I think it looks great. Replant the peas.

Hi Alan

Garden is looking good! You can feel the spaces that you have open, you have a long season ahead.

Silvia

Alan, it looks wonderful to me! Better than my pathetic little garden. Ditto on the "replant the peas". Mine are still small but they do produce well for me this time of year. I have some bare spots too, I need to add some more seed. Good luck to you.

Looking good! Watch out, it's addicting, soon you'll need to join the rest of us in veggie rehab ;-)

Tom

Thanks, everyone. I've already taken some steps to refill the empty spaces a bit. I took out the stunted pepper plants, and replaced them with new ones from the local big box. On the recommendation of the local extension office, amended the soil in that part of the bed with some sand in order to increase drainage (adding about 25% by volume), so we'll see how that goes.

I had some extra Yellow Pear seedlings that were 'back-ups' in case I lost the main plant to disease - and I've installed those where the peas were. They had actually gotten pretty large in their containers, so I thought they had the best chance to get some light above the shading. Since the Yellows are the absolute favorite of my two-year-old, having a few extra seemed like a good idea.

What I'm debating right now is what to do with the rust-ravaged beans in one bed. I'm giving them a little time to see if the Captan can get the rust under control, and I've planted new seed in the few spots where the plants have died outright - but I'm seriously considering just tearing them all out and replanting. I'm torn, because the beans are still producing (though at a diminished rate), and the growth cycle puts me right into January before new plantings would start producing. But without a real frost in Miami, I suppose that I'm unlikely to lose the plants, and I would have a nicer base for spring if I could get the rust completely under control.

Alan

Alan,

We all have failures, we just never show those pictures. If you get to harvest from 75% of the different seeds you planted, consider yourself lucky. I have constant failures of what I plant. What was a success one year can be a total failure the next year and everything was done exactly the same. I plant scads of different stuff thereby giving mother nature a run for her money... she can't kill everything. (oops maybe I shouldn't have said that out loud) I'm sorry mommy nature, I was just joking!! Please have mercy on my seed!

Lou

...I'm torn, because the beans are still producing (though at a diminished rate), and the growth cycle puts me right into January before new plantings would start producing....

Alan, veggies are like us, they only live so long and then it's over. Here in Florida rust usually shows up at the end of the beans life cycle, around day 70 and they're not good at tolerating short-day stress. How old are your beans?

Sugar Snaps, on the other hand, love short days and cool weather...move to Sugar Snaps until February or March depending on frost in your area, then go back to beans....Beans in early fall and spring, peas in late fall through winter, which here is until some time in February depending on when your trees start budding out, in the south usually around the first, central around the fifteenth an north at the end of the month.

Tom

Tom, they're about...well, almost 70 days old exactly. I planted the beans on September 8. Sixty-eight days. How about that? So maybe it is time to move on. I'll give the sugar snaps a shot. I also ordered some beet seeds, which also might work out in our (sort of) colder weather over the winter.

Alan

Well, I took Tom's advice. Today I got my package from Park Seed, and after one last harvest went out and removed all my bean plants. I left the support in place where the pole beans were, and replanted those areas with sugar snaps. In place of the bush beans, I planted beets.

In the end, I got about 2 pounds of beans from the equivalent of an 8-foot row - which is gratifying for a first effort, but not an especially high yield. I think the supports weren't sufficient to give the beans space to really spread out. I think next year I'll replace my bamboo stick teepees with cattle panel - not as pretty, but probably better for the beans.

Alan