Rust?! on my strawberries

 I missed going in to my garden yesterday as I am a teacher and had back-to-school duties yesterday up through the evening with Open House night. So, tonight after I got home at around 6:30 p.m. I raced out to the garden to see what needed picking and how everything was doing. I noticed that my small patch of strawberries had what appeared to be rust on them in about 1/4 of the bed!

I squealed with alarm, and without thinking, immediately started yanking the affected plants out of the pot. Therefore, I did not get a picture of the damage as a whole. 

It is hard to tell in the pictures, but there definitely seemed to be a powdery, rusty looking colored fungus that was three-dimensional sticking to the plants.

I should have worn gloves, but in my haste to save my strawberries I didn't think to put them on. Then, afterward I scrubbed with soap and hot water. I hope it doesn't give me any sort of allergic reaction.

Here is a photo of the pot where the plants are with the damaged ones already removed.

Harvest Monday August 3, 2015

Harvests this week consisted of mainly beans. I went away for the weekend having picked beans before I left, and came back to a nice big handful of the yard long beans! 

My granddaughters wanted to eat them then and there, but I managed to talk them into letting me add them to our dinner.

The girls (6 years and 2 1/2 years old) chose red beans and rice to make, and helped add their chosen ingredients. It was quite good! The beans were sauteed in a little olive oil with garlic, salt, and pepper.

I'm linking up with others on Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions.

A Good Year for Peppers

Bell Pepper

I have had a really good season for peppers. I normally try planting a couple of bell pepper plants every year, but I'm lucky to see one or two fruits. We have actually had so many peppers that I had to chop them up and freeze them.

Bell Peppers

My husband has suggested making stuffed peppers when these get big enough.

Cubanelle Peppers

I planted one Cubanelle pepper plant, and it has been even more productive than the Bell peppers! I am not as impressed with the flavor of these peppers though. They are a little bitter.

Cubanelle Pepper

Mini harvest

Yesterday I noticed that some of my yard-long beans were getting pretty long. They were dangling on the ground, in fact. I was not sure if they were ready for picking or not as I've never grown them or even seen them before. My son-in-law figured that they should grow to be a yard-long as the name advertises.

Today I harvested a modest 1 ounce of the yard-long beans, and 4.5 ounces of the bush beans. There are a couple of different varieties of those that are just all hodge-podged together. As you can see, the yard-long beans seem to be very slender compared to the bush beans. A Vietnamese friend of mine told me that she likes to cut the long beans into small pieces and cook them with scrambled eggs. She said that they have a slightly chewy texture. I may give that a try tomorrow. Have you grown this variety of bean before? 

Babies in the Garden

   I sowed some brassica seeds today in the garden: Long Island Brussels sprouts, Calabrese broccoli, early purple broccoli, two colors of Vienna kohlrabi (purple and white), bok choy, savoy perfection cabbage, and golden acre cabbage. I am new to Fall gardening, so we shall see how it goes with planting at this time of the year. I am thinking of doing some successive plantings to see when is the best time to plant in future years. 

Baby Cucumber

   

   There are a few baby plants around the garden already. I have four baby cucumber bush type plants. I am hopeful that I get some fruits from these as the pickle worms wreaked havoc on my Spring planting.

Baby Sugar Pumpkin

   I have three baby Sugar Pumpkin plants sprouted. These are my second attempt. My first planting were attacked by squash vine borers and seemed to be dying off from a disease of some kind.

Baby Peanut

   There is one unexpected baby in the garden bed, a peanut plant. At least I'm 95% sure it is a peanut plant. I had planted peanuts two years ago in this bed. I had some pop up last year, but I was surprised to see this little one growing. I have not decided if I will let it continue to grow or not.
 

Anxiously awaiting sweet potatoes

I planted 18 sweet potato slips "Beauregard" in April. I had to net them after the deer ate the tender young leaves to the ground. Amazingly, most of the plants came back! The bed is full of running vines now. This is my first year growing them, so I am not entirely sure how to know when they are ready to dig. I think waiting until the vines die back may be a good plan, but I wanted to check and see. Are there any sweet potatoes in there? I gently probed around a bit around one of the plants that is beginning to yellow. I did find a nice tuber growing! I carefully covered it back up and watered it. They aren't quite ready yet.

Beans Update

Pole beans

I tried planting pole beans on trellises elsewhere in the garden earlier this Spring. The deer ate them, and then the cucumber plants took over the trellis. I underestimated how much room they would need! I decided to make a tee pee trellis to see how that would work out. There are two kinds of pole beans planted around this one: asparagus yard-long and Kentucky wonder.

The plants are climbing the trellis quickly, and started putting out lovely large flowers. I even spotted a couple of tiny beans near one flower. This is my first experience with pole beans (not counting the failed first attempt), so I'm pretty excited about them.

Tiny little beans are emerging

The bush beans have been under netting since the deer mowed down the first planting. There are a few different varieties under there, successively sown: provider, blue bush lake, and golden wax. I had tried an Italian flat green bean variety too, but they were a part of the casualties, and I didn't have any more seeds for them. Two small plants survived and gave me a little nibble, but that was all.

Bush beans 

 The most mature row of the beans are starting to put out beans. I picked a handful yesterday and today. I'm really hoping for a nice crop of beans so that I can store some for winter. As it is, I have enough beans for a couple of servings, so they are on the menu for tonight's dinner.

Starting to produce