Lots of Veggies to Eat

Things are going well in the container garden.

The pole beans are bearing heavily now, I can pick enough from just one container of them to use in my soup.  I lost a few plants of the Rattlesnake beans, but the Mississippi Skip Beans aka White Half Runner had no such issues.  The Skip Beans may be better adapted to the humid climate of Florida than Rattlesnake, I suspect the Rattlesnake plants succumbed to a fungus.

This is the first time I've tried growing Skip Beans in pots and giving them poles to climb, I usually plant them in a bed and let them sprawl.  I'm very pleased with the results.  The only disadvantage is the need for a stepladder to harvest the beans.  I think they're definitely growing better as climbers.  I might try giving my sweet potatoes some poles and tying up the vines.  That way they won't be rooting in the ground or getting nibbled by my friends the rabbits.

I enjoy the company of the rabbits, they don't seem to mind my walking past them while they're munching on things they find in my weedy lawns.  I've never had any serious trouble from them, they don't seem to bother my veggies except for the sweet potato vines. The diggers haven't been bothering me anymore either.  Those were unknown animals that excavated the soil out of my pots and planting beds, and dumped out my seedling pots on the ground.  I keep the pots mulched now, or covered with chicken wire, and I've fenced in the planting beds with chicken wire.  When I first tried gardening at this house, they dug up my garden every night.

The Swiss Chard has been really outstanding.  The flavor and texture of the leaves seems to be better in the large containers than when I grew them last time in the planting beds.  I'm growing Ruby Red, same variety both times.  Though it's interesting, I got one plant of some green variety of chard that was very tasty and tender...must have been some other seed got mixed in, or it was just due to a lack of separation between seed crops by the people who grew the seed. I wouldn't mind growing more of the green variety again.

I've tried growing chard from some of the major seed houses here in the US, but I didn't like that chard at all.  Years ago I grew some seed that someone brought back from Europe and that tasted so much better.  Not all chard is the same.  I've been staying with Ruby Red for a while now.

The eggplant is doing very well too.  I like them stir-fried or in soup. I'm growing Bangladeshi Long, Florida Market, Long Purple, and some unknown Asian variety that's somewhat long with green and white striping.  I only have one plant of the green and white variety, it showed up from a batch of Bangladeshi Long seed I planted.  I think I like it the best of the four, though I've only harvested one fruit so far.  Maybe I'll move it to a bigger container, southeast Asian eggplant are perennial here in my climate.  I might even try air layering it to produce more plants.  With only one plant, I can't very well expect to save the seed and have them breed true.  Some plants are very amenable to air layering, you never know until you try.

With oregano and sweet potato, all I have to do is set a new pot next to the old one, lay a vine over the new pot and hold it down with something.  After it roots, I clip the connecting vine and I'm done. Propagation can't get much easier than that.  I've got oregano and sweet potato I've been growing that way for years.  If you live in a temperate climate, you would have to take a plant of your favorite varieties indoors for the winter, of course.  We didn't get a killing frost this year, so no need for me to do anything like that.

The unusually warm weather continues, so I've been setting my alarm and getting up at first light.  I don't deal well with tropical sun anymore, have to avoid getting too much of it.  But as far as the garden plants go, all I have to do is switch crops and keep right on planting and harvesting.  It will soon be too hot even for most peppers, I'll probably switch to growing only Caribbean Red and Tabasco before much longer.  They're a different species of plant from the usual hot pepper and bell pepper varieties, and they like the heat.  The pole beans will be replaced with long beans and blackeyed peas too.  You have to grow the right varieties of veggies for your climate or you're working against yourself.