Everything's Coming Up Milhouse!

DudeLife did such a great job of caring for the garden while I was out of town, that when I came home, I was able to immediately harvest all this awesome!

And that was to be the last of the fava beans. As it turns out, they are kind of a bitch to grow. Not that they seem to be picky about where I put them or how often they get watered or even who their neighbours are. The problem with favas is how much garden real estate they require and how many plants you need to yield a crop worth messing with.

There they are up against the fence, early in the season and reasonably sized.

I planted probably 10-ish fava bean seeds, and as they grew up and out they engulfed all of the neighbouring plants. And then every time it rained, the stalks would fall over from the weight, and I'd be stuck trying to figure out what was up versus down and how the hell to stake the buggers well enough to help them keep to themselves. When I returned home from NY I had had enough of the spider and caterpillar haven they were creating, so I harvested what was ready and pulled out the plants.

This about halfway through the growing season, before the falling over.

The beans were delicious, don't get me wrong. But a couple of bags of favas (which is certainly more than I was getting per harvest) yields barely a small bowl of shelled beans and I am damn sure I could have planted something there that would have had a better output for the real estate. I think next year I am going to try edamame, and increase our growing space by netting at least one side of our fence for vertical plants to grow up.

In other garden related news, we have our very first tiny tomatoes finally growing! As I got such a late start with my seeds this year, it's good to see my little guys finally setting fruit. These first tomatoes are on the Riviera plant in the garden, which was the first of all the 'maters to flower, so that makes sense.

By that logic, the Flamme should be next, followed by the Black Krim, the Pink Ping Pong, and lastly the sad little Super Snow White that was decimated by a vicious bird attack. Another exciting thing I noticed is how different the Black Krim flowers are from all of the others. These ones are much larger, with more of a sunflower-like appearance than the usual star shaped flowers. Peculiar. But ultimately, I'm sure, delicious.

Regular ass tomato flower.

Big ass Black Krim tomato flower.