The Garden of Woz...

[karstopography]

I did bush beans here last fall. Seeded September 1st, started getting production in the latter half of October and had three or four good weeks of production. The pattern is similar in the spring here. A few solid weeks of production, then the beans sputter out.

Are there bush beans that will continue to produce well in subsequent weeks even if the weather is cooperative or do bush beans have their main crop for those few weeks and mostly peter out no matter what the weather is doing?

[PlainJane]

Nice haul!

[Whwoz]

Are there bush beans that will continue to produce well in subsequent weeks even if the weather is cooperative or do bush beans have their main crop for those few weeks and mostly peter out no matter what the weather is doing?

@karstopography I think a lot has to do with time of year planted, in our climate at least. Back in the summer of 1982/1983 the folks planted 4 rows of Windsor Long Pod (all before Christmas) and we picked them for weeks. We estimated that we picked over 300lb from those 4 x 20m/22yard (approx) rows, may the day we would head off with 5 (one for each of us) 25lt/6.5US gallon buckets and near enough fill them all before a big session at the table topping, tailing and cutting for freezing. There were still beans on the plants at the end of March when we had lifted the pumpkins, pulled carrots etc and allowed the cows in. The Windsor Long Pods available now are not the same as back then, much tougher, no doubt breed for transport handling and so the hunt is on for a new variety. Also that was a El Nino year after the folks had cleaned out a dam or two over the previous summer and we ripped up a new patch of ground for the veggie garden, nothing to match yield since.

[Whwoz]

Cleaning up of the tomatoes has nearly finished, Just Blueberries to remove, but need to pick them first. Need to finish weeding that area, a fair bit of coochy type grass growing their, then a quick dig over and in with some garlic. Found enough tomatoes for another batch of sauce.

[Whwoz]

Pakenham bound today to pay deposit on a Grange 5 X 12 m Sproutwell 10 mm dual wall polycarbonate. In stock at there Geelong warehouse so it will not be long before it is this side of Melbourne ready for me to pick up

[Whwoz]

With the in progress purchase of above greenhouse, I have gone a bit silly on the low heat chilli seed ordering front, about 35 or so different ones ordered. Will be very interested to see how these go in there with the distinct possibility of over wintering and growing them onto for 4 or 5 years with the aid of a solar panel or two to supply warmth in winter

[Whwoz]

On the subject of sweet potatoes, I have two Beauregard in a pot now putting out lovely new slips, at the wrong time of the year. These are in my mini greenhouse that I use for germinating seed and will remain there for a while yet.

Not sure how many sweets the garden will yield, rat runs all through the plants foliage out there unfortunately. Foliage not overly long, but with a few weeds about, they obviously have enough cover. Grrrrrr.

[Whwoz]

Now have the following pepita pumpkin seed
Kakai, Lady Godiva, Scheherazade, and Styrian Hulless. Plus received Today Pabana, Guatemalan Blue and Rai Kaw Tok, the last as a freebie

[Whwoz]

Made a start on planting the garlic today, the new Asiatic and Turbans plus about 50 of Monaro Purple. Still a lot more to go.

[GoDawgs]

Not sure how many sweets the garden will yield, rat runs all through the plants foliage out there unfortunately. Foliage not overly long, but with a few weeds about, they obviously have enough cover. Grrrrrr.

Going vertical would solve that. No cover for the rats! But it does entail the extra work of weaving the vines through the trellis as they don't climb on their own. But I usually do it when I make an "inspection walk" through the garden. It just takes a few minutes and is no big hassle.

[Whwoz]

Not sure how many sweets the garden will yield, rat runs all through the plants foliage out there unfortunately. Foliage not overly long, but with a few weeds about, they obviously have enough cover. Grrrrrr.

Going vertical would solve that. No cover for the rats! But it does entail the extra work of weaving the vines through the trellis as they don't climb on their own. But I usually do it when I make an "inspection walk" through the garden. It just takes a few minutes and is no big hassle.

Indeed it would @GoDawgs, but unfortunately most of these have been selectively breed to be short, bushy plants with stems not really long enough to train into a trellis

[Whwoz]

We had to move the bees off the block last night. The impending arrival of the greenhouse and concreting works with machinery that will result lead to this necessity as bees do not the smell of diesel fuel or exhaust and will go into full on attack mode against the operators of such equipment. Will get the earthworks done as quick as we can and take the opportunity to revamp the bee living zone to try and prevent grass growth around the hives so that we can get some bees back ASAP.

[Whwoz]

Ok, it appears that I have not gone as mad on the chili seed as I thought, 29 seed lots arriving in todays post.

From Chilli Madness

Chilli Madness.jpg

And from the Hippy Seed Co.

Hipp Seed Co.jpg

I guess that will give me room to order a few more

[Whwoz]

have started planting the garlic, some of the new to me varieties were just poking shoots out through the tops of the cloves so definitely a bit late, but not much I could do about that.

Those planted include

Asiatic

Spicey Korean Mountain

Turban - Newbies

Georgian Stride
Gossimer
Mexican early Purple
Shandong
Spanish Early Violet
Xian

Turban - Regrowers

Monaro Purple
Traf White Turban
White Crookneck

Porcelains

Music
French Ruskie
Susan Delafield

And a couple of one trialing very early planting, recommended planting time for these is the start of June, so we shall see what happens.

Marbled Purple Stripe

Marbled Blush

MPS x SPS

Perhonnen Kadhesta

Will post picks in a separate thread rather than loose them in amongst his lot.

[Whwoz]

those of you who follow this thread may remember that I mentioned that I had some Vekan garlic do some weird stuff, with up to 5 scapes visible on one plant. Well I must report that it was a serious case of side shooting that lead to multiple cloves dividing within each plant producing a ridiculous number of small to very small cloves in a standard sized globe. Not planting you again, even those that did not side shoot.

Vekan.jpg

The original plant that had five scapes

Vekan 2.jpg

Striped down, there was actually 7 scapes

Vekan 3.jpg

Showing a few of the small cloves, each of those separate pieces has multiple cloves init.

Vekan 4.jpg

What they should have looked like

[Whwoz]

I keep forgetting to mention my attempt at getting true seed from Rocambole garlic. The five varieties that I have were planted in a semi-randomised fashion and grew well enough to produce scapes and bulbils. From what I understand, in most instances to get TGS, you need to remove the bulbils before the flowers will appear. Not so in this case. When I removed the bulbils from the most advanced plant the flowers were already present, so I just watched the remaining plants and as they were all producing flowers, left well enough alone. This was mid-December, then the weather and migraines intervened. Our first spell of warm to hot weather for the season coincided with that run of migraine headaches I had over Christmas New Year and when I was recovered enough to check, they had completely dried out. Might have been Interesting if I had of been able to water.....

[bower]

You should definitely try that again @Whwoz . Very lucky climate wise to have them flower freely. I hope you have a better opportunity next time!

[Whwoz]

@Bower , I intend to try it again, also with the porcelains and I might try with some turbans and Creoles. Most of the work done with TGS has been associated with the different Purple Stripe groups, so naturally I have looked elsewhere to start with. From what I am hearing weather forecast wise, I don't think this year will be any good for getting seed from the rocamboles, going to get too hot early, I have had the Porcelain "Music" flower without removing bulbils and I quite like the size of the porcelain cloves for cooking with, nice and big, easy handling. Turbans, being the first to mature of the hardnecks here are an obvious candidate to try as they have the longest time to mature seed still on the plant in the ground with minimal affect on globe size. Creoles would just be a curiosity thing at this stage. it is also a matter of having enough suitable ground space where the plants can be left without impacting on the summer crop requirements.

[Whwoz]

Must mention that the greenhouse will be arriving late on Friday, delivered to our door. Yippee!!!

[GoDawgs]

Interesting that you should be talking about trying to save garlic seed. I was just looking at some garlic for fall and on that site the narrative mentioned that true garlic seed almost doesn't exist anymore because the flowers have lost their ability to produce seed. But they did say that there are a few people trying to overcome that and get garlic flowers to reliably produce seed again. Now I can't find that blurb on that site again so I looked elsewhere. But this site gives better information on how to try it. It's still tricky business and not often successful but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that you can do it the next time around!

https://practicalselfreliance.com/true-garlic-seed/