Collapse!

We’ve had really the best summer possible. The wet spring meant great germination (and even enough cool weather for peas!) and although it’s been dry since June, it’s also been hot enough for the tomatoes, peppers and winter squash to do their thing. So far (knock on wood) we’ve had no hail or major storms to wreak havoc with the crops.

In fact, the garden has completely overflowed its banks and the aisles between the raised beds are so full of vines it is hard to get in there and see, let alone harvest, the produce.

Yesterday when I went out to hunt for cucumbers, I found that the jute netting I’d put over the trellis collapsed. Collapsed from the weight of cucumber vines! It’s unprecedented in my garden. This has been my favorite trellis, and I was sad to see that the online supply store is no longer carrying this great boxy jute netting that you can put on it to hold the vines and keep the cukes off the ground. Now I know why! The netting completely collapsed, and when I tried to attach it on different rungs, it just kept breaking! It was a mess. But hey, cucumbers do fine vining along the ground. It was three years before I even started trellising them. And now I understand why Gardener’s Supply has replaced this item with sturdier biodegradable netting that looks like plastic (but is made of plant fibers).

On the other side of the garden, the bean wall has also fallen. I set up some stakes on ropes to support the wall in the wind, but the wind seems to have shifted, or something. The bean wall now lies on the three stakes quite nicely. In fact, the beans often point down away from the vines for easier harvesting! It’s less a wall and more a lean-to. Or a bean-to.

Every day I gasp at the size of the winter squash. Seriously, the words “State Fair” come to mind whenever I’m out there. The Cool Old Squash has several fruits, and one of them was growing so large so fast that it started swelling over a corner of the raised bed. I lifted it up so it could swell more freely and to avoid the nasty corner scar. That thing could be putting on weight for another three weeks before harvest!

The Tahitian squash are also turning out to be these enormous ropy things. And the delicata is not at all delicate. I have squash bugs, which I think have dissuaded the watermelons from producing, but even they cannot stop these squash plants.

Still, if I were a betting woman, I’d put my money for the next collapse on the tomato and tomatillo forest. Despite pruning and blight, these plants are setting all kinds of fruit.

It’s a wilderness out there. I wish you could come hike it with me.