We had great success with some pole beans we planted a few years ago, even though we didn’t get around to planting until very late in the season. This year I wanted to plant those same beans again, but the bag of beans is really old. I didn’t want to plant them and not know if they were going to grow, so I decided to sprout them inside before planting them.

This is an experiment. I don’t know how well it will work.

When it was snowing outside, I soaked some bean seeds for about 8 hours (while I slept). In the morning, I drained the water and put a paper towel in the bowl below the beans. I covered the bowl with plastic wrap, poked a few holes, and waited for the beans to sprout. They did sprout, but they also got pretty stinky along the way. Maybe my beans were too old, maybe I kept them too wet or too dry. I don’t know, but I do know that about half of them sprouted, and I planted them. None of them have emerged from the ground yet, so this may still be a total failure. In case that happens, Charmaine planted a few rows of beans seeds for planting this year, and not sprouted inside. They are the control group.

I hope they all work, but even if they don’t, it’s been a fun experiment.

It’s May 19th. The main area of the garden is done. It’s amazing. Charmaine worked outside most the day and got all the rest of the beds planted. I took a few minutes to build what I call a “climbing gym” for the cucumbers.

Obviously, we’re not done with planting yet. In fact, despite having more than 70 pepper plants in the ground, we’re not even half way through the peppers… and that’s after discarding almost half the starts earlier this year. I think it’s safe to say we’ve over done it.

I didn’t write anything last week. There wasn’t much to write about. We were still enjoying winter in May. Everything outside was completely dead. The plants inside were running out of room, nutrients, space, light, etc. It wasn’t fun. Luckily, the weather improved. I’m feeling much more confident about planting things outside now. I’m guessing we may still get another freeze, but we can deal with it if it happens.

I want to put a plug in for two of my favorite tools that saved us lots of time and energy today. First, our Honda FG-110 mini tiller. Second, my pitchfork. My peas have started coming up, but so had a bunch of weeds between the rows of peas. In just a few seconds with the mini tiller, the weeds were gone. I never had to bend down and pick a single one… magic. We used the pitchfork to turn over the raised beds in the garden… most notably, where the tomatoes and peppers had frozen just a few short weeks ago. The pitchfork is also the best tool for turning the compost pile. I don’t think I could garden without it.

Today we planted a whole bunch of stuff outside. Tomatoes, Peppers, Tomatillos, Eggplant, and Squash. We picked up a roll of black cloth that we put down over the raised beds, then cut holes at various spots in the cloth where we planted our plants. Hopefully this will help keep the weeds at bay, and also stimulate root growth of our plants. Hopefully it won’t get so hot that all the plants die. We haven’t had much luck with our experiments thus far, but I’m hopeful this one will turn out well.

Despite having 7 of the raised beds planted, we still have a lot of plants growing in trays. It’s time to start giving the plants away.