2024 Little Easy Bean Network - Growing Heirloom Beans Of Today And Tomorrow

[flowerbug]

yeah, i'm losing some light due to trees now out back later in the day. cedar trees if they are big enough that wood is nice to smell. if you make anything from them it will probably last a long time.

 

[Blue-Jay]

I thought the look of the pole beans in the front was great this year, and will do more next year for sure.

I have planted a tomato plant in front of my house. I plant pole beans in my south flower bed. I have a neighbor who was born and raised in Stuttgart. She tells me that is very European. Nothing wrong with it. Europeans don't waste space when growing their garden plants. They'll plant veggies even in the flowerbeds.

I like the trend in some places where people take out their entire front lawn and make it garden. If my home owners association would allow it. I think I would do the same.

 

[flowerbug]

...
I like the trend in some places where people take out their entire front lawn and make it garden. If my home owners association would allow it. I think I would do the same.

stealth decorative veggies.

there's not much lawn left here and i'd like to get rid of even more of it if i could. the front lawn was mistakenly covered and planted with gardens but it really should not have been since it is the septic drain field. eventually i'd like to remove a lot of the rock pathways and have it planted with more flowers but moving all those rocks and gravel is literally tons of work and i may not really be able to do it that much any more. so for now it all stays as it is.

 

[heirloomgal]

'Cresnjevec'
Another bean I've wanted to grow for a couple years. Finally did!

 

[flowerbug]

'Cresnjevec'
Another bean I've wanted to grow for a couple years. Finally did!

beautiful dark purple! nice shape!

 

[flowerbug]

picked through the last bean garden for a few hours. now i have a paper bag and a half more Purple Dove beans to shell out. i was wondering if they were damaged by the frosts but they looked ok when i spot checked them before and during picking. a few pods here or there were still not fully dried down but i decided to leave them out there as extra worm food.

it was actually two full paper bags as i'd brought in a box top full already...

 

[Blue-Jay]

'Cresnjevec'
Another bean I've wanted to grow for a couple years. Finally did!

This has been one of my favorites since I first acquired and grew Cresnjevec. Very productive. A beautiful color and produces excellent quality beans. A real gem.

Love the photos that should make a bean lover just droll with excitment.

 

[heirloomgal]

It was a long afternoon/evening of transferring beans from paper bags to glass jars (without lids). Didn't seem like it would take soooo long to do that, but DS helped me for 2 hours and we got 3/4 done. There were a few pods still to be shelled in some of the bags as we went along, so that took some time. Feels great to be on this step, though my worry wart brain worries about putting them in jars since they're a little deep. But they've been drying for a long while already so I'm probably being paranoid. Plus, the jars are open so they're still breathing.

The start pile...this continued around the room. Everyone here just loves living with me.

I can definitely confirm that Appalachian beans do great in Northern Ontario! Without question those beans blew all the rest away in yields - Ruth Bible, Fat Man, Aunt Maggie, Granny, Green String. Myrtle Allen is one non-Appalachian bean that did superb too. How funny, I always avoided them thinking I'd fail for sure in my location! Brings me back to my garden mantra, 'you never know'! Lots of pictures still need to be done, so I'm hoping for some good sunshine before the temps drop.

It's nice to have my living room floor back! Almost time to decorate for Halloween so it's good timing. The North Carolina cross, a Wildtäler plant and the runner beans are yet to fully dry down; I opened a few pods of the North Carolina cross though and they are very pretty - purple marbling color.

Couple pics from the tree take down.
You can see how big those trees were from the the dead zone around them, they were probably 10 ft across and at least 20 feet high. That's DH's guess, mine is that they were closer to 30. At 40 years old, they were towering over the house. Neighbour hauled 5 big trailer loads away for us, we kept all the logs and bigger branches. The ground is really raised up from all the roots, which will have to levelled next year when we take these stumps out.

The stumps at the far end in the pic are where the 'wall-o-trees' was, all the way across, so the sunlight now getting through will be a whole new life for this garden.

Only one teeny little problem. We wanted to keep one columnar growth type cedar next to the house, it was the only one that had not gotten overgrown and still had some shape to it. Unfortunately, it's gone bald on one side with the crowding! DH wants to wait and see if the sun exposure will force some new growth, I'm humoring him about it but I don't think that'll happen. The tree is just too old, and grew in that cluster for too long. It's a shame, I'd like to keep that one tree but if it doesn't fill in it'll have to come down too. It seems so big now, but it's the smallest tree there was compared to all the others.

 

[flowerbug]

...
Only one teeny little problem. We wanted to keep one columnar growth type cedar next to the house, it was the only one that had not gotten overgrown and still had some shape to it. Unfortunately, it's gone bald on one side with the crowding! DH wants to wait and see if the sun exposure will force some new growth, I'm humoring him about it but I don't think that'll happen. The tree is just too old, and grew in that cluster for too long. It's a shame, I'd like to keep that one tree but if it doesn't fill in it'll have to come down too. It seems so big now, but it's the smallest tree there was compared to all the others.
...

it may take some years to fill back in. are you willing to wait that long?

as swamp loving plants cedars build up their own pads like that.

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

Yikes… It might take another 25 years for the tree to sorta fill in, if of course the whole side still can respond with new growth. Many do not., if so slowly with stunted growth.

I speak from experience . Same issue with my trees. Will take more than what’s left of my lifetime left see enough growth .

Sometimes the easiest things get complicated. That’s the way of gardening. Those trees were a big job ..kudos to your DH.

I’m glad you have more space to grow beans.