Aiming for Fresh Green Beans for Thanksgiving

This weekend it finally dried up enough to do a little planting.  It has been a long time in coming.  I'm a month late for the fall garden, but there's not much I could do because of the rain.  So the first thing I'm putting in is the green beans.  I always try to plan it so that we have fresh green beans for Thanksgiving.

Here is the bed where we will plant our beans.  This was where the pumpkins were before all succumbing to the torrential rains.  Sadly they all died and weeds happy took their place.  Early Saturday I got out the weed eater and clipped the weeds down to the dirt.  The area was still covered by the shadows of the live oaks.

Later that afternoon I used a shovel to turn over the soil.  I really didn't want to work it too much - just enough to open the soil up.  In the past this dirt was hard and compacted.  Over the past two years, I've incorporated a lot of leaves into the soil. The rotten leaves have added organic material and definitely loosened the soil.  It is amazing the number of earthworms that reside in the soil now.

A SHOVEL-READY JOB

I opted to plant three varieties of green beans, from both seeds I've saved as well as purchased.  I used the traditional Contender Green bean, Italian Roma Green beans, and Dragon Tongue beans.

Dragon tongue beans on the left in the photo below and Italian Roma and Contender Green beans on the right.

I dug some shallow holes and mixed a tablespoon full of organic fertilizer mixed with some organic potting soil, planted a couple seeds in each hole, covered and watered.

With 55 days to maturity, if things go according to plan, we'll enjoy some fresh picked green beans for Thanksgiving - maybe wrapped in bacon.  That sounds great to me!  As I was planting, I noticed that I had some company in the garden. Some have garden gnomes, but I have a garden toad.  These guys are great for the garden.  They eat over 100 insects each night.  This was a fat little dude and must have been eating his fill of bugs for many nights.

Well, since we're late with the fall garden, I have a lot of work to do in a very short time to try to get everything in.