early fall harvests

 

okay, i'll admit it.  i am guilty of neglecting my gardens.  i know i'm not alone, which is why i feel comfortable admitting this here.  clearly taking on my most ambitious gardening efforts the same summer that i was planning a wedding [mine] and that my full-time job was extremely demanding was not the best idea.  but still, i do not regret it.  i know i could have actually pulled out the peas once they dried up back in july.  and i know i could have planted some fall crops in their place, and in the place of the garlic i harvested months ago.  but i didn't.  and you know what? it's okay.

as much as i may have neglected my gardens these past two months, it is still producing.  still making me happy every time i pick a tiny little cherry tomato off those volunteer plants wedged between the chard and beans.  still surprising me when i pulled up over a dozen small onions that i thought were dead and shriveled [even if they're not much larger than the starts i planted back in the early spring, i will still eat them with pride].

so. even though my garden could have been better, more productive, more lush, more organized.  it's not.  and i am still so very grateful for what it produces.  because of my efforts, or in spite of them. 

harvesting beans

so here is the follow up post to the growing beans post from earlier this season.  after all that work, i am reaping the benefits of my bean extravaganza.  so far, i have harvested almost all of the tiger's eye beans (the orange/red ones), and less than half of the calypso beans (the black and white ones).  i've also picked a couple of pounds of the purple pod pole and sultan's golden crescent fresh beans.  i still have october beans and hutterite soup beans that i saved from last year as well.

growing dry beans is one of the easiest things to do in your garden, since they are so low maintenance.  just make sure they are decently watered while they are growing, and just leave them on the plants until they are fully crispy.  shell the beans, spread them out on a baking tray, and bake in the oven on the lowest setting for 10-15 minutes to make sure there are no weevils or other itty bitty critters enjoying your beans.  one new technique that i tried this year was rolling the bean seeds in rhizobium powder prior to planting.  this is supposed to increase yields by up to 100%, but honestly, i saw no difference [at least in the ones i've harvested so far].  i'd love to hear if anyone has different experience with this. 

here are a few sources for heirloom bean recipes:
:: seed savers heritage farm bean salad (this is where i purchase my bean seeds)
:: rancho gordo  (both rancho gordo and seed savers also sell heirloom beans for cooking if you don't want to grow your own).  they also have a whole book of heirloom bean recipes!
:: 101 cookbooks heirloom beans and seitan recipe
:: becky and the beanstalk (i made this hutterite bean soup last winter)

do you have any favorite heirloom bean recipes or tips?

(guest post) The Unbumper Crops

Thank you so much for the honor to write with you lovely gals here on Tend. I love checking in and seeing what's going on, reading similar philosophies and approaches to my own way of living. Every post emits a shared coziness and warmth; a breath of fresh air.

See, sometimes my green thumb turns into a green and jealous meanie when I see the many finely edited gardens dotting the internet. I have a hard time keeping my garden envy in check when I see others with bumper crops of vine ripened tomatoes. I immediately compare them to my own Better Boys, split and scarred from the recent onslaught of thunderstorms.

Then, sometimes, I watch my daughter play in the plants. I made up my mind early in my pregnancy that I would embrace her curiosity and teach her to respect the natural world around us. But also, as a mom I devote most of my energy to Mabel, and the gardens don't get the same amount of attention they used to. I plant things and don't mark them, forgetting about them until they produce something discernible. This year that something is beans. I've grown beans before: favas, limas, green beans, cow peas...but this year they came up, started forming beans and I had one of those new gardener moments where I ran inside and showed Charlie and Mabel that I. grew. beans. I had 2 beans in my hand, each bulging with the black eyed peas hidden inside. There were more out in the garden, not quite ready for picking, and definitely not a bumper crop by any stretch of the imagination. Those 2 beans in my hand, though, produced a swell of gardening pride.

I can't really pinpoint the source of pride. I suspect it's a residual effect of motherhood: I can choose to obsess over aphids and soil fertility, or I can choose to celebrate the small wonders that make Mabel ooohh and ahhh over a flower or an interesting rock. Being present in those moments has taught me to appreciate everything I grow, including my 2 pods of black eyed peas--my own amazing unbumper crop.

--

Thank you so much Renee for being our guest here today, we're honored! Renee lives in North Carolina and authored the Petals & Pedals series at Modish. Please visit her blog and website, Wolfie + the Sneak for more of her creative endeavors.

growing beans

i'm pretty sure that beans are now my favorite thing to grow in my garden. last year a fellow community gardener told me about growing dry beans-something that had never occurred to me before. of course, when i opened the seed savers catalog there were pages of heirloom beans just waiting to be planted in my garden! i started off with hutterite soup beans and october beans. they were so easy to grow and took up relatively little space. for each seed packed of about 50 seeds, i harvested about 2 cups of beans. enough for a couple of meals. we eat a lot of beans (mostly black) so i would never try to grow enough to feed us all year, but to incorporate a little variety into our bean diet, and for more special meals, i'm all about the beans.

i saved some seeds from the two varieties i planted last year, and added some new ones: tiger's eye, turkey craw, calypso, and hidatsa shield figure. and of course, i ordered way more than one seed packet each (um, so far i still have a few seed packets that haven't been planted and my garden is full! i'm going to have to replace all the early spring crops with beans, i think). for dry beans, you leave the fruits on the plants until they are completely dried out. completely. you want them to be crispy. once crisped, they are easy to pick and shell, and you just put the beans in the oven on low for about 15-20 minutes to make sure that there are no itty bitty creatures living inside. store in a jar, and save for a delicious meal. we made a delicious soup with our hutterite beans a few months ago, but i'll admit that i haven't had the nerve to cook up our october beans just yet. i guess i've been waiting for a special occasion, but i know we should just eat them! they'll be delicious in a summer bean salad...

last spring i learned about a method of planting called "hexagonal planting" in which seeds are planted in hexagons instead of rows, which allows you to plant seeds closer together and also helps deter weeds. i tried this with a few of my plants last year, but was most successful with the beans- allowing me to plant each packet of 50 seeds in an area about 2'x2'. All you have to do is make a triangle where each side is the distance that the seedlings are intended to from each other once thinned (so, 2" for beans, 4" for carrots, 8" for lettuce, etc.). then plant your seeds at each point on the triangle and shift the triangle around in a circle to make a hexagon. this technique was originated in a john jeavons book, where it goes into much more mathematical detail, and includes how to use this method for companion planting as well.

another tip about growing beans that i'm trying for the first time this year is to coat the seeds in rhizobium powder prior to planting. someone had told me about it last year, but i'd already planted. by this spring, i had completely forgotten, but luckily i came across a reference to it in the backyard homestead a few weeks ago and i snagged a packet. rhizobium is a naturally occurring bacteria that, when applied to bean or pea seeds up to 24 hours prior to planting helps the seeds absorb more nutrients and can make the plants up to 50% more productive! (at least, that's what the package says, does anyone have experience with this?) i'll be interested to see how it turns out.  who knows, i may be swimming in beans come harvest time!