Feeding the Fishes

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I love the family time, the festivities, the crisp fall weather in the air, the focus on thankfulness and the food.  One of the things that we always shoot for is fresh green beans out of the garden as a side dish on the menu.  We grow snap beans in the spring.  In the fall, it's a little more tricky, but it's worth it.  I'm thinking about fresh snap beans wrapped in little bundles bound by bacon, topped with brown sugar and cooked in the oven.  Delicious!

But we have to work hard to get them there.  For one thing we planted two rows of Contender Snap Beans.  It's still 90 degrees a week into October.  That means the pests like army worms, caterpillars and other bugs are feasting on all the fresh foliage.  You can see some evidence of worm damage to the sweet potato leaves in the right corner of the photo below.  In looking at the forecast, on Tuesday, we'll have lows in the lower 60's and highs around 84 degrees.  That'll be the best the weather has been in a while.  Hopefully it will send the pests into hibernation or at least slow them down.

Yesterday, now that the snap beans are getting some size, I figured it was high time to give them some fertilizer.  They were started with some composted chicken manure, but now it's time to give them a little boost.  This time I'll hit them with some fish emulsion.   I use a powdered fish emulsion that calls for 1 Tablespoon per gallon of water that I put in my garden sprayer.  The leaves are covered until they are wet, giving them a good foliar feeding and then a spray the ground around the stem until the soil is wet.

I learned from experience to try to use it all up, leaving no leftovers.  If the fish emulsion is left in the sprayer, it heats up and 'cooks.'  The concoction turns green and smells absolutely awful - like raw sewerage.  So now I use it all up, emptying out the sprayer.  Although the fish emulsion stinks, the plants love it, and it is an organic, natural way to fertilize your plants.  I'll try to do this once every week.

Hopefully, this will keep the snap beans growing and pretty soon we'll see blooms and then a little later, pods.  And you know what that means?  We'll be swimming in snap beans come Thanksgiving.