Many of this year’s tomato and pepper plants already are bearing multiple baby fruits. The onion sets grow more bulbous every day. And the cucumbers, not long sprouted, quickly have grown their third set of leaves; first tendrils are not far behind.
Over in the lettuce beds, there continue to be at least two harvests weekly. Herbs being herbs, the more they are harvested, the more they produce. And down in the celery patch — last year’s holdovers, kept under cover all winter – there are plenty of maturing stalks that have graced salads and soups and stews quite early.
Just don’t ask about this year’s green beans.
A combination of voles and birds have pretty much destroyed three plantings of four varieties of bush green beans this year. Frustration has set in.
The little rodents have had no trouble burrowing into the raised beds; they’ve paid traps “no never mind,” as a great grandma liked to say. As for the birds – marauding robins, jays and grackles — not even a cheesecloth cover has kept them at bay.
Yes, it’s enough to give a gardener a bad case of the green bean blues. But not force him to give up.
Such a dastardly, deadly and relentless green bean assault required a proportional response. Thus, an emergency has been declared and yet another sowing has taken place.
Only this time it’s in eight separate pots out of the garden proper, with frames that are wrapped tight with fiberglass screening. If planting No. 4 doesn’t survive, surely the green bean gods must be very angry. About something.
It once was written that there is no gardening without humility. And while gardeners are no strangers to occasionally swallowing their pride, this gardener would much rather be swallowing green beans.
Colin McNickle is a senior fellow and media specialist at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
