today's harvest

November 6 and I'm STILL picking green beans! These are Kentucky Wonder pole beans.

today's harvest

Beans, beans, beans! Plus a few beets and broccoli side shoots.

I need to find a good recipe for dilly beans....

beans sowed and picked

I planted some bush green beans today and calculated when they should be ready to pick.

Maxibel (a French/filet bean), 50 days, expect to harvest around Sept 12
Jumbo (a flat Italian bean), 55 days, expect to harvest around Sept 17

These will be my last bean plantings as this harvest dates will be the end of bean season.

I also sowed some dill seeds next to the beans. It was very old seed, so I hope it sprouts. Dill matures in 40-60 days.

My purple bush beans, planted this spring, have been producing a small harvest for me for the past week or so. I picked a meal of them today. My second planting of bush beans (Roma and more purple beans) is just beginning to bloom. My pole beans are half way up their poles.

lacy bean leaves

A bad year for beans. Rampant Mexican bean beetles. I left 2 full beds of my plot for beans this year, but am pulling faster than I plant. Time to give up. I pulled the last of my snap beans today. The photo is my shell beans. I'm tired of spraying and squishing the beetles, so these will probably be pulled soon. :(

mesh-covered green beans

I came across the beautiful beans last week in a plot at the Belmont Victory Gardens. Why are they covered with mesh? Does this keep the bean beetles off? They sure look great with no signs of beetle damage, unlike most plots around here. But then the adjacent and uncovered pole beans look good too.

Very nicely mulched with salt hay, too. I bought some stray/hay mulch that I will be spreading today in my gardens. I hope it looks as nice as this.

bean bugs

I have a very ugly yellow spiny bug eating my bean leaves. They are all over the leaves and are completely eating them down to the veins. Yuck.

A fellow gardener recommended a homemade spray that she has used successfully: Mix 12 garlic cloves, 12 very hot chili peppers (habenero would be best), 2 Tbs Murphy's Oil soap, 2 Tbs salad oil and food process til pureed. Filter through cheese cloth. Dilute with 1 gallon of water and spray on the plants.

I am not sure I have the energy to mix this up myself. I think I will head over to the garden store tomorrow and see what they have for organic sprays.

today's harvest

My Chinese pole beans are ready! These are my favorite bean. Big and lumpy - a green and white color mix. They are crisp and tender even when they grow very big.

A friend gave me some seeds. I've grown them for three years now and have to make sure to save a handful of beans to plant next year.

stir fried green beans

I'm growing four types of green beans this year:

- Shunguang's long Chinese pole beans (the best)
- Fortex pole beans (very nice)
- Provider green bush beans
- Royal Burgundy bush beans

They are growing in next to my house in reduced sunlight (about 11-3pm). They do well here and are always ready for a quick vegetable dish. I've been letting some of the pods mature on the vines recently. I'll harvest these later and let then dry for seed for next year. I'm thinking I'll skip the two bush bean varieties next year and only grow the pole beans. They taste much better to me.



This is a quick and easy vegetable dish. I added my garlic and Thai hot peppers. It is delicious served over rice with some roast duck on the side. Also nice with pork fried rice.

Recipe:
1 Tbs peanut oil
1 tsp minced fresh ginger (optional)
1 large clove minced garlic
1 minced Thai hot pepper (use the seeds too)
1/2 lb fresh green beans

To wok, add all of the above. Stir fry for 3 minutes ('til the beans just start to brown).

2 Tbs dry sherry or vermouth
2 Tbs soy sauce
2 tsp cornstarch combined with 2 Tbs cold water

Add all of these to wok with the beans. Stir fry until the sauce comes to a boil and thickens. Serve over rice.

Shunguang's beans

Seeds for these beans were given to me last year. They are unusual pole beans with a lumpy shape, green and white color, and unusually crisp lemony flavor. I don't think they are the same as the Yard Long beans I've seen around, which usually aren't lumpy and white. I'm very pleased these were shared with me.

This is my first bean harvest this year. I think my pods aren't as long as the pods Shunguang grew last year. I'm growing them next to my house where its a bit shady. My crop is late because of the cool weather, slugs, clouds, etc....

I've book marked this recipe that Daphne suggested. I'm looking forward to trying it soon.

Fortex green beans

Here's a variety I'll add to my list to grow again next year. Its a green bean called Fortex. As long as a dinner plate (10 inches), stringless, nice vines and best of all really sweet. Delicious.

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prolific green beans

I have two varieties of green beans that have done great this year. Haricots Verts "Maxibel" and Provider, both of which I planted in the middle of May and never replanted. They keep on producing more. Once a week or so I pick all the beans and they always have another crop when I look again. They are saving me many trips to the supermarket.

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freezing green beans

A lot of my beans ripened all at once this year, so I froze a few servings. These instructions are from the Victory Garden Cook Book: Blanch in boiling water for 3 minutes, chill in ice water, then freeze in baggies. Pretty easy. They'll be good in winter stews.

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green beans for dinner

These are Haricot Vert "Maxibel" Bush green beans that I mail ordered from Seeds of Change. I planted this row in the middle of May (with inoculant). I can report that they taste delicious!

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ugly bugs on pole beans

OK. Some more ugly pictures of my pole beans. I was asked some questions about what's really going on, so here are some close-up photos.

I guess I see thrips and spider mites. Some mite webs. Also mottled, puckered leaves and fruit. I noticed black aphids earlier but they're gone now. The problem is ONLY affecting my 3 types of pole beans, one of which is way on the other side of my house. No problem with my 3 types of bush beans planted nearby (odd).

So my guess is the real problem is a mosaic virus and the bugs here are just feasting on the weakened plants. I've sprayed in previous years for mites on eggplants and have found that this made the mites worse (it reduces the bugs that feed on the mites). I think the real problem is not usually the mites.

So, I'd love any suggestions here. My plan - no spray. Just remove the pole beans and avoid planting any more this year. I'll plant bush beans instead.

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pole bean problem

My pole beans have been suffering this year. The vines are very stunted and leaves are mottled and crinkled. I thought they weren't getting enough water and then I thought it was the black aphids that killed the nearby fava beans. But I think it is probably a mosaic virus (maybe bean common mosaic virus or cucumber mosaic virus?). These viruses are spread by aphids and the only solution seems to be planting resistant varieties. I noticed that most of the pole beans at our local community garden also looked heavily affected. It must be a bad year for this virus. The problem is affecting both varieties of pole beans that I planted in my garden back in May (Italian Pole Beans and Blue Lake) and the Scarlet Runner beans I recently bought and have in pots on my porch. Fortunately my bush beans (Royal Burgundy, Provider and Haricots Verts) and soybeans are fine so far.

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bean sprouts

Amazing how fast beans grow! Yesterday there were no signs of sprouts and today lots of 1 or 2 inch plants. These are Italian Pole Beans and Haricots Verts bush beans that I planted two weeks ago.

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still more pole beans

I went to take down these pole beans yesterday and found many beans still on the vine. New small ones coming along too. I picked enough for a good meal and we ate them last night. So I left the vines up. It seems like a very late season to me. I don't have any gardening records, so I can't really compare. But I hear about snow and cold weather elsewhere in the US. It seems late for Boston to be still growing beans with no frost yet. Our forecast is for cold tonight and the next several days. So our frost is probably just around the corner. I'll cover-up the lettuce tonight.

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Kentucky Wonder

My pole beans have not done very well this year. These look pretty, but I've only had a couple of meals of beans from 3 seed packages. I guess I need to stop rotating the location of my legumes. Last year they did well, but I had them in another location. As a fellow gardener/blogger commented on earlier in the year on my poor pea crop, I probably don't have much innoculant in the soil of this bed. I guess what I should do is to grow then here again next year.

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Bean Sprouts

I planted these beans after I pulled out my peas plants. One package of pole beans seeds and one of bush beans. The package said it plants about 20 feet of row - I squished them into about 5 or 6 feet. They have come up well. Usually we frost mid-October, so I'm hoping they grow fast. They need 50-60 days til harvest. Its disappointing that the summer is winding down....

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