Harvest Pics (Finally!)

I've been harvesting from my garden for a couple weeks now, but none of it ever seems to make it into pictures! Part of the issue is that I'm mostly harvesting from the rural garden and then I make dinner for everyone over there, so a lot of the time nothing makes it back to the apartment.

First Harvest of String Beans: Blue Lake (Green), Pencil Pod (Yellow) and Dragon Langerie (Purple)

First Ripe Tomatoes! 5 oz of Oxheart Pink tomatoes picked July 16th.

1 1/2 pounds of beans. About half of these were sent home with friends.


On a side note, I'm looking to buy a pressure canner and would love some input from others about their favorite brands/sizes before I invest. My price limit is $200, but I'm hoping to spend more like $100-$150.

Mystery Disease

I went to the community garden for the first time in about a week and was pleased to see that it's mostly thriving. However, a quick examination of my tomato plants showed that a quarter of them are infected with something. At first I thought it was just dirt splashed on the leaves, but unfortunately it's definitely not dirt. I'm thinking it's either septoria leaf spot or early blight, but I've not seen this before and would love some help figuring out what it is. The affected leaves are mostly on the bottom half of the plants.

Other than the diseased plants everything is looking pretty good, although I had a ridiculous amount of weeding to do in the right bed. I'm particularly happy with the bean patch and the kale, which have both shown awesome growth and are looking very healthy.

Before Weeding....

And After!

Donated Kale

The Bean Patch

*Update!* After some help from the people over at gardenwebs and a return visit to the garden I have decided that my mystery disease is indeed early blight. I yanked the 2 plants that were most heavily affected and removed all the infected leaves/branches from the other plants. Now I'm just waiting it out to see how it goes.

The Urban Bean Patch

The Bean Patch
The soil in the community garden is somewhat depleted and crop rotation of any kind just does not seem to happen, so this year I decided to dedicate half of my plot to beans in an effort to break up the tomato/pepper/eggplant monotony.

Black Valentine Beans

Envy Soybeans

I ended up planting Slenderette, Blue Lake, Dragon Langerie, Pencil Pod, Black Valentine, Envy Soybeans, Vermont Cranberry and Jacob's Cattle. I also have plans to plant my Black-Eyed Peas the next time I get over to the community plot. I'm very happy with the germination rates of these beans, even with the storms and tornadoes that ravaged my area shortly after planting. But they've survived and seem to be doing just fine!

Looking good!

The garden is looking excellent! I had a mini harvest today and it's my biggest of the season thus far.



3 tomatoes (2 hybrids, 1 heirloom), 1 crookneck summer squash and a handful of green beans. All said and done it was about a pound and a half of veggies.

I have a bunch more crooknecks forming, as well as some nice gold zucchini. Over 5 eggplants have set fruit as well! I'll probably harvest the first of them mid-week for some eggplant parm. The butternut squash I've trained up the chicken wire fence are also setting fruit. One is the size of my fist and the others are the size of a kiwi. Pictures of everything mid week hopefully!