rattlesnake beans on vine

Rattlesnake beans

I’m sharing the best planting days for September in this post, but we likely won’t plant anything.

Our fall planting of mustard, kale, turnips, and kohlrabi isn’t doing that great.

The turnips are up but are still on the small side. The mustard is spotty, the kohlrabi came up but died from the dry heat, and the kale is so poor I can’t even say it is spotty.

On the bright side the kale we planted way back in early spring is still growing all thought it’s raggedy. We were going to pull it out, but I said we better leave it and see if it gets a new life when the cooler and hopefully wetter weather of fall of the year gets here since our fall planting is doing so bad.

The second planting of green beans is looking promising. Especially if we continue to get the rain we’ve had over the last several days.

Directly we’ll have our first picking of rattlesnake beans. The other two varieties we planted have blooms and a few tiny beans.

The cucumbers we planted among the beans are beginning to run.

Our sweet potatoes appear to have made good and the rest of our arsh taters still need to be harvested. Okra is still going strong as is the malabar spinach. Tomatoes are still coming in and we still have carrots and parsnips to harvest although the parsnips may be on the small side. Butter beans are still bearing, although they sure don’t produce as much as green beans do for us.

This has definitely been a tough year for growing, but I am beyond thankful for the things the garden produced in spite of the unusually dry weather.

The best planting days for September.

Taurus: good for all root crops and above ground crops 20, 21
Cancer: best for planting above ground and root crops 24, 25
Scorpio: best for flowers and above ground crops 7, 8
Pisces: good for planting and transplanting above ground crops, trees and shrubbery 16, 17

Last night’s video: Summer Breakfast: Tomato Gravy, Biscuits, Fried Eggs, Sausage, Cantaloupe, & Syrup with Butter.

Tipper

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19 Comments

  1. There’s di-reckly which means no wavering off course “You better go di-reckly to Grammaws house if you know what’s good fer ye!” Then there’s d’reckly which means an undetermined time in the future, “I’ll be along d’reckly” “Don’t look for me til you see me comin.”
    There’s no “t” but there’s a substitute “k” in my version of “direckly”. Sorry, that’s just the way I talk! I’m just a dumb hick!

  2. I’m done with summer & fall garden! Bought rattlesnake beans from a friend who had an abundance for sale! Canned 15 quarts which is plenty for me!! Also I can pick all the mustard greens I want! God is good.
    Pray for our country and Israel. Everyone have a great day!

  3. I bought some Mother Stoddard beans to plant for next year. I do like it when the parsnips are smaller. They seem to taste better. Next up is our apple trip.

  4. Morning!
    Right now MI Gardener has seeds $1 a pack. Free shipping on $20 purchase! Happy shopping hope you see this in time. No code needed, when adding to your cart the discount is applied
    Hope you can grab some!
    Michelle Koehler

  5. Hello Tipper, after hearing you talk about rattlesnake beans and how prolific they are and taste good, this Alberta girl bought two packages of the seeds. I’m happy to report they have done really well here and we are really enjoying them. The same with the Cherokee purple tomatoes, I ordered the seeds from Amazon and they are also growing good and we like the taste of them as well. I’ll definitely be saving the seeds of both to plant again next year. I love trying different veggies in the garden every year, so thank you for introducing me to these two keepers.

  6. I know you enjoy your garden and all that comes with it, but won’t it be sweet when we get some snow and can just sit back and relax a bit…

  7. Ohhhhh…PLANT! Sow and reap! Ponder the wonders God DOES provide. And EVERYTHING is a “wonder.” Please know daily, I’m thankful for You. I usually read 2 emails every day: The Daily Nosh from the MJAA.org website, and yours. Today’s on the Messianic Jewish site is Psalms 106:7 thus my comment. I really like the preface to C.S. Lewis’ book on the Psalms. He wrote that he doesn’t try to “teach,” rather, just “shares notes.” Bless you! And keep you. Keep looking UP!

  8. I’m finished with planting this year. The few things left in my garden are suffering from the lack of rain we have had all growing season. I planted a few turnips and cushaws on the first of August and not one seed came up. My tomatoes have been plentiful but I’ve thrown away more than I kept. They are either rotted on the vine or go bad quickly once they are picked. Praying next year will be better.

  9. Morning everyone. We had a tiny crop of tomatoes, they did not yield very many. Our Cherokee purples, maybe 4. Almost laughable, but very yummy. We had a nice salad type tomato, I didn’t get the name of them, hubby didn’t put the name tags down. The ones we got were very juicy and tasty. Then the porch pot of sweet cherry tomato plants yielded the cutest mini maters and they were sweet and delicious. They gave the most but seem to dry up very fast. Our eggplant did great. Still yielding some. Very pretty and delicious. We had a Japanese eggplant and a small variety of the type you see in the stores. Also good. My green pepper, porch pot plant, wasn’t too generous either. Didn’t give much and the didn’t get very big. If they tried to grow some little green worms tried eating them. I pulled 2 or 3 worms off the plants. Well, can you tell us old folk’s aren’t very good at gardening. LOL. Miss Tipper, if y’all could continue praying for our daughter. She’s not had much improvement since her stroke. It’s only been a short time. We still believe God will always be our comforter and He will not forsake her in the struggle and recovery of this. God bless everyone today, tomorrow and always. Thank you all for your prayers and support during this time.

  10. I had thought about planting a fall garden, but with all the heat and lack of rain, I decided not too. I sure hope your fall garden starts doing well since the rain. Hoping you have a good harvest with everything you planted.

  11. I love how you used the word “directly” when you wrote, “Directly we’ll have some rattlesnake beans”. My dad always uses directly that way. He will say “oh, I will get that done directly”. Have a super day!

  12. Hoping and praying the beautiful beneficial rains return for you soon. Not only is it good for the garden, but the air smells so nice after a good rain.

  13. So glad that you are still getting fresh produce from your garden! Ours is slowly fizzling out, the rattlesnake beans are nearing their end of life, but we got plenty of beans canned and the rest we’ve allowed to dry out for soup beans. Our tomatoes are pretty much done, peppers are still doing well and I’ll be picking those today to freeze, zucchini and yellow squash has died, our kale is still doing well along with our onions, carrots, and cowpeas. Our eggplant is iffy, but still putting out produce. I did plant beets, lettuce, spinach, and radishes. They are all growing, but I don’t know if they’ll do very well, too early to tell. Fall is fast approaching!

  14. I have not seen anyone planting anything for a fall or a late garden around here. Most of the summer gardens have long been gone because of no rain. It has cooled off this week but the 70 degree temperatures and the good rain chances haven’t happen. There were a few showers over the weekend, but again I was the doughnut hole. I was thinking a day or so ago about this time of the year and the past when I was still a kid growing up at home and how we would soon be taking up sweet potatoes and our peanuts. Daddy usually waited until October to do this. Anyone remember “sweet potato banks” These would be a “tee pee” like mound of dirt, dried corn stalks and maybe roofing tin mounded over dirt floor covered with pine needles or straw with the sweet potatoes kept inside during the winter. Later on the high schools began to have “tater houses” that were temperature controlled to store the sweet potatoes for the people. I hated picking the peanuts off the vine but loved laying on the floor beside Daddy in front of our fireplace eating roasted/parched peanuts on those cold winter evenings.

  15. Many years ago, we purchased an old house on several acres. It had a drilled well, but later discovered it also had a dug or shallow well, probably the original, that was used for irrigation once the drilled well went in. I know dug wells are still used for larger herd and crop operations. What I don’t know is how difficult it would be to actually dig a shallow well. It all used to be done my hand, and the value of having an irrigation-only well would certainly be invaluable, especially for medium-sized food gardens during drought years. It would be interesting to investigate how to put in a shallow dug well.

    1. Nancy, in SC, I do not know of any well drilling company that will “bore” a shallow well now because of the regulations of the health departments. Bored Wells are shallow- less than about 75 foot deep, and have “surface” water. The well drilling companies now only drill wells and can go as deep as your money will allow, they can also drill through rock . A drill well has an underground water vein. Bored Wells are now 24-30 inch diameter and a drill well is about 8 or 10 inch diameters I think. My parent’s home had a hand dug 30 ft deep well 48 inches in diameter that had over 20 feet of water in it for years. I had a 40 ft bored well until about 15 years ago until the county payed for us to have public “city water” because of putting a large county landfill and allowing a rock quarry in my area. I doubt if you could convince the government to allow you to bore a well to use just for irrigation.

      1. Randy, I’m sure what you say is true. For me, this would be a private family affair and project–a catchment system to water a garden as if the government had any business in watering our homegrown taters, tomatoes, and corn. Our dug well, which we used for our garden, was just about the same size as your parent’s. In all the years we lived there, it never went dry.

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