Too bad I keep picking off the seed part to eat. I feel kind of bad about it, but I do love green beans. Sorry, plants. Your genetic destiny will be foiled once again.
The pole beans have also finally started producing prodigious quantities of flowers. There are even some beans on them now. The problem I'm finding with the pole beans, though, is they're so damn big and exuberant, I can't see the stupid beans inside the mess of foliage. Green beans are surprisingly camouflaged, looking amazingly like a part of the stem. I have to spend several minutes carefully searching through the leaves to find even a few beans. I should imagine this might get easier when there are more beans on the plants, as they tend to hang in clumps. But right now? It's a daily hunting expedition for the few that are big enough to eat.
Next year I might go back to the purple pole beans. They're easier to find.
The rest of the garden has just started to recover from the July drought. So our growing season is pretty much just now getting started. In August. Our first frost can come anytime after the end of September. Yeah. I don't think we're going to be breaking any records for harvests this year.
A trip to the farmers market might be in order.
Sounds a lot like my beans - the bushes look terrible, but are still trying to produce, and the poles are giants, mostly leaves, but a few beans here and there.
ReplyDeleteI like the purple bean idea - I spent an inordinate amount of time the other day looking for beans to pick and came away with an inordinately small amount of beans for my efforts.
In my father-in-law's garden it's the cucumbers. The leaves are yellow, wilted and pathetic, but the cukes are numerous and huge. Every time I come over, as I'm leaving Lou hollers, "Don't forget to take some cucumbers!"
ReplyDeleteWord verification: flystr -- a sticky paper used to catch inse
Beans are one of my favorite things to raise. I can sit and look at the plants for the longest time--seeing absolutely no beans. Ten minutes later I look again--beans all over the place. It's sort of magic.
ReplyDeleteI'm with ya on the "green" beans. I did golden wax and boy were they easy to find. I'm going to try pole beans next year...I'll give the purple ones a shot!
ReplyDeleteOh dude. Those beans are effing sneaky. I can pick and pick and pick and pick and STILL there will be a hidden clump that evades me and then is SURPRISE totally huge when I go back in the morning.
ReplyDeleteMonsters.
Enjoy!
If you can find the seeds, Rattlesnake Beans are delicious. The pod on them is covered in a purplish pattern over the green.
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