Garden Update

As prelude to a land finding trip, I rode home to PA Friday on the train. It has been a good week at the happy organic garden. The entire structure of the beds have changed with the season as certain key species undergo sharp population changes. The corn stalks, now that the ears are removed, are showing their age and sagging heavily. Soon the spent corn plants will join their ancestors in the compost bins. Likewise the eggplants are fading fast, as their fruits have been devoured by squirrels. With the Japanese beetle threat gone, the pole beans have expanded like weeds. All of the corn stalks, all of the bamboo supports, and most of my neighbor's fence is now covered with bean vines. They have grown so much that now there seems to be a competition between the beans and the tomato plants for valuable sunlight. A few days of cool weather have greatly boosted the growth of the turnips, a harvest will be possible within 2 weeks. The animal ecology of the garden has also changed drastically. In the bean vine dominated habitat, there seems to be hundreds of small spiders, all of them furiously spinning webs to capture thousands and thousands of tiny winged leaf-hoppers. In the turnip areas, the struggle now appears to be between green worms and ants. The green worms are taking advantage of the rich turnip greens, while the ants seem to be busy hunting the green worms.


The produce has been abundant this week. All in all, 14 lbs of pole beans, 10 lbs of tomatoes, and 1 lb of green onions have been harvested.