Garden Update 9/21/15

Cleaned out the bush bean/acre/field peas.

Turned them into a nice bucket of chopped green manure/mulch to be planted with the banana trees.

Left three little okra plants that have been heavily shaded and not able to compete with the beans. The cocoplum hedge will be going in this area in the next couple weeks. The okra have till then to prove themselves.

Left one bean plant in the ground because of the remarkable bean pod still on the vine. It is longer than most others, uniform in shape and with seed distributed the full length of the pod. This will be dried and saved as seed for the next season.

After heavy rain for the last week, I decided it was time to poke around in the garden to see what seeds need to be replanted and what may still sprout.

Very disappointed with the germination rate of the corn. Only 2 seeds out of ten have sprouted. I found one still in the ground that looks to have just germinated and is sending out the seed root. The others that I found were squishy and rotted. The rattlesnake beans fared a bit better though and I had roughly 16 of 21 seeds sprout. A couple of those look like they aren't gonna make it and make have been chewed on by something. Out of my 4 Amish pie pumpkin seeds, maybe one has sprouted. But it might be a cucumber. I'm not quite sure.

So I'm going to start seeds for each of those in a seed tray indoors using the wet paper towel method. I'd like to figure out if the corn seed is bad or just got flooded so I can plan my next move without wasting anymore time. I have a backup package of Burpee corn seed if my variety of seed from Johnny's is a flop. I suspect the heavy rain rotted the pumpkins and I just want a couple more pole beans.

This seed tray is a washed and repurposed cookie container from the grocery store. It will be perfect for seed starting and easier to look into than a ziplock bag.