Friday, October 31, 2008

Has-beans

Well, I learned something about planting and harvesting shelling beans. One, you have to plant a lot of beans to get any kind of return worth writing home about. I planted only 10 beans from Rancho Gordo. Which would've filled up a quart jar with cellinis, except for Lesson Two: You're supposed to leave the bean pods on the vine until they turn dry and brown, yes, but not if there's going to be a freeze.

I should've harvested all the remaining green pods and put them somewhere cool – but not freezing – to finish drying out. Once they'd frozen, the pods and beans turned to mush. I thought I might be able to save the once-frozen green beans and use them right away, but they tasted off, so into the compost they went. (The ones in the jar are fine, though. They dried out before the freeze.)

Ah well. Garden and learn.

2 comments:

  1. Gardening is just one big experiment... an experiment with no controls.

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  2. You said it, Betts. Always interesting to see how it turns out. And the next year you get to try again.

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