Sorcerer's Apprentice?

A couple of months ago, we noticed that a volunteer green bean plant was sprouting in the raised bed.  (See: Nobody Told Them ).

Sprouting

It's easy to lose track of green bean pods on the vine; one day it's a little pod too small to pick, and the next day it's three feet long and too tough to eat.  That's what it seems like, anyway.  And sometimes one of them gets missed and stays on the vine until it dries up and the seeds fall on the ground and sprout when the rains come, even though they're not supposed to want to germinate until the weather gets warmer.

Mature Plant

 So now the vine is fully mature and producing green beans.  Lots and lots of green beans.  Every day, more beans.

One of Many

We're still working on all the green beans Cindy picked and froze last summer, and probably some from the summer before that.  The plant is not only showing no signs of slowing down its production, but seems to be going into overdrive.

Lots and Lots of Beans

It's a good thing we like green beans.

Not Quite As Successful As We Hoped

Unfortunately, that's the verdict on this year's effort at grafting heirloom tomato plants to tomato root stock.

Cindy started the seeds several weeks ago, transporting them from the small greenhouse out behind the garage to inside the garage at night.  When the plants were big enough, she began the process of grafting them.

Setting Up For the Operation

First she matches up tomato and root plant with stems that are approximately the same width, then slices off the top of one tomato and one root plant; she keeps the tomato top and discards the top of the root plant.  She also cuts off most of the leaves of the tomato top so that the plant will put most of its energy into healing the graft instead of producing more leaves.

Then she makes the grafting cuts with a razor blade in both stems and clips both halves together.

Trimming the Tops

Grafted Plants

The plants go into a dark space overnight with a plastic bin over the top of the tray to keep the humidity up and the plants moist.

Humid Environment

Inspected By Miss Mia

After that they go into dim light in the garage for a couple of days and continue to grow.

At least that was the plan.

After a couple of days, all but one of the plants had keeled over and it was clear they had not survived.

Lone Survivor

And the winner is.... Rose de Berne on Estamino root stock.

Fortunately, Cindy still has quite a few ungrafted tomato plants, so it doesn't all depend on this one plant and we should still have plenty of tomatoes this summer.