Bean Brace Take 2

After my bean brace fell over for a third time on Friday night, I decided a redesign was in order. I took the supports apart, cut the ends into stakes, hammered them into the ground, and then I strung string through the holes in the supports. It is not as visually impressive as the last structure (and may not be easily disassembled), but it shouldn't fall over any more. Several of the young seedlings were damaged the last time the brace fell over so I probably will have to replant in places. That is definitely a weekend project.

In other garden news, I have had two recent disappointing revelations. First, while I was reading about peas in my Rodale's Encyclopedia, I read that they do not do well near garlic or onions. Unfortunately, I planted garlic outside my garden in a place that happens to be near one of my rows of peas. This may explain why that one row of peas is several inches shorter than the others. In more distressing news, the trees have filled in a lot over the last couple of weeks and the canopy of trees are now choking out a lot of the light in the garden, particularly the end where my tomatoes are trying to grow. I am becoming pessimistic about how much the tomato plants can yield if there is less than 8 hours of light on them each day. I will do a bit of trimming of the trees near the garden, but I may not be able to grow tomatoes on that side successfully. Live and learn.

On a positive note, I have lots of good stuff happening on the local food front. Last Friday I stopped at Crystal Brook Farm in Sterling and picked up some goat cheese. The stuff is very good and I have crumbled it onto my salads the last couple of days. This time I picked up the plain cheese, but next time I go I will be a bit more adventurous and get some of the seasoned varieties. Another exciting development is that we are just 2 weeks away from our CSA starting! Last year we started getting vegetables from Many Hands Organic Farm in Barre. I love picking up the bag from the CSA each week, its filled with all sorts of vegetables that I get to figure out how to cook each week. Even if it takes me a couple of years to get my garden sorted out, we will have great local vegetables from the CSA through October. If you are interested in a CSA and you live in or near Boston/Dorchester, Holden, Fitchburg, Worcester, or Palmer, all of those towns have co-op delivery from the farm. They still have shares left for the summer so sign-up!