Completely Jaded

I tend to experiment a lot in the veggie garden, always trying new techniques and new varieties in the quest for the perfect pepper, the most terrific tomato, the coolest cucumber. Well, when it comes to green beans, I think I should just stop my search. I've grown many different kinds of beans over the years, but I have never grown any better than Jade. So why keep looking? They were unbothered by bugs until the very last week or two, they showed no sign of disease, and my little 4x4' bed produced 15 pounds of the most beautiful, tasty beans I could imagine. I think that deserves all caps—FIFTEEN POUNDS! That's 50% more beans than I got from Tenderpick last year.

I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of them when they were growing, especially since they were so lovely and floriferous, but here's a photo of some of the 12 pints that we'll be enjoying later in the fall and winter, when the days when I could go out and pick produce for the evening's meal will be just a fond memory. Until next spring.

Calendula Girl

I'm not sure what I think of the Calendula officinalis 'Citrus Smoothies' that we started from seed this year. On the one hand, they got off to a good start—they germinated well and grew vigorously in the cells, and one plant even started budding before we transplanted it to the garden. The flowers themselves, while not spectacular, were pretty enough, although the quality of the blooms was inconsistent. (This photo shows one of the nicest ones.)

The thing that puzzles me is that I put all 18 or so plants in the same spot, where they were all in the same soil and got the same amount of water and sun. So why was it that about half of the plants grew reasonably well...

...and the other half stayed roughly the same size they were when I transplanted them, and didn't offer up a single flower?

When it comes to a reliable floral display, I don't like those odds. And I don't think I'll be betting on calendula again.

Zen and the Art of Bean Cultivation

Clearly I have not yet mastered the art of growing garbanzo beans. The ten-foot row that I planted in the Miami Township Community Garden sprouted and grew well enough at first, but then seemed to get overwhelmed by the lima beans and black beans on either side. Perhaps they didn't like the soil, or the amount of water they got. In any case, the plants produced fewer than two dozen pods, and I wasn't sure exactly when to pick them. The ones that were green had well-formed beans inside them (one per pod), but the beans themselves were green, when I was expecting a nice beige nugget. The brown pods yielded beans of the right color, but they were shriveled and dry, not plump like the green ones. So I tried soaking the dried ones overnight, and voila! They did fill out and looked like what I expected garbanzo beans to look like. But what am I going to do with twelve garbanzo beans? Make a teaspoon of hummus?

I have not picked any of the lima beans yet. From two rows, I can count the number of pods on one hand. They're large, but still almost as flat as snow peas. I'll let them go longer and see what happens.

The black beans, on the other hand, have been a resounding success! As with the garbanzo beans, I wasn't sure exactly when to pick them. I had some green pods and some white pods and some brown pods, and opening all three revealed that the green pods were definitely not ready (some of the beans were still light purple rather than black), while both the white and brown pods yielded many black beauties.

I have not been going out to the community garden as often as I should, so the fact that I can harvest black beans after they have dried on the vine is a big plus in my book. Of all the beans I planted there, the black beans were the most severely attacked by bugs (Japanese beetles in particular), but that didn't seem to hurt their productivity. Of course, they're sort of like shelling peas—even from a lot of pods, you don't get a huge harvest. But just a few cups of organic, home-grown beans are better than none, and sometime this week we'll have black beans and rice for dinner! (Now if only I can figure out how to grow rice...)

Prunella Beneath the Prunus

When my husband ordered some Prunella 'Freelander' seeds this past spring, I thought they were new to me. "No," he said, "we grew them in New York. You liked them there. Remember?"

Alas, I don't, but I'm going to try really hard to remember them in the future, because he was right—I do like them. They're short, shade-tolerant perennials, with a form like primroses, and flowers like lamium (which makes sense, because they're in the same plant family). Right now I've got them planted around our waterfall and under the plum tree, but their similarity in form to primroses makes me think they would be good companions for the primroses we have growing under the crabapple. That way, we'd have flowers there in both the spring and the summer. (The Prunella started blooming in late June, and are still going.)

Our Prunella plants been flowering in various shades of pink, purple, and blue, along with some white. I've been very pleased with their performance, and this is just their first year! They're supposed to spread, but hopefully won't be too invasive. (They are in the same family as mint, which might be a bad omen...)

Now if I can just walk past them without thinking of the song from 101 Dalmatians: "Prunella De Vil, Prunella De Vil..." They're such nice plants, they don't deserve that!