Ripping out the Beans

The next few weeks I will probably not be posting during the week. I will finally be working full-time (yay!), but I will be working crazy hours. I will be teaching an intermediate ESL class from 9am-12:40 M-F, a private class from 2-3pm, then an evening beginning ESL class from 5:30-10pm M-Th. I have weird breaks in there that I will use for lesson planning, working out, and going to the community garden, but it might be hard to find time to blog as well. We'll see what happens. This crazy schedule will only be through August, then I will either have found a better job (cross your fingers) or I will go back to working my evening class and subbing for the morning school.

The last 2 weeks or so my purple stringless beans have been slowly producing less and less. I looked at a bunch of websites and I think that the plants are just finished, so after work on Friday I went to the community garden and pulled out the 4 beans plants. I also decided to trim any tomato plants that were taller than I could reach. I think that because I have been tying the tomatoes to the poles, they are growing taller than they normally would if I were just using a tomato cage. I had a wheelbarrow packed full of plant matter by the time I was finished. In 6 months or so, they will be good compost for the community garden.

On my way home I stopped at Walter Anderson Nursery to look at what plants I should put up the trellis to take the place of the beans. (We have been trying to grow eggplant from seeds, but they haven't grown). I bought an eggplant seedling and a loofah gourd seedling. They will be shaded by the tomatoes a little, but I hope that they will grow nevertheless. I'll keep you posted on how they do!

Today Jason and I are volunteering at a garden build for Victory Garden San Diego. We'll help someone put in 4 raised beds, an irrigation system, and plant all the beds. It's a cool organization that helps people put in gardens through coordinating groups of volunteers. It's our 1st time volunteering. Hopefully Jason and I will meet some cool people. We need more friends.