Beans!

I’ve found that beans are one of the easiest things to grow in my little backyard garden. I didn’t plant any this year but, in the past, I have grown purple, yellow, and green beans to use fresh and frozen as well as rattlesnake and turtle beans for shelling. I tried lima beans and long Thai beans once each. I even experimented with garbanzos back when we were living on the mountain. The plants were beautiful, but they didn’t make a single bean.

My absolute favorite are climbing shell beans. I just love the entire process of planting them, training the vines to a homemade trellis, waiting for the pods to grow full then dry, and finally spending an afternoon on the porch shelling them.

New rattlesnake bean seedlings.

Training onto the trellis.

Bean blossoms.

Looking good!

Starting to dry out now.

Ready to shell.

Beans!

I’ve never planted enough for them to be a staple of our winter diet, but there are usually plenty for a few batches of baked beans or soups. I just used some of our dry beans collected a couple years ago for some good old fashion Boston baked beans.

From the jar...

...into the pot...

...and ready to serve.

Now I kinda feel bad that I didn’t plant any beans at all this year. Oh well. I’ll add them to my plans for next season.

And here's a bunny, just because.