Hot....humid....and PLENTIFUL!

For someone who lives in Wisconsin, you think I would enjoy the hot humid weather we have been getting these past 3 weeks. Beats the cold of winter, right? Well, give me warm, but that's about all I'd have if it's my choice! 72 degrees, sunny, white puffy clouds in the sky, a slight breeze from the west, and no humidity please. Well, that's not exactly what we've been granted with here. Instead, 85-90 and HUMID! The good thing out of this, the garden is ripening up something real good!

Today after arriving home from work, we went out to water (we've officially almost tapped our rain barrels dry after 2 weeks without rain). In the process of watering, I noticed how plentiful the garden looked. To my surprise we had a few more zucchini's. I'm not exactly sure how well the zucchini will continue to grow. I'll be honest, I tried too many zucchini in a small raised bed and they are kinda choking each other out. Well, lesson learned.

Then I moved along to the broccoli. 4 out of 7 generous heads have started. In a few days, they'll be ready for harvest and will keep regenerating. The tomatoes are also coming along. Lots of green, nothing ripened to red yet.

Next, I got to the green beans. Now, our garden takes up a very small area of our yard. We had to keep the garden close to the house for watering purposes, so we have 4 raised beds that are about 15 sq. feet of planting area each (3x5 beds) and another that's about 3x6 (18 sq. feet). The beans are planted in rows in a 15 sq. feet bed. All of the planting I choose this year is based on it's ability to be preserved, in effort to help feed ourselves over winter. I planted tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, strawberries, zucchini & a sugar snap pea bean pole (these snap peas go straight to our stomach & never make it out of the garden).

Anyhow, I digress - back to the green beans. So I could see there are plenty of green beans to be picked. I grabbed an ice cream pail to put the green beans in. I decided I would count the green beans, you know, just a challenge to see how many green beans I would find! Well, 2 ice cream pails later and drumroll please.......371 green beans! Wow, from my tiny 15 square foot bed. I probably pulled out about this many between the last two times I picked too. Talk about return on investment, I'm sure that pack of seeds cost a mere $1.29.

I'm in green bean heaven! -L