I was given some beautiful hand collected Chinese pole bean seeds a couple of days ago. These were collected by a local gardener/colleague, who also shared some fresh beans with me last summer. The fresh beans were long, very crisp and a bit lemony in flavor (my photo). I was hoping I could grow some myself this year and am extremely pleased he shared his seed crop with me. Thank you Shunguang! There's nothing better than hand collected, heirloom seeds. Shunguang says the seeds store best in their shells, but I opened pod one just to see what the seeds look like.
Last summer Shunguang also shared with me some photos of his vegetable garden, which I post here below. I love to look at garden photos, especially in the middle of winter. It looks like a big plot with fantastic rows of produce. Corn, beans, cukes, radish, etc. Thanks also to Shunguang for sharing these photos.
My garden is nowhere near as big as Shunguang's, but I look forward to having a couple tepees of Chinese pole beans this year.
Chinese pole beans
How very nice to get some special bean seeds from your fellow gardener! I am always so amazed at the wonderful diversity of vegetables from around the world -- ordering some seeds today underscored that.
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, Skippy looks fabulous frolicking in the snow!
What a nice gift! Gardeners are so generous.
ReplyDeleteAnd in that spirit...I'm finally going to plant some fruit trees/shrubs this year, and I wonder if you have advice on that. I'm planning to put in two or maybe 3 small trees (apricot, cherry, and maybe plum, all self-pollinating) plus a few bushes of raspberry and blueberry.
Do you have any experience, or do you know of a blog I could check out? We have pretty bad soil, and it's been a drought here as long as we've lived here, so I'm philosophical about loss. Maybe they won't make it. But I'd like to do what I can to help them succeed.
Kathy, Thank you. As I have stated in the past, I am inspired and have used many ideas from your blog.
ReplyDeleteI finally looked into CSA Farms in our area, and will be organizing a tour of a couple of local farms in Bakersfield and Tehachapi California.
This was new to me and now we are planning on promoting the idea in this area. I hope to have about 40 people on our tour. I am putting it together through our Democratic club and with other folks that are involved in land use in Central California. The idea is to get folks to use the CSA farms, but also remind folks from the cities that fertile soil needs to be preserved.
So once again thank you because YOU made me aware of CSA farms.
Nick Altieri
naltieri55@gmail.com
in case you are interested in correspondence
Very refreshing considering the below 0 weather we've had going on week 2 now! Thank you Kathy!
ReplyDeleteThose are lovely! I'm sure you'll have a good yield from these special beans. I wonder, are these the same as/similar to what are called "Chinese Long Beans"? In India (my background country) we eat something called "chori" that is sometimes called Chinese Long Bean in America... here's Wikipedia's entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yardlong_bean
ReplyDeleteDoes that look like what you got?
Those are beautiful inspiring pictures. I can't seem to grow beans very well. I may have to exercise more patience when trellising.
ReplyDeleteNice photos. I tried growing yard long beans this last year. It was the only bean that didn't do well. I'm only guessing that is the kind of bean you have. I love to eat them in the Chinese restaurants.
ReplyDeleteThese are not the long beans. In the Wikipedia entry for Chinese yard long beans that livinginalocalzone mentioned there is a Wiki photo of beans at a Chinese market. The yard longs are in the middle, and the Chinese pole beans I have look like the ones at left. Shunguang told me they do not have a name, just Chinese pole beans. I'll compare them with Fortex this year. They seem longer and crispier to me.
ReplyDeleteNow I see the problem, I posted two photos of the same bean tepee and none of the fresh platters of beans. I'll fix that now so the type of bean is easier to see... Oops.
ReplyDelete