The snap bean harvest is dwindling down now. This week, I was only able to pick one pound six ounces. Still, I'm grateful for it.
The butter beans surprised me with another good picking that weighed in at three and a half pounds. I felt sure that there was only going to be one more picking, but I'm glad I was wrong about that. It is remarkable that the butter beans as well as the snap beans are still producing flowers for additional beans. There are several hundred butter bean pods that I am hoping will fill out before the frost gets them. It has gotten to the point of us watching the evening weather report and looking for frost warnings. When we're expecting frost, I'm going to cover the row with old bed sheets in hopes of preventing damage.
I used the snap beans from last week and canned six pints of Dilled Green Beans, using a Mrs. Wages prepared recipe. I haven't canned them before, but I like dill and I like green beans, so they should be good.
I thought I would try my hand at dehydrating apples. Since I don't have an apple tree, I used store-bought apples. They came out pretty good. I pre-treated them with citric acid before dehydrating them, then after they cooled, I stored them in Ball canning jars to keep the air out so they would last longer.
By next week, I hope to be picking Swiss chard. It's just about ready.
Have a great vegetable gardening day!
Thanks,
Veggie PAK
Wow, you're one lucky gardener!! We have been having frosts here for a couple of weeks now. Those dilled beans look good. I have never canned beans....let us know how they taste.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good gardening work :)
The temp this morning at 0615 was 54 degrees, and it's supposed to get to 71 today. Great weather! I left the snow in the mountains of New York to come down here in 1973. Good choice!
ReplyDeleteThe beans sounded tasty, that's why I decided to give them a try. I used Mrs. Wages pre-packaged recipes earlier this year, and found them to be pretty good. Good combination of spices and such. I'll let you know how delicious the dilled beans are. Positive thinking!
I have to keep up the good gardening work, because I have to teach my grandkids everything I know about it. They love it!
Thanks, and have a great gardening day!
Veggie PAK
I have got to try growing those butter beans one of these days. Very nice harvest.
ReplyDeleteSo far with this second crop, I've picked 12 pounds of butter beans.
ReplyDeleteThey're a bush type, which I really don't care for. Long times on your hands and knees picking them. I think I'm going to try a pole version next year.
Thanks for visiting Henbogle -- I'm always happy to discover another gardening blog. I'll have to spend some time reading old posts to get to know your plot.
ReplyDeleteI am curious about butter beans. I've never eaten (or grown) them, tell me about them?
ali
I scrolled through your blog; what a very impressive garden (and canning pantry)! I'm surprised you haven't had a frost yet but I suppose Hampton Roads gets moderated temps being close to the ocean...
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of your Excel spreadsheet - it appeals to my sense of preciseness :) I still use a paper calendar and hand-write but I gave up on projecting out harvests because they never come true (seed packets lie!). I remember my first year gardening, I carefully counted out all of the days stated on the seed packet and wrote it on my calendar. NONE were accurate. Nowadays, I plan out planting dates and I'm flexible in successional planting if the plants growing are still being productive.
henbogle, the name "butter beans" may be kind of a local colloquialism, as technically they are lima beans, or baby limas. After shelling the beans, you cook them in some water, add salt (to cook's preference), and a little butter (two pats or so) and cover and bring to a boil and then simmer for a while at low heat, stirring occasionally. Make sure they don't run out of water! If you see enough water around the beans at the top layer to look juicy, then you're ok. If the beans are up out of the water, add some more water to produce the aforementioned appearance. We like to cook ours (stirring occasionally) for about an hour after they come to a boil. We even use up the pot liquor (juice) because it's rich with the bean flavor. Biscuits work well for this.
ReplyDeleteI want to try the pole bean version of these because it's a lot of time on my hands and knees picking them. And you don't just pick the pods. You feel them to make sure they're ready for picking. During the growth of these beans, you can get four, maybe five pickings from the plants. That's why you don't just "pick all the beans" at once. These are warm weather beans, but as my blog shows, I can get two crops a year by planning the plantings. No one else that I know of in this area has butter beans now. We do enjoy historically warmer temps by a few degrees compared to neighboring cities, and I try to capitalize on that recurring fact. For instance, parts of Chesapeake (which adjoins Portsmouth) were 32 degrees this morning as per Channel 13 Weather, but Portsmouth was 47.
Have a great gardening day!
Veggie PAK
foodgardenkitchen, Thank you for your kind comments! We're actually 30 miles from the ocean, but if you look at a map, you can see that Portsmouth is more in-line with the north-south direction of the Chesapeake Bay than Norfolk is. So when the official area temp is recorded at the Norfolk airport, our actual temp is a few degrees warmer. That's my explanation anyway. The experts might say different.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way about those seed packets! Actually though, it's probably different soils and temps that makes the differences we encounter. I use the spreadsheet because I have formulas in there to compute the projected harvest date. But, the additional column that I have for my recorded first harvest date allows a formula in another column to calculate what the ACTUAL time was between planting and harvest. That is the length of time that I would use for planning my garden for the (next)year.
Using a spreadsheet would be beneficial to you pertaining to the last sentence in your comment. As painful as it may seem, I no longer use the productivity of the plant to determine replanting or not. I have learned that using the spreadsheets more intensely allows me to project the maturity date of a particular crop. If that particular crop is not very cold tolerant, I would have to "move up" the planting date in order to get a maturity date that was in a weather condition that would be sufficient to ensure successful harvesting of the crop. Having said all that, and looking at the big picture, if the plant was still producing and I felt it necessary to pull it out in order to replant another crop, I would pull it. Next year, I would plant that "still producing" crop earlier than I did the previous year. The spreadsheets let you plan to adjust your garden as a whole, rather than individual vegetables, so to speak.
Lastly, I have learned to not go by air temps to judge when to plant. It may sound crazy, but I begin monitoring soil temps throughout my garden in March, and record the temps. I use a dial face, AC mechanic probe type thermometer, and insert it into the soil in various spots (sun and shade) to get the ambient temperature of the soil. Seed for warm weather crops goes in the ground when the ambient temp is a maintained 65 degrees. Lower than that, if the ground is too damp, the seed will rot, even if innoculant is used.
Thanks to all for visiting my blog. It has already proven to be a useful tool to help my gardening efforts.
Veggie PAK
I like your climate. We finally had our 3rd frost last night. Though for the second and third my garden didn't get hit, it was just the neighboring roofs. But the first one killed all my beans and I'm missing them.
ReplyDeleteDaphne, although we haven't had frost yet, you can see the difference the cold night air (low to mid 40's) makes in the plants. It slows down growth considerably, but every harvest is one to be thankful for!
ReplyDeleteThose dried apples look awesome. Can I ask you, what type of dehydrator do you use and would you recommend it? I'm thinking about investing in one, and have no idea which ones are good.
ReplyDeletemeemsnyc, I'm not well versed in dehydrators, but I kind of fell into the availabile opportunity to use my son's Open Country, five tray dehydrator. It has an on and off switch for heat control. From what I have read, if you are going to dry fruit, you should dry it at about 125 degrees for several hours. (You need a unit with adjustable heat for that. This isn't it, however, I like it.) Test the fruit after a few hours and see what it is doing. Different fruits take different times. It's hard to do it "wrong". In fact, I think "wrong" in this application means that you just haven't dried it long enough. And that's fixable, so therefore, there is no actual "wrong" that can happen. Now, I checked the discharge temperature on this unit and it measured 165 degrees. Some people would say that is too hot for fruit. I really don't know, as this is the only one I have ever used. However, I DO like the texture of the fruit that has been dried. It feels dry, and it looks dry. Therefore, it should keep well in Ball storage jars. I think something still moist will spoil. I like this unit for drying fruit. It costs about $40 to $44 bucks at Outdoor World, Bass Pro Shops, or places like that. I have to say that for preparing the apples, I use an apple slicer,peeler,corer from Bed, Bath & Beyond. It is made specifically for their stores, costs $20 bucks, and comes with a lifetime unconditional warranty at any store in the Country, and IT WORKS GREAT! Before I forget, cooking time: for 1/2 slices of apples, I cook them for 4 hours, then turn them over by hand, then cook for another 3 hours. That's it. At the dehydrator store, buy a container of Citric Acid for preparing your apples before you dehydrate them. It's natural and helps prevent spoilage and color loss. Just follow directions on container. Easy! I like a round one as opposed to a square one because a round one doesn't have corners that would cause poor air circulation, hence, uneven drying. This is a perfect unit for beef jerky too!
ReplyDeleteLong, huh?
Have a great dehydrating day!
Veggie PAK