Garden planted – check.  A coworker once told me, “You just can’t wait to get your hands in the dirt”.  Its true.  I look forward to planting the garden each year.  I usually plant produce that bears a lot, such as cantaloupe.  My parents and grandparents always planted plenty to share.  That’s part of the fun of gardening.  The other fun part… sitting in the middle of the strawberry patch and flicking the stems as I eat the berries.

This year Don is trying something new.  He planted sunflowers which will support the bean plants.  Last year, some black bean and black-eyed pea vines snaked up a few sunflower stalks so Don incorporated it on purpose this year.

The idea of training bean vines up stalks isn’t new.  Native Americans planted beans, corn and squash together. It seems to be a fairly sustainable system.  Corn stalks provide a pole for the beans to climb.  Beans provide nitrogen for the corn.  Squash, of course, is also edible, and the leaves prevent moisture evaporation, shade the ground to stunt weed growth and the vines and leaves eventually become mulch.