Bean Strategies and Dealing with a Tomato Glut

This year we set up a bean arbour in hopes of providing a solid structure for the heritage Italian beans.  The vines are incredibly vigorous with large leaves.  The first year I grew them in with the corn in a Three Sisters Garden.  They proved too much for the corn and broke the plants under their weight.  Last year they were on the bean rack my husband made me, but since it was 8' tall, I couldn't reach the beans at the top and lost a lot of the crop.

This year I decided to try a bean arbour.  My daughter grows beans very successfully on a metal garden arbour and I thought, why not try something like that much bigger - like a grape arbour.  So last May, my husband built me my bean arbour which spans 2 concrete raised beds.  It is covered with bean vines!  So much so that that the beans are again trying to escape.  Some vines have managed to latch onto the corn which is now thankfully finished.  Others have tumbled into the Queen of Denmark rose which is behind the beans.

The solution seemed to be to provide more avenues for escape and to that end, we set up ropes which tie onto the fence behind the garden.  Then I twined loose vines on the ropes to encourage them.  We should have done this long ago, but at least there's another month or so of growing time.  And it will certainly be easy to pick these beans!

Meanwhile, the tomatoes are flourishing.  Today I picked a good 25 pounds of Health Kick tomatoes - and this just from 6 plants!  These tomatoes will go into Zippy Salsa and Tomato Soup but there will still be lots left over to give away.

The tomato plants are far from finished - there are still lots more on the road to ripening and I have yet to harvest from the Principe Borghese plants.

I was worried that it was too hot for the Brussels Sprouts planted earlier this summer.  They are doing just fine, thank you, and hopefully will provide homegrown sprouts for Christmas dinner this year.

And as for apples, we are already picking Macintosh, and the Liberty isn't far behind.  This poor little tree struggles each year with its enormous crop of small, red, scrumptious apples, branches bending to the ground.  One of our favourite apples for fresh eating.  The drought we're experiencing is hitting the apple trees hard and we've purchased watering bags which zip around their trunks and provide a slow drip of water to help them out.