What's Growing? - Fordhook 242 Lima Beans

 

I am a complete newbie at growing lima beans.  It has been at least 30 years since I even ate limas.  I've never grown them, never picked them, never shelled them and never cooked them.  I have a big learning curve when it comes to shells to yield, maturity and cooking.

The plants themselves are growing just great.  At this point in the year, each plant had half a dozen mature pods down close to the ground.  

And they are still blooming and still setting pods.  There are no in between sized pods.  Its like they took a break during the hot weather and the blooms from that time period came to nothing and fell off.  The past two weeks they are back in production.

They are supposed to be ready to eat when the pods begins to yellow.  Once it begins to yellow there is a subtle change in the bulge as the bean grows, and the dryness of the shell.  That's where the learning curve comes in.  You don't want to miss that mid-size sweet yet plump stage and move on to the starchy dry stage.  Another thing I wasn't sure of is - what does a double portion of beans look like in the shell?  I took a guess and erred on the side of leftovers.

The wonderful internet full of knowledge came up short on how to shell baby limas.  All of the narratives and YouTube videos pertained to mature beans in dried pods.  The only instruction I found was to press along the inner curve and pop the shell open.  This doesn't work and I knew from my garden experiments one pod at a time that this doesn't work.  Maybe on just the right stage of maturity, but I am not experienced enough to know what just the right stage of maturity is.  In my mind I decided the best route was a sharp pointed paring knife and a wooden cutting board.

This turned out to be a good solution.  I just sliced the outer curve off and used that opening to wedge the shell open.

I followed this Recipe as a benchmark, because you reach a certain age where recipes are merely a suggestion.  Unless you're baking fine pastries, then you listen to the voice of experience.  I cooked my Limas for 12 minutes.  OK, 11 and a half because I'm impatient.  And I like my veggies to taste fresh.  Because honestly - 30 minutes?  Are you people crrrrrazy?  Yes, I know my MaMaw cooked her Kentucky Wonder string beans all day but...

I added a good dollop of butter and some coarse ground black pepper.  I didn't try the ketchup as I was raised to do.

And I thought they turned out really good.  My husband ate them despite prefacing it by saying "Don't give me much because I don't like limas."  At least he didn't take a bite and then offload his portion onto my plate like he does with broccoli.  I always take that as a vote of approval. He is game to at least try anything I've grown at least once. He told me over supper that his mother combined limas with ham and made a casserole. So it is not ironic that I chose to serve ham as our main course.  When adding up the components of lima beans, potato salad and fresh sweet corn, a slice of ham seemed like the logical choice.  I guess I was right

Strawberries

So it worked.  I grew Strawberries.  Not that is any great accomplishment, I've grown Strawberries before.  It's just that sometimes it seems like you are chasing an impossible dream.  Sure things are growing.  You have more lettuce than you know what to do with and the tomatoes are making progress but the things you've got your heart set on.....like Cantaloupes....are looking like a failure.  Again.  Even after all these years I wait in suspense to see how things will turn out.  Because despite the fact that I've proven I can pretty much grow and store a year's supply of fruits and vegetables, I always suspect crop failure may be lurking on the horizon.

When we chose the spot for the strawberry bed,
  Tim thought up some excellent cages
to protect them from rabbits and deer.

I used to have a nice strawberry bed.  For two or three years I picked strawberries until they lost their allure.  I froze strawberries and made jam and bread and honestly got a bit tired of strawberries.  The crop doesn't always arrive when picking and storing is convenient.  But then for two years it quit on me. The plants burned out.  I didn't get a handful of berries.  I got frustrated.  I began to long for gallons of strawberries, more strawberries than I would know what to do with.  An excess of strawberries.  Enough strawberries to be ... well...inconvenient,

So I formed "The Plan".  You know, the plan to grown the biggest, best, most of whatever you can't get enough of.  And it worked.  I bought new plants and I fed them super grow tonic (Blood Meal) and I battled the Chipmunks for the berries (how do those little fff-Suckers get into the berry cage?) and what I thought were slugs but turned out to be tiny little green centimeter worms (smaller than inch worms) that haven't been identified yet and which I do not yet know how to kill...

My strawberries can't wait to get out of strawberry jail

So strawberries are on the menu.  Unlike most everyone else, I am not really into strawberry short cake.  And strawberry jam, while delicious, is pretty easy to come by.  But what I AM really into is fresh strawberries on salads.  And strawberry vinaigrette.  And Tim is into strawberry bread.  Which really isn't bread.  Let's face it folks, any one who has made both cake and actual bread knows that strawberry/banana/zucchini "bread" is cake.  Really.  Its cake disguised as bread.  But I like cake.  And it freezes well, so that is good for long term strawberry storage

Source and Recipe

So why would someone with a blog about tomatoes prefer strawberries on salad?  It's hard to say.  But I do.  Tomatoes are great of course, but they need salt, I guess, and I truly do not feel that they add much to a garden salad.  But some Sungold cherry tomatoes and sliced cucumbers with Italian dressing and maybe some chick peas... now that's a good salad .  But my very favorite garden salad contains spinach, strawberries, mushrooms and garden peas.  With balsamic vinaigrette.  Even I find that combination a little curious.  But it's true.  If you want to be really bold, sprinkle some feta cheese on that.

Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette Source and Recipe

So it worked.  I grew strawberries.  And now I am going to enjoy my strawberries.  And hope the cantaloupes work out just as well.

Fall Gardening

Yes, I still have things growing. The temperatures have been below normal, and they even used the "S" word for this weekend's forecast. But there is still activity in the garden.

I am enjoying the fall planting of lettuce in the bed which held the first planting of cucumbers and bush beans. There are three short rows of carrots on the far end.

Tim and Neighbor Mike constructed an extra hoop house that fits over the lettuce. The cloth will give me frost protection down to 26*. Next summer I can replace the cloth for shade cloth and keep the lettuce cooler hoping to delay the bolting. I cut this cloth out of a larger sheet, hemmed the edges, and added gromets to fasten it to the frame.

There are still seedlings coming up and this bed will soon be a lettuce jungle.

The Nasturtium, which stops blooming in the heat of summer, always rallies and offers billows of bright fall color.

In the "paste tomato" bed, the only thing left is the Sungold which is being nursed along to provide salad tomatoes.

The third planting of bush beans is still lush. It produced a couple of gallons of beans to freeze, and now is keeping us in dinner beans. Now and then it gets ahead of me and I have to freeze a small batch. The Purple Queen beans are reverting to their pole bean ancesters and taking over the remaining cornstalks.

The "slicing tomato" bed still has some tenants, but they will be pulled this weekend. The bell peppers on the far side are going strong and I will have to freeze some.

The Serrano pepper looks very festive. We are going to try drying these.

The chard looks gorgeous!

But this is one ugly summer squash. The growing end keeps generating new growth as the old leaves die off leaving an ugly snaking stalk. I keep having to wind it around and back into the bed. Thre are still a few small squash coming on.

Plan for this weekend is winterization. I've done my "ungardening" gradually instead of all in one day. It feels like less work that way. But soon we will be battling leaves and anything left in the beds will just be an obstacle. The compost bin is full, but there is still work to be done to get everything cut down and protected, and the equipment clean, disinfected and ready for a smooth start in the spring.

Endings and Beginnings

To everything there is a season, and in the past two weeks I have bid goodbye to the spring delicacies and hello to new summer life. We are in the throes of a heat wave. In the past three weeks, we have gotten a scant quarter inch of rain.

The lush, sweet, garden peas were pulled out and composted

leaving the summer cucumbers and carrots behind (yes these carrots and cucumbers were hiding in that mass of peas. On the left, my second planting of bush beans is a week old and beginning to fill in. The Sweet Success cukes are larger than a finger and should be ready in another week. The first planting of Marketmores are still thriving with still no sign of powdery mildew.

Leafy green salads have made way for sliced cucumbers garnished with bright cherry tomatoes at the table. I sure miss that lettuce, and when it began to bolt I taste tested each variety to make sure it was beyond hope before I pulled it by the armload and carried it to the compost. I will be able to replant for fall.

Bright Lights chard and borage sentinels are left behind with a small stake marking where I planted the Eight Ball zucchini. Just past the borage, in the second bare spot, you can just see a young zucchini. Not that I need more summer squash. I have 6 Magda squash stacked up on my kitchen counter right now. From one plant.

The onions are ready to pull.

And the potatoes are doing fine despite the fact that I have been not been generous with water.

This beautiful, creamy White Lightening eggplant could be eaten now.

But despite being in the ground a full week earlier than last year, the tomatoes will not be breaking any records for earliness. Last year I picked the first Jap tomato on July 22nd. This one isn't even beginning to blush. On the flip side, the plants are more productive. The dry, warm weather and mild night temps have been perfect for pollination. Just my luck, they will all ripen at once.

What Else is Growing?

Everything! When I was looking through photos for this blog, I couldn't believe how much everything grows in a week. It's not only keeping me busy, it's already keeping us fed.

The first tomato to set this year was the Barlow Jap, as always.







And there are a couple of bell peppers of a usable size. This one is going into fresh salsa this weekend along with an onion, since those are just beginning to form bulbs.

Here is this year's version of the bush bean and cucumber bed. Last year I put the cukes down the middle, but they always head east (with the wind, and towards the morning sun) so I put them on the east edge this year instead of the middle. Minuscule baby slugs almost did in the transplants I bought, but some survived, and I filled in the gaps with seeds. The itsy bitsy teeny tiny (you really have NO idea) slugs were dealt with by scraping them off with my fingernails. I killed several dozen two nights in a row, drowned the mid sized ones in beer, and have kept them at bay with Iron Sulphate pellets which are working great and have also saved my pansies and lettuce.

I even have a little cucumber riiiiiight there.

I also planted very very short sunflowers in with the cucumbers, and allowed half a dozen Borage volunteers which were in the right places to draw pollinators in.

This is the Magda summer squash. There are two squash on there that will soon be ready to eat.

And on the other end of that bed is my lettuce. Blogger refused to put this photo in right. And the grow through grids are over the Borage. Last year the Borage was a jumbled mess, so we'll see if we can keep them tidy with grids. In the middle of that lettuce, is a plain old zucchini plant and along one edge is the third planting of cucumbers I really wasn't expecting the lettuce to last this long, but I only got bitter leaves once. If a plant starts to bolt, I pull it right away. And boy do we have lettuce!!!

That's what I get for not thinning it. But it really isn't a problem. I can hack at it with scissors, fill a bag to last us a week, and still not make a dent. I have seven varieties. These I got from Renee's Garden Ruby and Emerald Duet (Buttercrisp), Paris Market, and my favorite, Heirloom Cutting Mix.

I also got some transplants from a local greenhouse, and put in "Leaf Lettuce", Iceberg Lettuce, Buttercrisp and Romaine. Tim seems to like the Romaine the best with a little bit of the fancy stuff mixed on, but last night I gave him a bowl of pure Iceberg (the city boy favorite). I'm getting pretty good sized heads which is sort of a surprise.

So, lettuce is a HUGE success. I expect it will wear out at some point, and then the zucchini and cuccumbers can take over. If it doesn't give up, the zukes and cukes can provide filtered shade. You can bet I will be planting it again in the fall.

So we have been enjoying salads, fresh peas and a steady supply of strawberries. I've also been trying to use up my frozen green beans from last year so we won't have leftovers because the bush beans are blooming at it won't be too long before we will be enjoying them as well.

What's Growing: Garden Peas

Peas are one of my most favorite garden crops. Not only are fresh peas so superior to canned, or even frozen peas, but I love the flowers and even the chore of shelling them. Tim once offered to help me shell peas, and afterwards declared the crop "too much work for too little food". But I love peas.

All week I have sat in my office and had, in the back of my mind, lush rows of peas, full of flowers, the pods dangling within temptations reach. Of course I would always rather be outside than stuck in my office, but I just can't get enough of looking at my peas.

This year I am growing 6 different kinds of peas. I have Survivor, a low growing "leafless" variety which has many tendrils in place of leaves, Maestro, which matured earliest, Wando, which I saved from the last of a fall crop in 2007, some sugar snap peas, and both a tall and bush variety of blue podded peas. The flowers on these are wonderful, ranging from pink to blue to lavender and purple.

The pods are truly bright blue, but you will have to wait until they mature more to see some pictures.

Today's harvest of peas, mostly Maestro. They took almost half an hour to shell, and were reduced to ....

... a little over 3 cups of peas.

I love popping open the a perfect, even row of peas.


• Peapods are botanically a fruit, since they contain seeds developed from the ovary of a (pea) flower. However, peas are considered to be a vegetable in cooking. More specifically, they are a legume.
• The wild pea is restricted to the Mediterranean basin and the Near East. The earliest archaeological finds of peas come from Neolithic Syria, Turkey and Jordan. In Egypt, early finds date from ca. 4800–4400 BC in the Nile delta area, and from ca. 3800–3600 BC in Upper Egypt.
• In early times, peas were grown mostly for their dry seeds. In modern times, however, peas are usually boiled or steamed.
• The pea is only green when eaten because it is picked when still immature. A ripe pea is more yellow in color. Eating peas when they are green became fashionable in the 1600s and 1700s but was described by the French as "madness".
• Thomas Jefferson grew more than 30 cultivars of peas on his estate.
• Just one serving of garden peas contains as much vitamin C as two large apples, more fiber than a slice of whole grain bread and more thiamine than a pint of whole milk.
• Peas are said to give relief to ulcer pains in the stomach because they help 'use up' stomach acids.
• A 100-calorie serving of peas (three quarters of a cup) contains more protein than a whole egg or tablespoon of peanut butter.
• In the mid-19th century Austrian scientist Gregor Mendel observed the pea pod leading him to create his principle of Mendelian genetics, the foundation of modern genetics.



The garden is growing like mad, and the recent rains have caused an amazing growth spurt. Soon I will be eating summer squash, and the beans are beginning to flower. I even have some pretty good sized tomatoes and bell peppers.

Besides the vegetable garden, we spent last Saturday landscaping in one side of the chicken yard. Only the brick walk to the gate, and surrounding landscaping to go.

And Thursday night we brought in a lot of dirt and began hilling the potatoes. They were growing at an alarming rate and were at least a foot tall. And it's a good thing we got it done because since that evening, we have had almost 2 inches of rain. There has been some sun, but any picking and tending I've had to do has been in between the rain drops..

What's Growing ~ Bush Beans

Bush beans are one of my favorite garden crops. There is nothing that can compare to fresh picked green beans or even the ones you freeze yourself. Canned beans just won’t ever compare. Tim’s Uncle Lloyd, who now lives in South Carolina, says one of his friends once told him “That’s the thing about Northerners, they under cook their green beans.” You’re darn right we do! They should squeak when you bite them. And we under cook our corn on the cob too… or you Southerners over cook yours, depending on your point of view. But that’s a topic for another day. Every time Lloyd comes to visit, I make him green beans and corn on the cob. He seems to prefer the Northern cooking methods. If not, he’s too Southern to say otherwise.

The bush beans are just now coming on strong. And this is where I must make my first mention of “gardening for the old and myopic”. I prefer yellow or purple beans. Why? Because I can see to pick them. This is doubly important in bush beans because they’re low to the ground, and they look a lot like stems. Plus the yellow Goldmine beans from Burpee are just beautiful creamy beans.

And the Purple Queen… I’ve rarely seen a more gorgeous vegetable. Those purple pods look like frosted art glass hanging against bright green leaves. They’re simply stunning. The only problem with purple beans is when you cook them they turn boring green. The water, however turns a brilliant green. I’m talking lime jello green. It’s rather shocking.

My favorite green variety of bush bean is Blue Lake 47. I’ve tried a few others such as Contender and Tenderpick, but Blue Lake has the yield and the quality that I’m looking for so it’s the one I go back to year after year. This year I also planted Isar yellow filet bean. It will be a little while before they produce, so the jury is still out on that one.

I start planting the bush beans in mid-May, and keep planting a row every week or two until I run out of space or beans. I’m planning to plant another row or two in the coming week. I’ve found that the Goldmine variety, if you leave them alone when their first crop is over, will rally again the end of August and produce a nice second crop. That is if the weather is milder and they don’t burn up and dry out before then, and you are kind to them when you harvest the beans and don’t break the heck out of the plants. It’s also important to keep them picked and not let any get too mature or the plants will just plain quit.

Green Bean Facts:

• Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. The common bean has been cultivated for six thousand years in the Americas.


• 
  Beans were an important source of protein throughout Old and New World history, and still are today.
• 
  There are over 4,000 cultivars of bean on record in the United States alone.
  Most of the kinds commonly eaten fresh come from the Americas, being first seen by a European when Christopher Columbus during his exploration of what may have been the Bahamas, found them being grown in fields
  
• 
  Fresh green beans are very low in calories and contain no saturated fat; but are very good source of vitamins, minerals and plant derived micro-nutrients.


• 
  They are very rich source of dietary fiber
• 
  Green beans contain excellent levels of vitamin A, and many health promoting flavonoid poly phenolic antioxidants such as lutein, zeaxanthin and beta carotene in good amounts.
  They contain good amounts of vitamin-B6 (pyridoxine), thiamin (vitamin B-1), vitamin-C. and minerals like iron, calcium, magnesium, manganese and potassium which are very essential for body metabolism.
  
• 
  Snap beans got their nickname from the snapping sound they make when being broken.
  String beans are called that because most varieties used to have a long fibrous string that ran along the seam of the bean. Botanists found a way to remove the string and in 1894 the first successful stringless bean plant was cultivated.
  

What's Growing ~ Ornamentals

Right now, EVERYTHING is growing! Each meal is based on what we have most of, and with the neighborhood swap going on, we are enjoying things we did not get to plant ourselves like potatoes, and things that are delayed a bit, like green beans and cucumbers. Thankfully, Tim has been paying attention and has been turning away zucchini!



But this post is about the ornamentals. The stuff I plant for companion benefits and to fill in the green spaces. In fact, one bed was devoted completely to ornamentals because it was too late to plant peas or potatoes and because I had the seeds sitting around. This is my Painted Lady Pole Bean Christmas tree! It's gorgeous. The hanging tags on the top wire in the background are to give the fence the illusion of being taller to keep the deer from trying to jump in. Since the garden is much classier this year, we just couldn't use the knots of orange marking tape like we used to so I printed some vintage seed packs and laminated them for flags.

It's just covered with brilliant red and white flowers which attract hummingbirds and bees and truly makes it look like it is covered in Christmas lights, an illusion that is hard to capture on camera.

The Painted Lady is an heirloom pole bean named after Queen Victoria which is tasty enough if the beans are picked when they are small and tender. Or you can let them mature and pick them as dried beans. The beans themselves are also ornamental. If you pick them before they dry, the are pink speckled with purple. After they dry, then turn more of a tan with chocolate markings.

I also planted some Sweet Peas in with it because I didn't have a place for them either. The many colors of the peas just adds to the Christmas ornament effect.

In between the two bean poles is an artichoke which is developing. I expect there will be more than one choke on the plant, and since I don't really like eating them, they will be allowed to develop into the giant pink thistle flowers. You can see around the edges that the artichoke is nestled in red clover that I planted for a cover crop and to set nitrogen in the soil. The clover hasn't bloomed yet, but soon it will be covered in red flowers which ought to get the honey bees excited again!

My favorite ornamental is the Alaska Nasturtium which is a variegated bush Nasturtium with a wide range of colored flowers. Nasturtium is a very useful companion deterring aphids, squash bugs, and striped pumpkin beetles, and improving growth and flavor. Deters woolly aphids, whiteflies, cucumber beetles and other pests of the cucurbit family. Great trap crop for aphids (in particular the black aphids) which it does attract. I put them in each of my beds for good measure.

Nasturtium leaves have a peppery flavor and are good in salads. The flowers are also edible, but I think they're just too pretty to pick. Especially because they don't really taste like much. They sure will dress up a salad bowl though if you need a colorful garnish.

With all these flowers cascading throughout each bed, we are keeping the honey bees busy, and they are doing their thing for the cucumbers too. Sometimes I reach in to pick something and I can actually feel a breeze from all the little wings.

Besides all the humming birds and bees and beneficial insects, we have garden cats. This is Vivian Marie. She comes out to the garden with us each evening to chase locusts and cabbage moths. She loves the warm pavers and the first thing she does is give her back a good scratch on the rough surface.

And I have a Barlow Jap ripening. We've been eating Sungold cherry tomatoes for a week, but this is the first large tomato to begin turning. It's even ahead of the early Scotia tomatoes which is a surprise. Maybe my habit of saving seeds from the first fruit to set and ripen each year to avoid cross pollination is selectively developing it into an earlier variety. That would be cool!

And this picture has nothing to do with gardening, but I thought is would be fun to share anyway. On the way back from the horse barn this past weekend I saw this cow watching traffic, and I just had to turn around and get her picture.