October 11, 2010: The Final Harvest Monday, or Five Days and Counting

Five short days until we leave for Arizona! I had planned on finishing up with my garden cleanup, but wouldn't you know it's been pouring rain. I actually went out in the downpour and ripped some of the Ottawa Cranberry beans off the side fence, and piled the vines on the patio. Very few of them had dried, but they had to come out.

I shelled those that were close, and put them in a basket on the plant window shelf, where I'm hoping they will continue to dry.


Those that were still far from being dry were left in the pods and put in the hanging fruit basket in the kitchen. They will probably stay right there until I return next spring, as I know it will take longer than five days for the pods to dry out. Or maybe they won't dry, and I'll come home to a mildewy mess!

That might have been about 1/3 of the cranberry bean crop. I hope it stops raining long enough to pull out the rest of them today.


I had better luck with the Cherokee Trail of Tears beans. From the 25 seeds that were sent to me by Daphne's Dandelions, I harvested exactly one pound of dry beans! The ones in the pint jar have already been in the freezer to kill any creepy crawlies that may have taken residence in them, the others are going to air dry for a few days. Most of them are quite dry already, but there are a few that are still a bit soft (the larger, lighter colored beans).

The final dried beans are Fortex, being saved for next years pole bean crop. There were also quite a few that were not yet dried on the vines, but all of those in the plastic cup are good to use for seeds, and that's a lot more than came in the packet from the nursery, which gave me a wonderful bean harvest through the summer! I think most of the beans that are still drying should be OK, too.

Seeds for all of the above beans were from Daphne, who is also our hostess for Harvest Monday.

The harvests were small this week. The last of the lettuce leaves were pulled from the bolting plants. It's too bitter for us, but the pet rabbit likes it. There were a couple of cucumbers and just enough tomatoes for the dinner salads. Otto and Annie got fresh green beans with their chicken dinner. That's about the last of the pole beans, but the freezer is full.

Then came the 17 pounds of green peppers and a big bunch of basil. The large peppers were all given away to my kids, and I kept a few of the smaller ones for us and the dogs. Since Kelly told me her dog eats them, I tried feeding slices to Otto and Annie....and they loved them! They've always eaten green beans and carrots, raw or cooked, but I never thought to give them peppers. They work just fine for Annie's snacks during her diet, low in calories and high in vitamin C!

A few more radishes were pulled, but the rest are just tops with long, squiggly roots. Cookie, the house rabbit, loves radish tops, so they'll go into his food bag. A few tomatoes are still hanging in there, as well as the cucumbers.

Are cosmos supposed to get 8' tall and not go into full bloom until mid October? I've had an occasional blossom on this, maybe one or two a month, until this week. Now look at it, and it's loaded with buds. That's only one of the flower stalks. I cut the others back when they began getting so tall and showing no sign of blooming.