Stringbeans from my garden are doing great! So I cooked some up with smoked turkey, garlic (from my garden) and onions also from my garden. A combination of blue lake and roma beans.
Served with crab cakes.
This message was edited May 28, 2007 7:53 PM
Yum!
Foggy
OOOOO! Looks good! Must say my tastebuds are jealous my beans are only up about an 2". Can't wait to saute!
Yummy Kanita!
Which variety of beans do you happen to like the best, the blue lake or the roma? When did you plant your onions?
Delicious! My beans are just beginning to flower. The weather is dropping into the low 50's at night again here, so they will probably slow down. I'll have to put the Wall O Waters around my peppers and eggplants that I've just transplanted. Too cold to keep them happy.
Garden_mermaid,
Hi! (I think I remember you from last year on a zucchini thread). I am in Sunnyvale also, and yeah, it's been very very cool this year so far compared to last year. I planted my peppers at the beginning of April and they are already like 1ft tall, but they look cold! I haven't put any Wall O Waters or anything though even when I transplanted them in April. Their growth was pretty much stunted for the first month probably because of the cold.
Kanita,
Your beans are looking good! I picked something like half a dozen beans so far, but that's about it for now. Snails are eating the leaves like there is no tomorrow, so I will see how my beans do later on. Your dinner sounds YUMMY!!!
tmm
Mine are just coming up. I planted them about 2 weeks ago when the weather was in the 70's and 80's and now we are back into the 40's with a cold north wind.
Those green beans in the colandar look soooo good. It will be a long time before mine are ready.
tmm, although they won't grow much in the cooler weather, they are still maturing. My Stupice tomato has been in since March. It stayed the same size for some time and then took off when the weather warmed up. The first bunch of tomatoes are turning red! The peppers and eggplants languished and looked very sad until the WOWs went on.
MaryE,
Your weather sounds like ours, except your low is about 10 degrees lower than ours here. It was hot here about 2 weeks ago too.
Garden Mermaid,
You are a Stupice lover too? GREAT! They are fabulous, aren't they? I have 5 Stupice plants myself this year, since I liked it so much. My understanding is that Stupice does really well in cooler weather. (Last summer, when it was really hot, I had to move mine to a shaded area (mine are mostly in EBs) because they were wilting in heat. In fact, I persuaded my aunt in WA to switch from Oregon Springs to Stupice this year.) I transplanted mine in the 1st week of April, and just had my first Stupice tomato last weekend, and some more are turning colors.
You are right. They are all maturing fine. My peppers (6 anaheim) do stop growing when it's cold though. I can tell they don't like this cold weather. It sounds like your peppers are doing better than mine.
What other tomato plants do you have growing this year? What is your favorite (besides Stupice?) An repeaters? (I have 3 Aunt Ruby's German Green (repeater), 1 Sun Sugar(repeater), 1 Green Grape, 1 Mortgage Lifer and 1 mystery tomato plant. I can tell Mortgage Lifter doesn't like cool weather – they are flowering and setting fruit but some blossoms are falling when it's cold.)
tmm
Costaluto Genovese is our favourite tomato, but it needs warmer weather. The Stupice is usually the first to ripen in the SF Bay Area, so I planted one of those. Also trying Sun Sugar cherry tomato instead of the yellow pear this year. Three tomato plants is far more than DH will eat, but then, since we are gardening in the community garden, we have to allow for crop theft. Last year we only got five of the 30 costaluto tomatoes. We had about twenty just on the verge of perfect ripeness. When I came to harvest, someone had taken them all! Didn't even leave a few for us. This year I will put a cage around the crop when it ripes to see if that discourages the theives.
garden_mermaid,
I did Costaluto Genovese last year, but the shape of the tomatoes didn't turn out pretty like in the pictures (although they certainly looked like them when they were tiny), and the flavor wasn't there for me. It is really interesting how even in the same area, things could turn out differently (soil, amount of sun, etc, etc) and also everyone's taste/preference is different.
It is very very sad that people will take your ripe tomatoes. That would probably bother me a lot. My friend was telling me that her mom said she didn't get any of her tomatoes stolen when she grew Aunt Ruby's Greman Green (they are green when ripe) but maybe she was just lucky. Can you put a sign saying "Please do not take any ripe tomatoes"? Would that help? I believe Kanita uses a community garden too.
Kanita, are you there?
tmm
Sorry All! I have been busy with a big order at the warehouse.
TLeaves: I love the roma beans by far! I planted my onions last November in really large rectangular planters.
TMM: I am in a community garden, and luckily so far I haven't had problems with people taking any of my veggies, but I don't want to speak too soon. This week I harvested another 4 pounds of beans, so I will be making a bigger pot as they are producing like crazy for me. I am going to compost the bush beans that have already cranked out a load of beans as I staggered my plantings and have new plants getting ready to flower.
This year, I planted a ton of purple hull black eye peas and some pink ones as well. I also planted lima beans for the first time, Fordhook Giants and Christmas speckled. I am anxiously awaiting the yellow pole roma beans from Franchii Italian seeds.
kanita
By the way, I picked snails like crazy in the beginning, but now don't really have a problem with them.
Thanks K--- Happy eating!
Mary E, I am so sorry to hear about your cold snap. Hopefully, you'll still get beans off those plants.
Kanita,
4 pounds of beans? That is GREAT! I would be lucky if I could get 4 oz at a time! Thank you for your info on the snails. Hopefully, mine will go away (or shrivel up) with warmer weather. I bet it is just one snail having a feast! I will try to find him this weekend..
Good luck - hopefully, everyone is honest and they do not steal :-)
You were growing cukes last year, weren't you? Are you growing any this year?
tmm
This year I have scaled down on the cukes. I am only growing a few varieties:
Sugar Crunch, Sumter (for pickles), Japanese and Lemon.
Yeah, I hear Sugar Crunch is very good. I should try new varieties next year. (I just have Sweet Success(repeat) and Cool Breeze.)
tmm
Tonights dinner again. This time, I had to photograph the beans in my turkey roaster. Beans are doing really good this year.
Wow. They sure look yummy!
What are you going do with all the green beans?
tmm
Dunno
Eat them I hope! Maybe pickle a few with garlic and peppers?
I would really like to try pickling them.
A quick inquiry to Cooks.com reveals 126 recipes for pickled green beans. Clearly this is a popular way to eat them!
http://www.cooks.com/rec/search/0,1-0,pickled_green_beans,FF.html
http://www.noehill.com/downstairs/recipes_pickled_green_beans.asp
Thanks Mermaid. I have beans coming out of my ears. Everytime I go to the garden I leave with a pound of beans.
Wow, kanita, that is GREAT.
How many bean plants are you growing this year? Roma Beans right? Maybe I should try Roma Beans next year. I have Blue Lake, but there isn't much going on there.
tmm
Yes, I am growing roma pole beans, but I grew blue lake bush beans which have pretty much fizzled out on me. But the pole beans are doing just fine. I planted 9 pole beans. I am now starting to plant the black eyed peas for the heat of summer, nothing else will do as good in high temps I dont think.
Only nine???
Unbelievable harvest!!
I think I will do Roma Beans next summer.
Thanks!
tmm
tmm99 - pole beans outproduce bush varieties in my experience. We are growing Kentucky Wonder again this year. They are a very prolific heirloom variety with more flavour than Blue Lake. Roma pole beans are our next favourite. I had nine KW and four Roma plants last summer and picked many pounds of green beans every week. We were well fed and I had lots to donate to the local food bank.
Thank you Garden mermaid!
I will look into both Kentucky Wonder and Roma Beans. Since you are in the same city as I am, they should do great in my garden too.
Did you start them from seeds or you got the seedings from a nursery? If you got them at a nursery, can you share which nursery you go them from and when you planted them?
Thanks!
tmm
Last year I planted the seeds directly into the garden bed. This year I started them from seeds in the greenhouse and then transplanted them into the garden bed this year. My only garden space these days is a ~50 sq ft bed at the Charles Street Community Garden that we started last year. With small gardens, it is more efficient to start everything in pots for transplanting so that when one crop comes out, the next one goes in to maximise the growing space. I have extra Kentucky Wonder seeds it you would like some. Just DMail me you contact info and I'll get you some.
If you haven't already visited our community garden, please some by. We are at the civic center on Charles street, between Iowa and Olive. The city library is across the parking lot. The gates are open during the day for the public to visit.
I have bush beans and pole beans. Not sure what the bush beans are, but they're good! They started producing before the pole beans (Kentucky Wonder which are now 9 feet long), so I'm glad I planted both. I may have to learn to pickle beans *g*.
Margo
I agree with you Mermaid on starting seedlings inside when you are in a small space.
Waiting for tomorrow to pick.
ooooohh! Bean envy here. Mine are only about two inches long. I started mine kind of late because the space was still filled with cabbages.
Wow, great looking beans! Mine are small too. I can't wait.
Mermaid, I still have some cabbages that I need to pull up. The snails were ferocious.
Hi Mermaid,
I went to your community garden yesterday! I have driven through there before, but I've never even noticed the garden. (Absent driver here...) Anyway, it was very nice. And huge! (I loved the trellis full of sweet peas someone planted! Also, I enjoyed the archichokes. I didn't know the plants got so big.) I wondered which one was your garden, but there were so many lots, so I gave up looking for it.
Thank you for the offer on the seeds. Since I have seen Kentucky Wonder in one of the nurseries this year, I think I will try to get seedlings next year. (Lazy gardener here...)
tmm
Aha! This is the thread where people were talking about pickling green beans... Check out the recipe I've used, adapted from one of my all time favorite cookbooks, _The Joy of Pickling_... http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/523149/
Thanks for the link critter! It will be a few weeks before my green beans kick in, but I'm thinking of pickling a few this year.
