They were wonderful while they lasted, delicious and amazingly productive, but when I took my eyes off the beans for a few days (road trip to Oregon), the aphids moved in and took over. Earlier in the season, I would have put up a fight, but I was beginning to get tired of beans anyway so I decided they might as well go.
Mom helped me tear them out and free up this year’s new fence for climbers. The fence worked so well and is so sturdy that I’m done forever with teetery bamboo pole tepees. All it took was three cheap poles and two fence panels from Home Depot.
Naturally, the minute I had empty garden space, I got itchy to start my fall garden, so last week I planted sugar snap peas the full length of the fence. Now I’m checking several times a day to see if the seeds have emerged yet. This morning I planted carrots and rat-tail radishes in the rest of the box (plus some other radish varieties and arugula in a couple of earth boxes that looked lonely and empty).
It’s hard to say whether my timing is right for starting the fall garden. Most years I’ve been too late, but this year I may be too early. Time will tell!
* French idiom meaning “the end of the beans, ” described in Clotilde’s Chocolate and Zucchini blog. Here, obviously, I mean it very literally.
Funny to think about planting more in the garden at this time of the year.
Believe it or not but we just enjoyed the first of the tomatoes THIS weekend. I should just give up and grow flowers but there is nothing like the taste of a tomato, fully ripe, and just off of the vine!
The Romanos went really fast. They lost most of their fleshiness and became tough and stringy. I just left them on the plants for a couple of weeks and the pods turned yellow. The beans were good sized then. The white beans are large about the size of a large dark kidney bean. I haven’t tried the Blue Lakes since they haven’t gotten too tough yet. I’ll try to remember and take some pictures of what the Romanos look like.
I’ve also have some Scarlet Runners that I’m letting go to pod and I’m going to try them. I read a bit about them and they said they are strong flavored.
I just saw the little hump of the first pea emerging late this afternoon!
When your Blue Lakes and Romanos go to seed, do you let them and then shell them? I didn’t know if I could do that or not. It may have been the heat (along with the aphids) that made mine go south so fast when they started to go. I never thought about that. I’ll have to consider that next summer. Who knew there was so much to know about beans? Tomatoes seem so uncomplicated in comparison!
I have some fresh cranberry beans from the farmers’ market in the fridge, ready to shell. I LOVE fresh cranberry beans! With garlic, olive oil and sage.
My haricots (maxibels) finished a while back be we still have a good supply of Blue Lake green beans. I am a little disappointed with the romano style variety I grew. It is a variety called Helga and they went to see pretty fast in the heat. But they have made some wonderful cannelli beans. I cooked up some yesterday with garlic and olive oil and served with salmon. Yumm…
Hopefully your peas will emerge soon. Ours are about 6 inches high. They are coming along kinda slowly. We fertilized them today.
I’ve never had zucchini vine borers. The last time I grew zucchini, about 10 years ago, I got squash bugs. BILLIONS of bugs crawling everywhere. And that is why I will never, never, never grow zucchini again.
I feel that way about zucchini vine borers.
Love the fence.