Beans in the Garden: 2015 Varieties

I recently posted about planting borlotti beans as part of the three sisters garden I have; now for the rest of the beans.  I've never grown this many varieties (six!) or quantity of beans before, so I'm quite excited.  But the quantity certainly brings its challenges - especially with management of pests and critters that like to nibble!

I started with this patch (shown above) which was planted May 13th.  I have always direct sown my beans, as I’ve done with all of the varieties I have this year.  I don’t even soak them – just pop them in the ground and then water them in - it has just always worked for me in the past and it seems to have worked well enough this year again.  The plants were already a few inches tall when the frost/freeze hit on May 23^rd.  I had covered them with plastic and weighed the plastic down with all sorts of gear from around the yard as there were also high winds.  The majority survived.  Where they were damaged, I removed the plant and reseeded.  The three varieties in this garden are of the bush variety and are all new to me this year …
 

The first two rows on the left are black turtle beans.  I’ve come to love borlotti beans just in the past few years, but I’ve always been a huge fan of black beans, so I’m excited to be growing my own for the first time.  These came from Greta’s Organic Seeds, a local company not far from where I live.  Black turtle beans can be vining or bush.  Although they take more garden space, I find bush beans easier to grow.  













These require a lengthy season – 100-140 days to harvest.  Having them in the ground in early May gives me to about the end of September for harvesting.  Just enough time, as we often experience frosts early in October.

The next two rows (so the middle two) are Royal Burgundy bush beans from William Dam Seeds.  


Compared to the long season required for the black beans (and similarly, most drying beans) these have only 50 days or so to harvest.  I can already see the dark purplish pods starting to develop.  


 

These ones have some nibbles on the leaf but not too bad and its only on a few leaves.

And the last two rows on the right are Delinel – again, from William Dam.  Their website states, “Delinel is consistently the earliest variety in our trials. Excellent taste and holding quality”.  I’m looking forward to trying these! 



Although their harvest time is slightly shorter than Royal Burgundy at 45 days, they seem a bit further behind.  Or maybe it's just that their flowers are lighter in colour and not as obvious.

The remaining two bean varieties I have in the ground are vining / pole style.  I finally put together a trellis structure (my first ever!).  It did not take much time (which probably is evident in its lopsided-ness).  But I still seem to be challenged by getting beans (and peas) to climb up stuff.  I’ve got twine hanging down and keep hanging it over the plants hoping they’ll catch on to it – not so much yet (plus the twine keeps getting twisted up every time there is a wind).  Ugh, I think I’ll stick with bush beans in the future.

My other challenge is that they keep getting eaten … this garden space is right beside several acres of trees so I imagine there are all sorts of critters coming out of the bushes.  I’ve replanted and they seem to be okay for now, but I lost a lot of beans last year here as well – I guess I should take the hint and move them somewhere else next year!

Anyway, in the area with the trellis, I have Scarlet Runner (grown last year in the three sisters garden which means I didn’t get any at all) and Tarbais - a white bean that I successfully grew last year.  Although I was successful with the Tarbais, there was one mishap.  I mistakenly thought they were fresh beans early in the season (I was also growing Isabel pole beans) and harvested many of them for pickling.  Turns out they were fine to eat at that time (although a bit tougher than a fresh bean might have been), but I obviously had a much smaller harvest for drying at the end of the year.  When planting these out, I still had some Isabel beans left from previous years, but decided against planting any to avoid that problem – I’m unable to properly keep track of where I plant things so best to keep it simple.

And that’s it for my bean round-up. 

Harvest Monday: June 29, 2015

This is my submission for Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday collection.   I've got some of the same, some new.

The photo is a recent harvest of Batavian endive ... a.k.a. escarole.  It's not mature yet, I'm just thinning out the rows.  This batch was sauteed with mushrooms for a yummy pasta.

The rest of the week's harvest is more of the same ... I've pulled all of the Music garlic because of the leek moth infestation.  I have left the Red Russian garlic in for now.  There is a teeny weeny strawberry amongst the peas in the picture below. 

And some more peas, a bit of kale, basil, lettuce greens and a few radish.  Busy days now, will catch up on other stuff when I can.  Looking forward to seeing what others have on the go.

Three Sisters Garden: Redux

I tried this concept last year for the first time and it was a miserable failure.  But I believe it was more about the cool weather and the location rather than the particular combination of vegetable plants being grown together.  In fact, I’m having a difficult time with that location even this year so I’m not taking that failed attempt too personally.

Lettuce, kale and beets planted in April (very little to be seen!)

 

Especially considering how pleased I am with this year’s progress so far.  This is probably my most advanced garden space in the yard (although with all of the rain and sunshine the past few weeks, many of my plants are looking pretty nice right now).

I planted golden bantam corn – this is the same corn I tried last year as I had some left.  I had also ordered another packet of corn (Paydirt from Vesey’s) new for this year but decided I didn’t have the space.  Because of the poor growth I had in 2014, I actually started the corn indoors (April 26 seeded) and transplanted it once the weather warmed up (I can't remember when).  

I noticed earlier last week that some of the corn was falling over – I assume it was due to the high winds we’ve had recently.  But I also had considered that possibly the squash wrapping around it might be pulling it over??    I straightened them up a bit and put more soil around the base and they seem to be standing better now.

And these here are the two Marina Di Chioggia squash plants that I purchased at a plant sale back in the spring.  These were in the ground early (around May 19^th?) and survived the frost/freeze just a few days later as I had covered them with upside-down pots.  So they have a really good start on the growing season.

I also have several winter squash plants – and that’s all I can remember about them.  I’m pretty sure they are acorn or spaghetti squash but I can’t remember and don’t know enough about the leaves to guess at this point.  I have winter squash in various locations this year so I’ll just figure it out when they start to grow.

As for the third sister – beans – these are borlotti.  Definitely one of my favourite beans.  I also have beans in a few other spaces which I’ll post about separately.  Although I’ve put the three sisters (corn, squash, beans) into the same garden space, I can’t really call this a proper three sisters garden.  The intent of that garden style is for the plants to mingle and benefit from each other’s growth – for example, the beans are often pole bean style and would use the corn stalks as their support to grow vertically.  Because these beans are off to one side, I’m not really getting the benefit of planting them together.  

Borlotti are actually a bush bean, so the support is not necessary.  Mind you, they do get quite tall and I sometimes stake one or two of the plants if needed (this is only my 3^rd year growing borlotti so still working out the best approach).  

Sometimes a fourth sister is included in the mix as I’ve done here – the sunflower.  These are Kong sunflowers and are intended to get up to 12-14 feet tall.  I have also scattered these around the property but these two are definitely the best specimens so far – quite a bit thicker and taller than the others I have planted (they were started in the greenhouse).

And I have a fifth sister – OK, now I’m just making stuff up, this is definitely not traditional!  But I do have a fifth crop here – volunteer potatoes.  This area was my potato patch last year and I rotate crops regularly to reduce pest infestation (in this case, the Colorado potato beetle).  I pulled out the volunteers (well, most of them) where they came up near the corn or squash, but I figured they would be okay coming up around the beans.

I’m keeping a close eye out for problems (and a little bit of finger-crossing) as it is still early days.  But results so far are promising!