Harvest Monday, 6/27/16

Viola Francese garlic. I planted garlic in styrofoam boxes at the end of November last year and went ahead and harvested them today, a couple of the heads were starting to split open so it was time. They're not large but they seem ok.

Rossa di Sulmona garlic. I also planted a couple of  unnamed varieties but they perished during the winter. The garlics are currently hanging out under the carport out of the sun.

A handful of green beans were harvested from the pole beans. The snap pole beans are infected with rust which is inexorably killing the plants.

Honestly only the Smeralda romano type pole bean is setting pods and it's the bean that's heavily afflicted with rust. That's about 10 different varieties of pole and bush beans that are not setting beans at all. I truly think it's the unbearably hot weather. We grew Cherokee Wax and a bunch of the other bush beans last year and they set lots of beans, but then again last year was much cooler and wetter.

Come join is at Harvest Monday, a place where gardeners share what they've been growing and harvesting in their gardens.

Bush Bean Pickings

The first picking from the bush snap bean bed gave us 4.57 pounds of beans (2.07 kg). Not much for a 25-30 foot long bed but there was sparse germination in a couple of rows with just 10 plants or less germinating, and only one full row of beans.

Tendergreen Improved bush beans produced 2.142 pounds of beans (0.97 kg). They had the most plants germinate by far, Pinetree seed company is very generous with their bean seed packets.

Roma II bush beans produced 1.444 pounds of snap beans (0.66 kg). Baker Creek seed company only includes 40-60 seeds in their packet, they germinated really well but our very wet spring caused some of their stems to collapse at soil level and those plants died. This bucket is actually much bigger than the others, so there's more beans than it looks.

I planted one of those 20 cent packets of yellow Cherokee Wax beans that had maybe 10 seeds in them. Those very few plants produced a good number of beans. I've grown this variety before in the desert with sandy soil and the bean pods were dry and tiny. These beans look much bigger and seemed juicy when I was picking them. The green bean pods in this bucket are a mixture of Strike and Jade bush beans which were in rows that I planted much too deep for clay soil and there was sparse germination. Strike and Jade seem to be later producing plants or maybe they just produce much more slender beans, the plants were loaded but it felt like a lot of work for fewer weight-wise beans. I left a lot of the beans on these bushes to see if they would fill out more. We got 0.984 pounds from these 3 varieties.

I like to grow bush beans because they produce about a month ahead of pole beans. But they are a lot of work to pick. It took an hour of furious picking while stooping down to get 4.57 pounds of beans.

Green Beans from the Vegetable Garden and the Dreaded Japanese Beetle

3 quarts of green beans harvested Wednesday from the garden

Romano green beans growing on bush plants

Japanese beetle eating a green bean

The green beans are finally large enough to harvest from the garden. I was able to get 3 quarts on Monday and another 3 quarts on Wednesday, the colander holds 3.5 quarts. Monday's harvest went into a wonderful pork stir fry flavored with soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, and hot pepper flakes. We've also been eating lightly boiled green beans as a side with most meals. Wednesday's harvest went into the fridge for safe keeping.

The Japanese beetles have been eating the leaves of the bush bean and okra plants, usually I'm too busy squishing them to take a picture. But here's a nice one with the beetle eating a trail along the length of a green bean. The infestation isn't too bad this year, thank goodness. The spring and summer has been really dry and there was a late cold spell in the spring which may have contributed to the low number of pests this year.

I don't enjoy squishing bugs, especially beetles because they crunch when you squish them. But squishing is better then using pesticides.