Harvest Monday, 7/11/16

Cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and green beans are still trickling in. We've been getting lots of big rain storms passing through last week. The plants are looking greener than ever and not having to water the garden has been wonderful.

The plants had put on so much growth, I actually had trouble tying up the tomato plants and knocked a couple green tomatoes off. Luckily the green tomatoes were fairly small.  :)

A couple of Homestead tomatoes ripened and they're very small, not much bigger than a cherry tomato. I looked up a couple of reviews and people said that this variety gets smaller the hotter it gets. Strangely enough, the tomatoes swelled quickly but once it got truly hot they just stopped growing and eventually ripened instead.

A handful of Asian greens and some basil gets picked for soup occasionally. Mibun, tatsoi, and mizuna  make up this handful and you can tell the flea beetles have been at the leaves.

And of course summer squash marks the highlight of a summer garden. It looks like the pattypan squash are starting to blossom, so they're not far behind.

My parents have been visiting this week, so I have to keep this simple. I hope everybody is enjoying the summer weather. It's shaping up to be a decent summer, no huge gluts to speak of but hopefully there'll be many good things in the future.

Please join us at Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

The First Ripe Tomatoes and Cucumber with Lots of Eggplants

A basket with almost 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of produce including green bean, tomato, eggplant, cucumber, and zucchini.

Today we got the first tomatoes and cucumber! I also spent the morning picking clean the bush bean bed.

The Paul Robeson tomato plant gave the first ripe tomatoes, my husband was helping me stake the same plant and 3 little green tomatoes got knocked off. You can see the two oval Applegreen eggplants in the back of the basket, then a Bangladeshi Long and a Thai Long Purple eggplant to the far right.

The first cucumber of the season belongs to the Japanese Long variety. Training the cucumbers up bamboo poles is working very well, I love seeing them dangling in the breeze. A nice long zucchini was also harvested today.

The bush beans got away from me because I was too busy over the weekend to do much except a little hand pollination in the garden, so the snap beans were a bit plump when they got picked today but are still tender and delicious. All the varieties produced exceptionally well, except for Royal Burgundy. The Royal Burgundy plants are tall and lush and were heavy with blossoms but the blossoms did not set very many beans, I was lucky to get 2 or 3 beans per plant.

The rabbit seems to love the Blue Lake 274 beans, I found lots of munched bean remnants today. Both Blue Lake and Royal burgundy are smooth bean varieties, which makes cleaning them a lot easier than the downy beans like Romano and Tendergreen. But I think I prefer the flavor of the downy fuzzy beans compared to the smooth snap beans.

The bush bean bed was pretty much picked clean today, so I am going to fertilize them and see if they will give a second flush of beans after some rest.

Harvest Monday, June 25, 2012

9 inch okra and the first tomatoes of summer

Saturday's green bean haul

Wednesday's green bean harvest

This has been a week for firsts, the first green beans and the first tomatoes of the season. And they are all delicious! The green beans are coming in strong, I was able to harvest three large bowls full this week but I didn't get a picture of the very first harvest on Monday. One small tomato and two large cherry tomatoes were plucked from the vine on Saturday, the tomato became part of a tomato sandwich whereas the two cherry tomatoes were quickly popped into my mouth. Yum.

The okra have been producing for a couple of weeks, four were picked on Saturday with the largest being 9 inches long and still as tender as can be.

Weekly total:

3.5 pounds of green beans

0.25 pounds of okra

0.4 pounds of tomatoes

Please, join us at Daphne's Dandelions where we share our harvests every Monday!

Growing Green Beans from Seeds for Your Vegetable Garden

Golden Hubbard winter squash blossom on a bed of clover.

Vegetable gardening is a pleasure filled pass time, where else do you get the chance to listen to the wind, feel the sun and touch the soil in the quietness of nature. I find the peacefulness similar to running or jogging where you can feel the blood pulsing in your body and the wind touching your skin.

If you are just starting out gardening, I find the easiest to grow and gives the most vegetables in return is the bush green bean. Plant when the soil feels warm to the touch and the soil temperature is consistently over 60 degree Fahrenheit (15.6 degrees Celsius), otherwise the seeds may fail to germinate and rot in the ground. If your soil is heavy with clay, plant your seed shallow because they may have a difficult time breaking through the heavy clay crust that can form after rain. If you want even heavier yields, plant pole beans around bamboo stakes or fencing where they will twine around and grow up till they cascade over the top. In my old garden in the high desert known for blistering heat in the summer and freezing cold in the winters, I had a three foot tall fencing surrounding the vegetable garden which I used to grow pole beans, Scarlet runner beans, and cucumbers on. Runner beans actually prefer cooler weather in the 60s and 70s (15.6-21 Celsius) and are a popularly grown green bean in England. And remember, always keep up with picking your green beans because if just a few beans are allowed to ripen on the vine, the plants will shut down production and put all their efforts towards ripening the pods.

Really hot temperatures for an extended period of time will sterilize the pollen and may even cause pollinated fruit to abort. The few kinds of green beans that grow well in intense humid heat are the yardlong asparagus beans which are subtropical and tropical plants, they grow very quickly and once they start producing blossoms the beans grow astonishingly fast. The green beans of the yardlongs are cooked by frying, or they can be quickly parboiled and then fried in a little oil with some garlic. Yum. Cowpeas and pinkeye purple hull beans also grow well in hot humid areas as they are an important food crop in the semi-arid tropics but they are mainly tall bush varieties that are grown for their beans rather than their pods.

Most gardeners grow both bush and pole beans as bush beans produce close to twenty days earlier than poles, but poles will yield much more beans per plant and can be spaced closer together.

Some varieties I have found to have great yields and wonderful flavor. Keep your bean plants picked and they will keep producing for you:

• Romano bush bean - there are many varieties of this green bean but they all have wide flat pods that are stringless and can be allowed to get long and a little plumped up with half formed seeds while still retaining eating quality, so you get higher yields from their larger size. The flavor is delectable and distinctive.
• Dragon Tongue bush bean - the color makes the pods easy to find with large broad pods that are pale yellow with purple streaks, and they are considered a wax bean. The flavor is sweet and crispy.
• Scarlet Runner pole bean - the vines grow very long with beautiful red flowers that grow some of the largest green beans that are thick long and broad. Juicy and sweet. The plants enjoy cooler weather and will shut down pod production when it gets too hot.