We love to plant a garden and watch as everything shoots up through the ground. I don’t think much is any prettier than a recently plowed garden with loads of young plants poking up all around. We eat a lot of our meals out of the garden in a typical summer. I am a fairly new vegetarian of the year-round sort but we are all pretty much vegetarians in the summer. Well, most summers. Not this summer. We got off to a rocky start with the near constant rainfall that we had during the planting season. Stuff was late going into the ground…everything but the weeds. They thrive no matter what. Couple all of that with the incredible heat and dryness now and we have found the garden to be pretty pitiful.
I guess if I had to pick one thing that would succeed in the garden though, it would be green beans. I love green beans and could almost live on them and mountain dew. Luckily, the green beans and corn are doing exceptionally well this year. We picked and canned 34 pounds of green beans last weekend. It was a marathon canning session ending somewhere around 2 am…a mere 4 hours before the kids usually get up. Anyhow, we are in the beans this year for sure. There are tons more following the ones we picked so it will be another busy weekend. Of course, it can’t all be smooth and easy. We planted a bag full of bean seed clearly marked tenderette bush beans. I have no doubt that some of the seeds were in fact tenderettes. The majority of the beans, however, are some other sort of runners.
Bush beans grow in a somewhat compact bush where all of the beans can be picked from individual plants. Folks usually do not have to manage the plants in particular which is one of the reasons we like them. Runners, on the other hand, send out vines and are meant to be trellised or otherwise tied up. Thinking we only had bush beans, we didn’t pay any attention to the beans growing like mad in the garden until it was too late. So, instead of having nice individual rows, we have a freakin’ blob of bean plants chocked full of beans. With machete in hand, one can venture into the bean jungle and harvest, but it isn’t easy or fun.
There is still plenty of growing time left so we may yet be surprised with what the old garden will produce. It’s all good though. Even on my deserted island of a garden, I have to one thing I could not bear to do without…Jack Sparrow needed rum…I need green beans, savvy?
That’s just not fair! The deer ate all of our green beans AGAIN! You must not have deer. Your beans look really good!
holy cow that’s a LOT of green beans!!!!!
Pretty beans! And a good harvest. Our plants are history now, all plowed under. We had bush and half-runner. Did your beans have to be strung too? That’s one reason I don’t like half-runners. I think Larry got converted to bush beans this year. Thank goodness.
That’s another reason we like bush beans. Stringing them stinks. So half or a little better needed to be strung. The rest were fine. Ugh, I dislike runners
Purty beans!
So have you ever pickled your beans? “Dilly Beans” are my wifes favorite, but I think they would be better with a few hot peppers in the mix.
GW – I have had dilly beans and I like them but we never make them for some reason. Like you, a little hot in anything pickled is good for me!
I hear ya, we’ve been 90% vegetarian this summer ourselves (although we do have a burger on the grill now and then). Gardening just makes it so easy. Our green beans did well – we didn’t can any but we did freeze large batches.
WOW, have some beans. I have yet to put any up this season but we’ve eaten lots…on our second crop. Some of them we will freeze as my family don’t like canned beans.