Sunday, June 14, 2009

I'm a Bean Counter

The one thing I have been able to count on in the garden since the beginning has been the bush beans. Those suckers are going to be planted right in the same place next year, that's for sure. (well, the mesclun did well, too.)

As a review of what they looked like along the way, and because I know photos are really what people like to see, here's the beans in the beginning:
After they first emerged as a stately row. That was May 8, the first chance i had to get into the garden after about six days straight of rain, if I recall, and the mud there is churned up from vigorous weeding.

On May 17, they looked about the same:
although they steadily grew bigger, so big, in fact, that eventually one of them fell over and lay in the dirt.

But, eventually, they started producing little bud-like flower capsules - see the photos from May 24:
(sure wish I'd known how to use my camera's closeup function that day)

And then, on June 2, they had full-on flower pods:
Or, actually, those are the bean pods. I don't actually know the correct term of what I am seeing here. Because this is what happened next:
This is a photo from June 7. They flowered, and then the flowers withered, and were pushed off by little baby sprouting beans. You can actually see some if you look closely in this photo, beneath the white flower at the left edge of the big leaf.

Behold, on June 10:
ton's o' beans growing!! You can see, in this following photo, that some of the beans still have flowers attached that they are pushing off:
This is so neat. I just love getting out in this garden every day when I come home from work and learning about how things grow. I was and still am a true novice in every sense of the word when it comes to gardening and growing food and probably will be for years to come. But this process of discovery has been inspiring, uplifting, and awesome (awesome in the sense that it fills me with awe, I mean.) I realize I sound a little like the new parent who can't stop talking about their baby but that's why I started the blog, ha ha, so I can spit it all out here. What can I say, I am obsessed!

So, what do you think of the BEANS?!?

I am a big frequenter of others' gardening blogs and love to see photos of the crops I am growing and how they turn out in others' gardens, but I don't think I have noticed bush beans that anyone else is growing. If you have them, or you know where I can check them out, please leave me a comment :)

4 comments:

Lisa Paul said...

Beans are great fixers of nitrogen. So don't just plant them in the same place. Boost up all your soil by rotating them and sharing the nitrogen luv. But what do I know? My Fava Beans were a disaster this year. Not a bean and destroyed by aphids. But the tomatoes are now loving the nitrogen rich soil.

Cynthia Sanders said...

My beans are still itty bitty. Growing fast, but I still think they're in their "toddler" stage haha. I'll try to post pics soon.

Any kind of vegetable shouldn't be planted in the same spot 2 years in a row so make sure to plant them in a different spot next year! I'm sure if the beans did good this year something else will also grow wonderfully there next year.

And I totally agree about how addictive gardening is. This is my first year too so everything is so new and fresh and exciting! YAY!

Siren said...

thanks for the tips, you two :) maybe next year I can plant some cucumbers there. I did not do any this year and my husband is looking at me like I am crazy (why ZUCCHINI and not cucumbers, you always eat cucumbers and never zucchini, he says)

I am glad I know about not planting anything in the same spot two years in a row. I definitely won't be doing that with the lettuce or herbs since most of them did not love the places I put them this year.

TheKitchenWitch said...

That's so exciting about the beans! I'm a novice gardener too, so I'll be hangin' around looking for tips!