Sunday, June 23, 2013

Never Trust a Tomato Day3: Pole Beans?! Please help...

Can you even see the tomato cage?
One of my first employees was a 90-year-old woman who walked two miles to the greenhouse each day.  Her deep insights stay with me even today:

"Gardening was invented to give old people something to do."   

 and

Her "messed up son" who managed to hold a job, live on his own and had never been in jail.

Ahh, the standards of yesteryear...

I feel confident...
I haven't passed the "old" test when I look at the eight rows of pole beans I accidentally planted.  On my honor: I DID NOT know they were pole beans!  I was just trying to be efficient and use up all my seeds.  Waste not, want not, right?  Now I'll be stringing up bean plants and then stringing the beans for the rest of my useful days.  I am not looking forward to this as a way to keep busy.  That was Antoinette's test and I have not passed it.  Hurray! I am not old yet!

The beans are right behind the 200 indeterminate tomato plants.  Why didn't anyone stop me?

I am on my fourth staking idea, having revisited each a number of times.  It's a daunting task and looms larger and larger with every plant shackled.  The specter of age is laughing at my struggle.  The tomato plants seem unusually heavy and I am only averaging two a day.  Let's do the math:

200 divided by 2 = 100 days to contain the tomato plants.  

I broke down and special ordered more of the well-designed but untested tomato cages.  They were $8 each.

The question has again been raised: Should I prune the tomato plants?  Here's your link to AARP. If you have time to prune tomatoes, you just passed Antoinette's "Give old people something to do" test.  (Just kidding, no hate mail please.)

But Wait!  There's more!  Cucumbers and luffa sponges too!  I may be mowing around them soon to contain their enthusiasm.  This is an example of why garden planning is so important and impulsive planting is the parallel to impulsive buying.  Who hasn't tried to plan a vacation around the six different colors of deck shoes, purchased on sale

The hardware store will have to order more lumber to build this many trellises.  It's time to ask for ideas.  Cheap ideas.

You got any?
 

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