2 things:

Remember those beans I had in my meager garden this spring? (http://danielaisenbrey.blogspot.com/2011/06/watersundirtfood.html) Well they've run their course, and I was able to collect a handful (metaphorical, not literal) of dried beans/seeds from the pods that I left on the vines to dry out.

Tennessee Cornfield Beans

Clearly not enough to make soup out of, but the Tennessee Cornfield bean is a semi-rare heirloom variety, so I'm glad to have these seeds to trade/plant next year to propagate tasty, non-Monsanto varieties.


In other news, I finally made it out to the Smokies Sunday morning to catch the Fall color before it slips away from me. Unfortunately everyone else was too, rendering the drive back a frustrating ordeal.

I've been wanting to shoot more water-related stuff in the park, so I opted for the Little River Trail, a stone's throw from Elkmont campground. This area was a popular vacationing destination prior to the establishment of the National Park, evidenced by a smattering of abandoned cabins and resort cottages, most of which were built in the 1920's, and some of which had been in use up until the 90's.

Po-ta-toes? Mash 'em, boil 'em, stick 'em in a stew!

Well I finally broke. My curiosity got the best of me and I couldn't wait any longer to see what all was going on in my potato buckets.

I know you're supposed to wait for the vines to die, but I rationalized my decision by the fact that they weren't in an ideal growing environment to begin with, and the vines were turning yellow and loosing leaves, so death couldn't be that far away, right?

I had experimented with a variety of bucket configurations, mulching one with leaves, one with newspaper, and one un-mulched. Also half of the buckets had vapor barriers which didn't really get a chance to serve their purpose since the sprinkler system was put in, watering everything twice a day.

So this is what I ended up with out of four buckets and four Yukon Gold seed potatoes:

And here's the total bounty of the garden thus far, excluding a dozen or so leaves of mustard greens:














Hooray food!

You still have plenty of time to put in some fall crops like carrots, beets, turnips, spinach, brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, zucchini, pumpkin, or many others. I'm probably gonna do carrots, turnips, beets, and spinach in my containers once the tomatoes and beans finish up.

a hill of beans

Beeeeeeeeeans! From the garden.

Plants know what they're doing.

It would appear that the trick to a self-sustaining home container garden is to let your landlord install a sprinkler system, position your containers strategically, then leave town for a couple weeks.

I had been getting kinda nervous about the state of my meager stand of veggies as I drove around the midwest, from one "excessive heat warning" to another, and I hoped that no one had re-positioned the lawn sprinklers that had been so graciously sharing their bounty with my garden.

The first thing I noticed when I pulled back into Eleanor St. after two weeks away was a gigantic frenzy of vines floating at the top of my bean trellises. Luckily they were actually the Tennessee Cornfield beans, and not some volunteer weed from the flower bed. And what was that, hiding under the canopy of vines? Could it be a tomato? Indeed, each of my mystery tomato plants now bears a single fruit whom I have named Abraham & Sarah, in hopes that they will be the first of many blessed tomatoes.

The potatoes are doing fine. I guess. Won't really know until I dig them up. Mustard greens are harvestable and boy do they pack a punch. The broccoli is still sterile, not much hope for them.

Also found this guy crawling around on the beans and thought he might appreciate a photo-shoot.

The other thing I was a little hesitant to abandon for two weeks was my kombucha scoby. I didn't have the supplies on hand to prepare a full batch for it to work on while I was away, so I just left it in a couple inches of leftover tea with a bunch of sugar and crossed my fingers. I guess it appreciated my effort, since the culture was twice as thick (about 3 inches) when I got back.

I went ahead and split it since it actually tore while I was trying to get it out of the jar. I've been trying to think of new experiments to try with it, instead of just using the standard black tea + sugar combination, so I brewed up a couple quarts of super-concentrated bissap (a Senegalese drink made from hibiscus flowers and LOTS of sugar, similar to agua de flor de jamaica in Central America) and plopped the thinned-down scoby on top. Fingers crossed.

water+sun+dirt=food

It's a garden update!

Tomatoes are flowering and looking strong, no fruit set yet though. Haven't had any problem with insects on the tomatoes yet, so I think their slow progress is due to limited sunlight.

The beans are really starting to take off despite numerous transplants and rough handling. Even the two that I moved to the shallow flowerbed next to the porch are working their way up the railings! It's pretty fun to see their progress day-to-day and guide the inquisitive tendrils. I don't really know what these are supposed to look like full-grown, so hopefully they're on track.

Potatoes are going crazy in their buckets! I was worried I hadn't given them enough soil, but they don't seem to mind at all and can't even hold themselves up anymore. No big bug problems on the taters either, must be a combination of the containers and luck.

Greens and broccoli are pretty unremarkable at this point.

Well there she is, in all her minuscule glory.