Tag Archives: beans

2020 Garden Update & Shelibean’s Good Attitude

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Sheli’s photo expresses how life has been going around my home… And I’m guessing it may be the way life is going for some other folks homes as well.
I wish you all the best of health and happiness. Big hugs to you all!
~*~
We got most of our garden planted over the past few weeks. We’ve still got a few things to go. It helps, to add cheer to our life, walking to the garden and seeing the plants growing with a promise of veggies to come… or a promise of watching deer and bunnies feasting on our plants. 😉
Happy gardening!

 

Nostalgia For Stories while Breaking Beans

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In my youth, I considered breaking beans to be an enjoyable chore. I felt so grown up helping to break the beans for canning while spending time with my Mom. Now, I consider breaking beans an enjoyable nostalgic activity.
I watch documentaries while doing any sort of lengthy food prep like breaking beans. I some times wonder why it is that I prefer to watch a documentary instead of a regular movie.
Perhaps, it’s because when I was growing up and I’d help my Mom break beans, shuck corn, peel peaches or any one of many time consuming chores, she would tell stories that ran the gamut from silly to serious. The stories helped to pass the time and made the chore more enjoyable. I feel blessed and so very thankful to have these wonderful memories of my Mom.
A documentary is more personal than a movie, it’s like folks sitting around sharing stories of their experiences and thoughts. I suppose watching a documentary while breaking beans is my feeble way to relive a tiny bit of the special story telling moments from my youth.

Wishing you all many happy moments this week.

 

 

 

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Potatoes, squash, beans, chard, basil, onions, & Temperature Blanket Update

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We got a pretty mess of vegetables out of the garden the other day. We were happy we could harvest a few squash.
We had several potatoes; we used some and stored some for later.We have a rule at our house that the first mess of squash has to be fried. It used to be fried in oil in a skillet method. A few years ago, we needed to change our way of cooking to be healthier, so we make a stir-fry instead. Our stir fry is a bit of olive oil, squash, potatoes, basil, onions, and a bit of cornmeal just for nostalgia. 😉

Thankfully, our area is finally getting some rain. My husband thought it a good idea to go ahead and harvest all the potatoes so they wouldn’t ruin. I agreed with him since the potato plants were starting to die and since we got such a nice harvest a few days before.
Considering that we didn’t plant but 5 lbs. of potatoes, I think we got a good harvest.
I’m guessing there’s probably a couple pecks (half bushel)
We’re happy with them.

Temperature Blankets Update:

I decided to skip May temperature blankets update and wait until June to do my update so they’d be a bit bigger than every couple weeks.
They’re still coming along fairly well.

Wishing you all a great weekend!

 

 

 

 

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5th Garden Update 2019

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One of our yellow cherry tomatoes is ripening. It’s one of the vines we’re growing in a container on the back porch.
The tomatoes in the garden have babes on the vine, so hopefully we’ll have a few big tomatoes too.
Our chard is beautiful and delicious.
The onion bulbs are getting larger.
The squash and cucumbers vines are starting to bloom.
Something has been eating on the bean vines.
We found a baby bean on one of the luckier bean vines.
Our potato plants are big and healthy and new potatoes are cracking the ground at their base.
Last but not least our peppers are starting to produce. These are orange peppers and will take a many weeks to ripen fully… although they are quite edible at any stage of the growing/ripening time.
So despite our region having hot dry weather, our garden is doing well.
I hope all your gardens are productive.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

 

1st squash harvest – potato bucket update

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We got our first harvest of squash yesterday. We harvested some other veggies to go along with the squash for a stir fry.

My squash plants are big and beautiful at the moment. The corn is growing tall and strong. The beans, well, they’re pretty much just rabbit food as you can kind of tell from the plants in front of the squash.All-in-all, everything in the garden is growing well except for the beans.My potato buckets are looking really good. I’m not putting anymore soil in the buckets. I think they’re full enough. I have high hopes of at least one potato bucket producing at least one potato. I hope they bloom soon…

Wishing you all happy days for the rest of the week!

 

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Potato bucket, Gardening & fan nest

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One of my potato plants grew tall enough to add more soil to the bucket. I may have went a bit over board with the soil. As you can see, I kept the plant a couple inches tall and buried the leaves, so maybe it’ll be okay. It’ll make me happy if I actually luck up and grow an edible potato or two in the buckets.
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The garden is growing and doing well.
Except for our beans. The bunnies are eating the tops out of them. We figure the beans may still mature and produce as long as the plants have some leaves and are healthy. Our squash is loaded with babies. It won’t be long until we have a nice fresh mess of straightneck squash.The cucumber vines are growing nicely and has a few blooms. We grow cucumbers for salads and to snack on. These few plants will produce enough for us for the summer.The corn looks good and is growing strong. We hope we’ll have enough corn to freeze several bags for the winter.We’re happy with our little garden. It doesn’t require much attention (yet). We like having the more compact smaller garden.

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It’s that special time of year for birds to nest. A couple of birds tried to build nests in our fans again on the back porch. My husband cleaned out the twigs and fluff. Thankfully there wasn’t an egg in the nesting. We now keep the fans running on low during the day to deter the birds from trying to build nests again.
~*~
I hope your plants and flowers are thriving and growing well.
Have a great week!

~*~
edited in 5-22-2017-2:45pm:
Well I didn’t have to worry about adding too much soil after all because the potato plant took care of it.

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7-1-2016 Garden Update & Misc

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P1030246The asparagus beans have done well so far this year growing/running up the decorative corn and the twine. However, next year we plan to plant the asparagus beans in a row of their own and make a trellis for them to run on. It’s awfully crowded in the corn rows now that both are maturing and fully leafed out.
P1030402Our decorative corn stalks are getting their-ears-on. We’re hoping the deer doesn’t decide to sample the ears before they mature and we can harvest some.P1030450We’ve been getting only a few regular green beans compliments of the deer. There’s wasn’t enough for a mess to cook or freeze, so we broke them up with the asparagus beans and froze them all together. We froze 4 1/2 quarts of asparagus/green beans. I think that’s pretty good. We’re already looking forward to cooking them. 😉

P1030375My 50+ bell pepper plants are beginning to put on fruit. I figure by the end of the month we’ll be covered in colorful bell peppers. I’ll be freezing them for soups, stir fries and other tasty dishes. If most of the plants put on fruit, I’ll probably be giving oodles of them away.

00I added a much needed set of new screwdrivers to my tool collection. My husband is enjoying helping me fill my toolbox with new tools. I like having my toolbox of tools here in the house ready to use anytime day or night. I don’t know why I didn’t think to get my own set of tools decades ago.

P1030394aI made a stacked tuna salad and it was so pretty I thought I’d share a photo of it.
A stacked tuna salad is layers as follows:
crushed corn chips,
tuna salad
chopped tomatoes
shredded mix cheese
with a cherry tomato on the top

P1030279The walnut tree is loaded heavy this year. My husband had to cut some of the heavily ladened limbs off. They were hanging low over the driveway and could do damage to our vehicles when they dropped walnuts or if the wind caused them to break.
I’ve always heard that a bountiful season for the nut trees means an extra cold winter. I truly hope not…

P1020348t09017Just in case the walnut tree is predicting some bad winter weather,
I got busy and made me a new hat on my green Boye knitting loom. Hey, it never hurts to be prepared.

Happy July 1st to you all!
It’s hard to believe half of 2016 has passed already.
Have a safe and fun filled weekend!
I wish you all a wonderful July full of blogging & smiles.ec-sunny

Random Friday 5 +1

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P1020947One of my favorite ways to cook squash is Parmesan Squash sticks baked in the oven. We like them room temperature and dip them in ranch dressing. The yellow squash are really tasty baked this way.

P1030089I cooked a mess of asparagus beans and also a mess of regular green beans to compare the taste. I used the same herbs/spices and cooked them the same length of time… all day long.
My husband and I agree we like the asparagus beans best. They had a richer sweeter flavor and delicious. It was a small amount of them that I’d picked and there wasn’t much of them so it was good that I also had the regular beans cooked too.
We’re anxiously awaiting some more asparagus beans to mature so we can enjoy another cooking of them. We’re also hoping to have enough to freeze some too.

P1030102There was 2 dozen of our green onions left in the garden and they were getting nice size. However, if a big enough rain comes, they’d take a second growth and ruin. So my husband harvested them and we cleaned/chopped/bagged and froze them.
I know, I know, folks think onions should be dried out and kept in a cool place… Unfortunately, everytime I’ve tried drying onions in their skins/stalks about 3/4 of them rot. So, this year we decided to freeze them. I like them frozen. I open the bag and take out what I need and return the rest to the freezer. The frozen onions are handier for cooking since they’re already cleaned and chopped.

P1030051I got a few more new tools. I used some of my husbands pliars and they were too awkward for my hands. I got a couple blisters from struggling with them. So, I bought me a set of pliars that ought to be more comfortably for me to use.

P1010262Do you know what this strange looking plug is for?  A couple of my cameras came with one of these. I looked it up and discovered that it’s a travel converter plug in for 110 to 220 Voltage.  It’s handy for it to come with a camera that has a battery charger, in case one decides to travel to other countries that have different voltage electrical outlets.

P1030062And as an added bonus, I wanted to post this photo of my harvest from the other day. Seeing freshly harvested veggies makes me happy. 🙂

Wishing you all a great weekend
of pleasant weather & happy harvests.
gardeningcouple

24 inch Long Asparagus Bean

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P1030058P1030067I harvested a few asparagus beans. I picked some that was curling on the ground and I couldn’t make them stay up off the ground.

We were so surprised that at this early stage in their growth that some of them are 24 inches long. Wow! And according to what I’ve read, they could grow to be 30 to 36 inches long, they’re also called yard long beans.

I figure these long beans deserve a post showing their length compared to a familiar bush green bean.

I haven’t cooked them yet, but I plan too soon. I’ll let you know how they cook up and how they taste.

Trying new or different veggies is an enjoyable part of the gardening experience. We’ve tried some different veggies this year, so stay tuned.

Have you ever grew yard long beans?
Do you have a favorite recipe for long or normal green beans?

Happy Gardening!
gardeningcouple