Indiana last year that the tomatoes would all ripen just before we left, and of course that's exactly what they did.

Cindy did her best to gather them all and puree or freeze everything we couldn't eat, but it was still a LOT of tomatoes.  She gave some to neighbors, but forgot that she had already given them some of her tomato plants, all of which were producing as prolifically as ours were.

So we still had a lot of tomatoes on our hands as we were packing for the trip.

I said we should just take them with us, so we found a plastic box with a good tight lid, Cindy wrapped them carefully and we packed them in our checked luggage.   When we got to Indiana, we opened that suitcase with some trepidation, thinking we might have clothes soaked in tomato juice, but everything was fine and we all enjoyed the tomatoes.

Cindy At An Indiana Produce Stand

So this year, with a trip to Indiana scheduled for August, she knew she could take some of the tomato crop with her to share with her dad, and she packed some of the green beans in, too.

There's nothing like fresh, home-grown tomatoes and green beans.

Green Bean Season

Bean Plants Reach For The Sky

Green bean season is upon us and we're up to our kneecaps in green beans.  The bean plants are about as tall as the proverbial elephant's eye by now.

In fact, one of the plants got so ambitious that it sent vining tendrils out and latched onto one of the overhanging branches of the Lemonade Berry Tree.  The problem with that is that it created a ready-made bridge for varmints right up over Cindy's carefully constructed anti-varmint panels.  In fact, it was a veritable rat highway to the green beans.

Rat Highway

Fortunately, we found it before the varmints did and a couple of snips with the long-handled loppers took care of the problem.

So now we have fresh green beans.  Lots of green beans.  When we went out to dinner the other night, the special vegetable was:  green beans.

Green Beans!

Box Car Willie

Box Car Willie

One of the varieties of tomato plants Cindy put in this year was the Box Car Willie tomato plant, which she chose mainly on account of its interesting name.  Who wouldn't love Box Car Willie?

The plant was described in the catalogue as an "indeterminate", meaning that it would keep producing tomatoes throughout the season, and was expected to produce "a very heavy crop of good sized, smooth red tomatoes with delicious flavor, ranging from 6 to 10 ounces."

The plant did indeed produce a good crop of delicious tomatoes, but unfortunately very early began to show signs of Verticillium Wilt or Fusarium Wilt, fungi that cause the leaves to turn yellow, then brown and eventually kill the plant.  Unfortunately, the fungus survives as microsclerotia in the soil and will reoccur in any plant that is susceptible to it.  

Signs of Wilt

So now Cindy will probably have to solarize the soil in that raised bed this winter to kill off the fungus before she can plant any more tomatoes in that bed.  One advantage of using the raised bed system is that each bed is a self-contained unit and the fungus should not spread to any of the other beds.

Too bad about Box Car Willie, but we did get some delicious tomatoes from it.

But We Got Some Tomatoes!

Family Jewels

Family Jewels Asclepia Plant

For the past several years we've planted Asclepia plants to encourage the Monarch butterflies to come to our yard.  Most of the Asclepia plants have clusters small red or orange flowers, and the butterflies seem to like them.  In fact, Asclepia leaves are the only thing Monarch caterpillars will eat.

Cindy had been hearing about a particular variety of Asclepia called Family Jewels, so she planted one this year in the butterfly garden, and it seems to be flourishing there.  This plant is much larger than the other varieties of Asclepia that we have had.

Instead of red or orange flowers, it has clusters of small white flowers that become an interesting seed pod as the flowers fade.  The seed pods swell and begin to resemble, um, "family jewels." Sort of.  

Although the plant seems to be doing very well, we still haven't seen any sign of Monarch caterpillars on the leaves of any of the Asclepia plants.  Milkweed bugs yes, but no caterpillars.  

Family Jewel Seed Pods

Scarlet Flowering Eucalyptus

Scarlet Flowering Eucalyptus

When our friend Joanne was visiting us a couple of weeks ago from Minnesota, she was impressed by the brilliant red flowers on a large tree a couple of houses down from ours.

We had noticed that the flowers were extremely popular with the bees and hummingbirds, but didn't know what it was.  Turns out its a Scarlet Flowering Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus ficifolia).

It has dark green, leathery leaves year round, which also means that it is perpetually shedding those leaves on the neighbors' lawn.  I guess that's only fair, since her shrubs are constantly shedding leaves on our driveway.

The tree is resistant to the Eucalyptus Longhorn Borer.  It's a very drought-tolerant tree, but it does not tolerate freezing temperatures, which means Joanne will just have to come back to San Diego to see more of them.

One feature of these trees that has fascinated me for years is the interesting bell-shaped seed pods I have found.  I keep wondering how to make jewelry out of them.