A Break in the Bugs

The mosquito levels have been much more tolerable for the last couple of days and I've been taking advantage to spend some time weeding. All of the favas are done as are the garlic and bulb onions.

I spent two hours tonight doing half of the bunching onion bed. That one is slow going as the bunching onions are much smaller and blend in with the grass that I'm pulling. So far so good though, I just ran out of day light.

I also planted Sicitalian Black Swamp Beans (more on those here) and Aleppo Arab Runner Beans from the Roughwood collection. I started those inside so that I was less likely to have any gaps as the window for dry bean planting is already so narrow in Vermont. The runner beans were so big that they didn't really fit in 72 cell trays. I had to wedge them in diagonally!

Fava beans (foreground), pole beans (middle) and bunching onions (background)

You'll notice that the dry beans are surrounded by some green mulch. The lawn down there got a bit shaggy before it got mowed and there was a lot of fresh, half-dried grass laying around. I either just scored some great mulch for free or laid down an extra thick cover crop of dandelion seeds. We'll see.

Here's another pic of the same area, this one before the grass mulch was added and mostly to show off the fava beans. It's so hard to take a decent pic down there when the sun is low, but look at the size of those suckers!

Favas, pole beans, and alliums

Obvious I have some string work to do still but that should be quick.

One excellent byproduct of weeding is that I've been snacking on volunteer daikons the size of pencils. Yum! Lambs quarters are a good size right now too and have me excited for quinoa greens.