More Food and Organic Garden Update!

Today, about 1/2 pounds of green onions were harvested from the garden. The Onion greens can be harvested continuously through the summer and early fall. After which the underground Onion tubers can be extracted with a final harvest. I had intended to plant some more herbs such as basil and thyme, but didn't quite get the time to do so. In the rest of the garden, much has transpired. Almost all of the crops are flowering, making the garden look like a giant series of flowering bushes.


The early and mid season potatoes will be ready for harvest within 2 weeks. The late season potatoes will be ready within 4 weeks. The idea here is to stagger the planting of a secondary crop of potatoes into 3 phases, which would result in another 3 harvests later this year. One troubling thought is the effect of the potato harvests upon the surrounding bean plants, since the beans have formed a symbiotic relationship with the potatoes, the removal of the taters may make the beans more susceptible to pests.

The crop trinity in Garden Bed one is doing very well, the Eggplants are flowering profusely and will soon bear fruit. The pole beans have climbed up each and every corn stalk and are also flowering like crazy. Everything is so tightly integrated that this network of crops looks as if it's a single, complex plant. The corn stalks have sent up strong stalks with broad emerald leaves, the beans clamor along the sides of those stalks, and the ground beneath is entirely covered by eggplant leaves, not a square inch of sunlit space is wasted by this system. The corn/bean combination I think can be left there until the end of the agricultural season this year. The beans will produce until October, and the corn will be ripe by then as well. The eggplants after the august harvest may be turned under the soil and replanted with either sugar beets or winter kale. I plan to seed Garden bed one with some other leafy vegetable combination next year, and if the gods are kind, another intensive crop of potatoes the year after to form a full rotation.