A heart-shaped tale
There was plenty happening in our world this weekend, and it had to figure itself out without my input because I was clearing out the heart-shaped bed. It’s the time of the season when some crops have spurted out all they got, and a change is called for.
Around the heart-shaped bed from right front to the curvy other side back toward left front: I had planted bush beans (variety unknown because they never sprouted), pineapple squash across the middle, Red Swan bush beans around the end, basil varieties on the middle left side, finishing with more bush beans on the front left (which turned out to be pole beans that defied the tall stakes and escaped heading north to form a canopy over the basil and some of the Red Swans… and after two months never popped a blossom).
The bed called out for a reset which means I get to do more garden art. Gardening is combining your energy, wild ideas and resources to paint the 3-D picture of your dreams which, by the way, will be tasty at dinnertime. In my early days of gardening, I planted a 2×15-feet bed of bronze crispy lettuce – a full healthy bed of produce, a work of art – and it was so profoundly picturesque I never harvested any of it. I watched the whole bed go to seed and enjoyed the process.
I learned from the lettuce there’s a rhythm to gardening, and the relative point for the heart-shaped bed is now is the time to paint another profoundly picturesque painting. The garden will tell me what I need to know. So far, the plan seems to be a short rest (nurtured by rain), addition of mid-season amendments and matter, and a replant.
The spring plan for the front right corner was five or six bush bean plants, and in spite of two plantings only a couple sprouts sprouted and somebody ate them. Eventually the cosmos took over.
Across the middle of the bed were strong, vibrant healthy pineapple squash plants. Tropical-like leaves big as pillows until the squash bugs came to town. They and their scurrilous mission would not be denied no matter the amount of neem oil spray or devoted attention. After the first few squash, the plants lost their mojo. They languished, no more blossoms, so their season was over.
So out came the squash vines along with the Red Swan bean plants. Reddish-magenta snap beans make for a colorful dinner. They were productive in not much space, but the plants were spent.
The front left corner hosted eight-foot-tall bean vines which the gardener thought were going to be cute bushy bean plants. They grew into a tall jumbled mess with no blossoms, though they did provide shade for the basil, and now they dwell atop the leaf mulch pile.
So… the bed needs replenishing. Scratch the surface with a cultivator to let the air in, add soil amendments, compost, grass clippings, aged horsey if you have it, and give it a few days off. I figure we are toward the end of a seasonal window for replanting quick-maturing bush beans and bush cucumbers, and that’s what the heart-shaped bed called for.
Across the middle where the squash plants roamed will be the Red Swan beans again because they’re quick along with maybe a yellow variety for variety. Bush cucumbers will move into the two refurbished front areas. If planted soon, they will produce harvestable cukes by mid-September according to the plan for the next profoundly picturesque painting. Across the back side where the red beans grew will be a medley of leafy greens such as arugula, Asian brassicas, chicory and chard.
Or the heart-shaped bed could change its mind as heart-shaped things sometimes do.