Episode Transcript

Hi! John Morgan here with the Keep Growing Podcast where we take a look a the weather forecast and gardening tasks each week for the Mid-Ohio Valley.

This weekend we’re looking at a very warm and humid weekend with clouds and thunderstorms in spots.  Sunday evening, we’re looking at more widespread storms with some being severe.  That will bring a slight dip in the temperatures going into Monday and Tuesday as a front passes.  Then we’ll have some wet weather mid-week as we continue to cool into the lower 70s.  If the forecast going into next weekend holds we’ll be looking at a wet start to next weekend with temperatures climbing back towards the 80s.

If you listened to last week’s episode, today is the day to get your Florida Weave on and stake your tomatoes.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go check out the show notes at bobsmarket.com/keepgrowing.  Also, it is a great time to trellis your cucumbers before they get too big.

Monday, May 27th is Memorial Day.  It’s also a great day to plant asparagus beans.  Asparagus beans are like green beans, but they have looooooong seed pods.  They’re also called yardlong bean, pea bean, long-podded cowpea, Chinese long bean, snake bean, bodi, and bora.  These beans are a summer favorite that flourish in hot weather (high 70s to 95) and produce abundantly. In addition to being easy to grow, they are rich in protein, vitamin B, iron, and calcium.  These beans are climbers.  They can easily climb 10 to 12 feet!  They are a perfect plant for cattle panel arches.

On Tuesday, May 28th, consider planting leaf lettuce as a companion with your trellised cucumbers.  If you use an inclined trellis, it creates a bit of shaded space below the cucumber vines.  That in turn creates a cool, shaded area where you can squeeze in one final crop of leaf lettuce before we get to the really hot days of summer.

On Wednesday, May 29th, plant roma beans. They're broad and flat—as if someone accidentally sat on a giant string bean—with a juicy, sweet flavor and great crunch. They come in green, yellow, and purple, though the yellow and green kinds are more common. They're usually around four to six inches long, and can get much larger at the peak of the season.

This is a beany week.  However, I recommend checking out some of these different varieties of beans.  A few years ago, I grew an heirloom dry bean called … oh my … lazy housewife.  Yeah.  That name didn’t age well.  Anyhow, they’re a bean that you let dry on the vine in the fall and then just shell them out and store them in jars.  They were delicious when cooked in our electric pressure cooker with some fried salt pork and onions and served over some corn bread!  It started me on a bit of a quest to go beyond just planting the usual spring peas and green beans in the summer for canning.  There are many types of beans that grow well in our region.  You might just find one, like the … lazy housewife, that is a delicious treat waiting to be discovered.

Thursday, May 30th is the last quarter moon.

Friday, May 31st is an excellent time for cultivating and treating garden pests.  I would recommend treating your fruit trees on this day.

That gets us to Saturday, June 1st.  It is the time to seed lettuce around your newly staked tomatoes as a companion plant.  This is a great choice for gardens with limited space.  It also works as a natural way to control weeds.  Saturday is also a good day to seed parsley.  Just remember to plant it in an area where it will be protected from the heat of the afternoon sun.  Parsley can bolt pretty quickly in hot weather.

Get out in the garden this week, exercise your green thumb, plant some weird beans, and, of course, keep growing.

For full show notes visit us at bobsmarket.com/keepgrowing