Summer Vegetable Gardening in Zone 4B Minnesota

Minnesota is in Zone 4B. We have had a summer vegetable garden between May and Sep. Every year the layout has been different.

Nature has been reclaiming its space. Deers have been roaming confidently around all neighborhoods. And chomping on everyone's freshly grown veggie gardens in the Summer. One such did that to my bean plants & made our neighbors newly planted apple tree, bare of all leaves. Bunnies have been equally bold and out in open.

My beans plants were leafless and shivering literally. Finally I gave up and bought chicken-coop fence & fence posts. It was a 15 minutes job, laying it around the entire plot. I wondered why I hadn't done this sooner ! 

 

And it was equally easy rolling it back to packup when the cold wave hit in Oct and I had cleared all frost-bitten plants.

Methi was the only one with reliable results & most ROI. Germinating the seeds was the key we figured out this year. Soak the methi seads in water for a day. Drain water & keep it wrapped in tissue in a quiet place for few days & they spourt. Then transfer to soil and water as usual. They will burst out. Disappointing part was that the sticks were very hard-fibrous, compared to market methi.

Here is the Mango cycle from seed to 1 year old sapling. I germinated some of the seeds from store-bought mangoes. Loads of Youtube videos guiding how to break it out of hard-shell. Be sure to have a glove in the other hand, while using knife to pry open the shell.

Watching one of the tropical plants grow tempted me with Jackfruit.

 

Overall harvest of beans was disappointing, but also got other harvest were fun.