Decisions Rendered

Several days ago, I was seriously contemplating ripping out the pole and bush beans in the largest trellised box and starting all over again. From what advice I was receiving, I gathered it was either a slug of sorts sliding off of the leaves or much rather an insect of sorts which was draining the leaves and then communicating some sort of fungus to them. I kept cutting off the infected leaves one at a time, until I felt like there was nothing left. Both the bush beans and especially the pole beans looked bare. I was a hairs breath away from ripping everything out to start again when I left to quell an argument between the boy and girl, or rather watch while they duked it out and then offer advice, and consequently forgot all about the beans.

Yesterday I noticed that from where I cut off the leaves, there seemed to be new growth so I left them. You can honestly tell that the bush beans are recovering nicely and I'm hoping the pole beans won't be far behind. I'm rather relieved that I didn't make the rash decision to rip everything out. The yield may be lower, but it looks like it will be a yield of some sort at least.

I took some more advice and bought some decanters of sorts to make pepper sauce with my peppers that I didn't know what to do with. I couldn't get some of the larger and fatter banana peppers in there so I cut them in pieces and shoved them in. I hope it will still work this way. Sad thing is, I don't see how the man is going to pull those things out to eventually eat them, himself.

I built two more unintended boxes today. Our bed is on stilts of sorts and years ago we had to build a box under the bed to keep the dog from crawling under there when it was time to go outside. Now that Vladimir is no longer with us...there's extra wood to be had. I put together two 3x2 boxes. One can go in front of the first box and will get about an hours more sun. I'm going to put another squash there since the other I have is not doing so well due to the shade. I'm going to level out the space to the right of the side box and put two more tomato plants there.

The sugar baby watermelon is doing its best to do absolutely nothing. I'm thinking that it's going to be a wash. Actually, nothing has seemed to grow well in that little box. However, I can't help being amazed at the number of female cucumbers and zucchini I've got growing. They're outpacing the males entirely. Last summer I never got a female cucumber, so this is amazing and very inspiring. I've got a few more weeks of decent weather before the brutal heat of July sets in. Hopefully things will mature before that.

Odd as well, I have one squash leaf that within an hour between my visits to the garden went from stiff, lovely leaf to fallen down limp leaf. It's the only leaf affected. Something seems to have sucked the life right out of it. I'd like to prune it back, but the stems are hollow and I don't want little critters crawling in there. How do you suggest to prune back squash?

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.