Bean-y Tales

If I can count on anything to do well in my garden it's beans. Good thing I like them! D likes them too, but not as much as I do. This year I expanded my bean horizons with more than the usual plantings of Fresh Pick bush beans. Since space in the garden was at a premium I planted the fence with a number of pole varieties and I thought I'd report on how all the beans are doing.

 In the past I haven't had much production from my pole beans and that includes the much vaunted Fortex, whose bean I like but would've like more of. I've written enough about my Gold Marie Vining  bean which is pictured below. It produces like mad and I hope to be able to keep on growing this variety. Above is my planting of Chinese Red Noodle beans. After getting those first two green noodle beans a few weeks ago, I haven't seen anything...until....this week! Hooray! There are baby red noodle beans.

 At the far end of the fence, past the Gold Maries, past the Red Noodles, is the planting of scarlet runner beans. Planted a bit late for runner beans, they set all of two beans before the hot weather closed down production. Our recent run of unusually cool temps has led to renewed profuse blossoming and yes, some beans. Looks like we'll get to try out a meal of runner beans after all.

 Here are a few close-ups of the baby Scarlet Runner beans. They're quite small at the moment and I'm a bit unsure when to harvest them as they are a new variety to me and nobody I know has ever grown them.

 Below are a couple of pictures of the developing Red Noodle Beans. I'm so excited about them and can't wait to see them develop their color and length. Yes, these look like they'll be red! You can especially see the color in the second photo.

 And below are some noodle bean blossoms. They seem to be rather demure and I miss them before they are already gone and showing beans instead.

On the opposite end of the garden the fence has some beans too. The first is called Aunt Jean's pole bean and it is being grown for dried beans. I've never done this before, so hoping those nice plump beans you see below will dry well. I picked this variety because it is a pole bean and I just don't have the space to devote to the bush varieties.

 Last of the pole beans is good old Kentucky Wonder. It is taking forever to produce and I have taken the photo below of the one and only blossom I've seen so far on those vines. Hope there are more!

 It seems just wrong not to include a picture of my workhorse bush beans. They have been the foundation of my bean harvest for years. I have three plantings of Fresh Pick and the bed pictured is the second one, just about ready to produce. This year I had a scare when Johnny's seeds didn't carry them in their catalogue, but thankfully they still had them to order online. If they don't carry them next year I may have to search out another variety. I've tried Provider in the past and liked them, but not as well as these.

Those are my bean tales for 2013! I'll be sure to post pictures of the noodle beans when they look like noodles!