The garden grows … and grows … and …

The straw bale garden is a-growing!

The pole beans have reached the top of the trellis and started to grow back down.  Tomato plants are huge and full of green tomatoes.  One tomato plant – a Rapunzel cherry tomato – is as tall as I am.  The spaghetti squash … don’t get me started.  It started growing out of the garden and I thought it might be a good idea for it to start growing up the trellis instead of onto the grass.  So now it’s grown up.  And then down again.  And then up.  The winter squash (acorn and butternut too) is taking over.  I forgot how it tends to do that.

So far I’ve enjoyed: cucumbers, a few tomatoes, green beans, snap peas, and summer squash/zucchini.  It’s all been delicious.

In general, most of the straw bale gardening experience has been great.  It’s pretty wonderful to not have to worry about weeding or watering.  Some of the bales decomposed faster than others and so they needed to be propped up and kept from falling over.  I’m struggling with blight on a couple of my tomato plants (Thank you, rain and high humidity.) but that can happen in any kind of garden.  I’m just hoping the tomatoes on the plant will ripen before the whole thing dies.  (Any tried and true blight treatment out there?  I’ve been using an organic spray right now, but I’ve also read that once you have it, you can slow it but not get rid of it completely.  I’m learning as I go here!)

Here’s a photo but I realize it just looks like a lot of green … which is pretty much what it is.  But proof that the straw bale garden is alive and growing … and growing … and growing.