I think the clear winner this year were these red Mexican bush beans. They come out of the shell a lovely pink and then slowly darken as they dry towards the deeper red you'd see in a kidney bean. They are about half the size of a kidney bean. We have about half a litre dried and another third of a litre drying or still on the plant. I am keen to try them but I will admire them for awhile first.
We also planted some Ireland creek Anne beans. Meh. They are okay but I think I will try pinto beans next year instead. And we plants a bunch of painted lady beans (below). These are a large pole bean (lima sized) and took forever to set. Many are still too green to harvest and I'd like to see how they taste before deciding of they are worth doing again.
All told, we grew about two litres of beans in not very much space. I'm going to try to do some more next year (with fewer green beans!) as they are a good source of protein and they self-preserve. After cleaning potatoes and blanching carrots to freeze, this is a nice feature. After several hours of shucking, I will never look at a bag of beans the same way again. Next up: high bush cranberry jelly.
great post! We were also inspired by Kevin's blog post on beans and grew some kidney beans this year. I've yet to put up my post about it, but will do in November. I was surprised at how many beans we got off the plants!
ReplyDeleteThanks Amy. we made gigantes last night using the painted lady beans and they were delicious. About the only down side is that we used half of what we grew in the one dish! So I'll be growing more beans next year at the north side of a couple of beds.
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