Hyacinth Beans and Yard-Long/Asparagus beans 27 June 2009

This morning it was already brilliantly sunny when I awoke.  Enthused by the pleasant weather and the beautiful sunshine, I headed out into the garden to get some work done while the city was still fairly sleepy on this lovely Saturday.  I started out by sowing the hyacinth beans and yard-long/asparagus beans I did not get around to sowing yesterday.  (Descriptions follow the main entry.)  After that, I planted the things that were blooming or about to bloom – the six-pack of robust marigolds I got at this week’s farmers’ market, the three Gloriosa daisies I got at the plant sale at the historic estate, a heliotrope I got from Select Seeds, and the second rudbeckia I got from last week’s market (the untagged one, so I don’t know if it’s another ‘Indian Summer’ or a different cultivar).  I also moved the butterfly delphinium that had become entangled in the bean patch and looked increasingly sad.  I noted that the cucumber, though still only a couple feet tall, already has a bud.  I also noticed that even more morning glory seedlings have come up since yesterday.

The Downy Woodpeckers particularly like my street tree, the honey locust I’m always complaining about, because the same things that cause its penchants for dropping twigs/branches on my garden also mean that it’s got several dead or dying branches (though it is huge and most of its branches are still alive).  As so often happens, this morning one of them (the male this time) was searching the tree for breakfast as I was working in the garden.  It was nice to hear its whinny, and occasionally hear a responding whinny (presumably its mate) from what sounded like perhaps half a block away.   It was so quiet that early here in the city that I could hear the response even with my less stellar human ears.  In my experiences, Downies are extremely curious; in my old garden, they would sometimes sit in the neighbor’s tree (that hung over my garden) and watch me work in the garden, and in this one, sometimes they pause in their locust search to appraise me and my activities.  I think they are quite nifty birds.

After some days of not seeing the ladybug larva, and wondering if perhaps it had turned into an adult ladybug or had been eaten, I spotted a ladybug larva while working, hanging out on the bud of a tender salvia that I planted yesterday (and which I think I forgot to mention at the time).  Of course it may not be the same one – yesterday I also spied a few ladybugs in the garden, so they seem to be reacting to the terrible aphid problem I’ve been having this year now that it’s been nice enough for them to do much flying.  (I hope they eat leafhoppers too, though I doubt it.  The leafhoppers were so bad earlier this summer, though I’m not seeing as many now.  I’m also seeing a lot of slugs since it’s been so rainy, but I know ladybugs don’t eat those!)   May the ladybugs have laid many eggs in addition to doing their own munching away.

I was also right that there are caterpillars (or maybe just one mobile one) on the calendulas that I planted from the farmers’ market earlier this summer.  (I believe they came with the plants, as the problem started nearly immediately after planting.)  They are especially affecting flowering, as they seem to either eat part of the bud or do something else that causes the bud to stop production when partly formed.  They also seem to attract ants, or maybe they attract aphids that then attract ants.  I’ve never seen a caterpillar on calendula before, and did not realize that any ate it.  (I have tried to find out what kind it is, but have only found references posted by other gardeners who also did not know the name.  It is a very pale green that quite successfully matches the color of calendula leaves/stems, making it difficult to spot them for those who don’t have ants clustered around the caterpillars.)

“They” say it may thunderstorm this afternoon, and indeed, by now huge cumulous clouds – bordering already on cumulonimbus – are massing on the western horizion.  I hope it does.  I’d like a good thunderstorm; it’s been so cold we’ve hardly had any yet this year.

I took advantage of High Country Garden’s sale selling off their spring stock (which they, and many other US mail-order companies, do before ceasing shipping till late summer) last weekend, but my plants didn’t ship till Tuesday or Wednesday.  They had the misfortune of being delivered yesterday, which as I mentioned yesterday was the hottest day this month.

Now that it’s finally been sunny again, I need to take some new photos of the garden while the sunshine lasts.

Here is the other lima I sowed; I’ve added it to the previous post as well, but am pasting it here in case anyone already read that one.  I got it from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange this winter, and am not sure why they already removed it from their website.

VIOLET’S MULTI-COLORED BUTTERBEANS 80-90 days [Banks County, GA, saved by 4 generations of Violet Brady Westbrook’s family.] A rainbow of colors – cream, beige, red-brown, and violet-purple, with speckles and swirls. Small seeds have great flavor, good both fresh or dried. 3-5” pods. Semi-bush plants have good disease- and drought-resistance.

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Hyacinth Beans AKA Lablab Beans

As regular readers likely remember, last year was my first one growing hyacinth beans.  I was astounded at the vigor with which they took off once hot weather set in, and how they seemed completely undaunted by the hottest, most humid days my climate could throw at them.  Gorgeous plants usually grown as ornamentals by Americans, they most often have purple stems, purple veining on the leaves, purple flowers, and purple pods with a velvety feel to them, though variations exist (as can be seen below).

Hyacinth Bean (species) The Hyacinth Bean is featured on the arbor in the Monticello kitchen garden and draws countless questions from visitors every year. In the Garden Book in 1812 Jefferson mentioned, “Arbor beans white, scarlet, crimson, purple . . . on the long walk of the garden.” This tender annual vine grows to twenty feet and produces attractive purplish-green leaves, showy rose-purple flowers and pods, and unusual black and white seeds. Although not mentioned by Jefferson, Hyacinth Bean was sold by his favorite nurseryman, Bernard McMahon, in 1804.  Plant seeds in sunny garden soil after the last frost, and give the plants plenty of room. A native of tropical Asia, the unusual seeds and pods are also very ornamental. (Monticello)

Moonshadow (Dolichos lablab) Beautiful purple pods are used in Asia as a curry and stir-fry vegetable. Pick when small and tender, as old pods and dry beans may be poisonous! The long, rambling vine is also very ornamental with lilac-colored blossoms and purple stems. Thomas Jefferson planted this fine bean at Monticello. (Baker Creek)

Akahana Fujimame This hyacinth bean is a beautiful climbing bean that is grown for ornamental purposes as well as for eating. This red flowering Japanese variety is particularly popular. The pods are flat, thick and curved. Young pods can be sliced or used whole, and either boiled or stir-fried. Warning: Hyacinth beans naturally have cyanogenic glucoside (a plant compound that contains sugar and produces cyanide). Hyacinth beans should never be eaten raw. Always cook hyacinth beans well before eating. (Kitazawa Seed Co.)

Shirohana Fujimame This popular climbing hyacinth bean is grown for its beauty as much as for its beans. The fast growing vine produces elegant white flowers that give way to thick, but flat, curved pods. Stir-fry or boil these beans, which can be sliced or used whole. (Kitazawa Seed Co.)

Ruby Moon Exotic looking ornamental climber with gorgeous sprays of amethyst blossoms followed by glossy deep purple pods. Show stopping on fence or trellis! (Renee’s Garden Seeds)

Purple Moon [Another bean that’s been taken off the site that was selling it just this past winter! Here is the description from the seed packet:] This popular climbing hyacinth bean vine is grown for its beauty as much as for its beans. The plant growth is vigorous producing brilliantly colored red-purple flowers. The bean pods [are] also red-purple in color, with a flat, thick and curved shape. (Kitazawa Seed Co.)

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Yard-Long Beans AKA Asparagus Beans

Red Noodle The unusual purple-red color of this yard long bean is familiar in southern China. The beans can grow up to 22″ long. The plant is heat tolerant and grows vigorously. The bean will lose its red color when cooked. These beans are stringless, sweet and tender. Cut into 2″ sections and deep fry, stir-fry, steam or add to soup. (Kitazawa Seed Co.)

Mosaic The variety name, Mosaic, describes this bean’s color. The pod’s purple, red and green colors create a mosaic pattern. It generously produces 16″ long beans that are crisp. These beans are most familiar in Southern China and are highly prized because of their sweet, tender pods. Cut into 2″ sections and deep fry, stir-fry, steam or add to soup. (Kitazawa)

Tsu In Yard long beans have been cultivated for centuries in India and China. This variety is unusual and recognized for its beautiful purple color pods. A generous producer of 16″-20″ long beans that are soft textured. The bean’s purple color is retained even when cooked. These beans are tender and stringless, and can be used with meats or with other vegetables in quick stir-fry dishes. In addition to the pods and seeds, the young leaves and stems are also edible when lightly steamed. (Kitazawa)

Kurojuroku This fast growing and generous producing variety of yard long bean thrives in the heat. Each vine yields dark green slender pods 14″-18″ long that contain 10-20 black seeds each. One of the most popular varieties grown, these stringless beans are highly prized in Asia because of their sweet and crunchy pods. (Kitazawa)

Garden plans for 2009 (part 1): Crops 23 January 2009

[Written over several days]

In my last two posts, I’ve done a retrospective of the past growing season’s successes and failures.  I’ve interspersed some thoughts on things I’m going to continue doing next year and others I’m planning to change.  In this post I’m going to talk more about my plans for the garden for 2009.

Crop Plans for 2009

• Beans, beans, beans – As you likely already know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time or have ever visited one of my gardens, I LOVE growing beans.  (And beans love me!  Garden beans thrive under my care, often growing to three times the size each cultivar’s vines supposedly reach.)  Every year I try at least a few new-to-me cultivars and/or species to see how they do and this year will be no different.  I’ve already ordered some more beans in my first seed orders of 2009 and plan to order a few more cultivars.  I’m also going to try at least one different cultivar of lima to give myself one last shot at growing limas here, and since my cowpeas did poorly this year I’m going to try new ones next year as well.  Plus I am planning to grow yard-long/asparagus beans for the first time, specifically ‘Red Chinese Noodle’ and the descriptively titled ‘Green Pod Red Seed.’ I am also going to give soybeans one last go, this time growing one of the same cultivars as before and switching the other to a new-to-me cultivar (‘Moon Cake’).  I think the soybeans had the same problem as the limas in being shaded out too much too fast.  I’m hoping better placement will help them this year.  I also need to make sure they have more consistent water when they’re flowering and podding up on the dry, hot site (I just read this winter that they don’t set pods as well with inconsistent or insufficient water).  Lastly, I am considering growing tepary beans this year, which I haven’t grown for a while.   I would need to grow them away from the soybeans, as these desert beans have the opposite issue – too much water results in lots of foliage and few beans!
• Tomatillos – I have this grand plan to try tomatillos this year.  We’ll see how it actually works out!   I want to try the standard (and rather dully titled if one knows Spanish) ‘Toma Verde’ as well as a purple cultivar (probably ‘Purple de Milpa’) and probably a third for balance, to round out the experiment.  I have yet to decide whether I’m going to try them by the bean patch, in pots, or both to see which does better.   I last grew tomatillos several years ago, a single plant that didn’t produce until very late in the season but grew quite tall in the meantime (taller than my tomato plants that year) and then produced an incredible amount of flowers when it did finally start.  Unfortunately an unusually early frost killed it before the flowers could turn into very much fruit.
• Cherry tomatoes – I used to regularly grow cherry tomatoes in my old, more spoilt garden.  In 2007 I grew unknown-cultivar cherry tomatoes that were given to me by a friend whose cherry tomatoes regularly self-seed in his local garden.  I had varying success with the plants growing them in pots in the semi-shady back yard.  (Since the sunnier front yard is on a very busy road, I don’t like to place pots in it.)  This time I’d like to grow named cultivars.  I’m especially interested in growing ‘Gardener’s Delight’ AKA ‘Sugar Lump,’ which I grew in my old garden, as well as a few other interesting cultivars from Bountiful Gardens (most especially ‘Isis Candy’ and ‘Chadwick’s Cherry’) and possibly a grape, pear, or wild cherry tomato too.   [Note: It’s so easy to get a fairly good variety of heirloom regular-sized tomatoes at the farmers’ market here that I’m still not sure it’s worth the large space and effort to grow my own until I am in a larger-sized garden (wherever that may be).  My old garden had a few cultivars for a couple years but they tended to not be the greatest-performing tomato plants ever and I ended up buying more from the market than I was able to harvest from my own garden anyhow.  I remember growing ‘Silvery Fir Tree’ – which actually did quite well in a large pot on the sunny, hot (roofless) back porch – as well as in-the-ground ‘Paul Robeson’ and ‘Green Zebra.’ I know there were more but I can’t remember the cultivars right now.]
• Root crops! – This is one of my biggest changes planned for the 2009 garden so we’ll see how it goes.  I am planning to do an experiment whereby I try growing root crops in large pots.  I have yet to decide if I’m going to also try them in the bean patch, which has been amended with heaps of compost but still has what I’d charitably call “questionable soil.”  I still regularly find shards of broken glass, rusty nails, bottle caps, etc. in addition to the millions of rocks and pieces of asphlat/concrete/etc that appear to be buried in the garden.  (The front garden’s border was made entirely of large rocks I dug up and I still have many left over.)  I am less hesitant to harvest plants that produce distinct products – like beans – because many studies have shown that the plant itself tends to hold most to all of the toxins from the soil while the produce has little or none.  Anyway, my plans for this vascillate between only pursuing simple plants like radishes and small carrots and trying more elaborate – and harder to find here – things like parsnips and salsify.  The latter would likely have to be grown in half-barrel planters.  I’d really like to try growing the latter types to see what happens, but am not sure how practical nor realistic it is.
• Greens – Every year here I mean to grow greens in pots and both years so far I haven’t actually gotten around to doing it.  I loved growing greens in my old garden, which was full of beautiful heirloom lettuces, mache/corn salad, Siberian kale (that once stood from February to the following January), and so on.  This year I keep swearing to myself that I’m actually going to do it.  Here’s hoping!
• Okra – I’m not quite giving up on okra yet.  Last year the farms at the market here had the best crop I’ve ever seen at local markets, so if only my plants had survived their childhoods I think they would have done well.  I’m planning to try different cultivars than last time, and also to place them in different spots than before.  I’m also planning to try to grow supposed dwarf cultivars this year (though keep in mind that some regular okras top 10 feet, so “dwarf” is relative here) to see if that helps both in their growing to adulthood and in their producing better in my climate, as the dwarf ones in seed listings often have earlier production times than the non-dwarf.  Last year it took them so long to sprout and die that it was risky replanting a new crop that late.  This year I’m considering two other strategies to help with that – one being the different placement I already mentioned and the other being the possibility of starting them early indoors, something I’ve not tried before.  I’m planning to try ‘Burgundy’ again and try the new-to-me ‘Choppee’ from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
• Eggplant – OK, I didn’t actually mean to grow eggplant this year.  I’ve tried growing eggplant before under better conditions and it didn’t really do well for me that year (I haven’t tried it again, yet).  I don’t know why since it’s in the same family as tomatoes and tomatillos and those did great that year.  However, I was looking through a new-to-me site, Amishland Heirloom Seeds (which I clicked through to because I was looking for a domestic source for the rare ‘Blue Pod/Blue Podded’ pea, AKA ‘Capucijners’ and ‘Pois a Crosse Violette’), and I saw this one eggplant offered that I couldn’t even imagine what it would taste like and couldn’t imagine ever finding it in any market here (‘Udmalbet,’ from India).  And so, before you knew it, I had clicked through and purchased it.  This is one of the biggest dangers of the internet for gardeners:  Seeds from all over the world, imported to your country, literally right at your fingertips, just a click away from no longer being out of reach.
• Chiles – As I mentioned recently, I’m looking to start growing chiles again this year.  I grew some in my old garden and then this past year I grew ornamental chiles starting in late summer (when they became available at my local nursery).  As I mentioned here last year, they did better than I expected them to once I replanted them in the hottest spot in the garden, the corner where the two retaining walls meet in the front garden.  They did so well that the leaves kept going through light frosts (despite some pretty impressive slug damage thanks to our wet summer) and one of the plants survived till a pretty hard frost.  The chiles themselves stayed on the plant until snow withered them.  Since I last mentioned it, I ordered a few chiles from Amishland Heirloom Seeds (‘Royal Black,’ ‘Tennessee Cheese,’ and ‘Amish Pimiento’).  I’m looking to order one or two more from Native Seeds/SEARCH, focusing on Southwestern chiles, particularly New Mexican green chiles.
• Slow-bolt cilantro – I tend to use cilantro a lot in my summertime cooking, so I’m going to try once again to grow it this year.  Last year my in situ sowing resulted in a whopping zero actual plants, so I’m considering starting them indoors this time.   I’m also looking into other slow-bolting cultivars (besides the one I tried last year).
• Slow-bolt parsley – Similarly, I am looking for a slowly bolting flat-leaved parsley cultivar.  I enjoyed the flowers and harvesting the seeds last year, and was impressed with how long the parsleys stood after they bolted, but I’d like to complement that with a parsley that I can continue to harvest from over the summertime.  We’ll see how that works.  I’ll probably try to start at least some of those seeds indoors this time as well, as none of my in situ parsley sowings resulted in actual plants either.
• Sweet marjoram – Last year my sweet marjoram suffered terribly in the growing shade of the bean plants.  I’d like to try it again in a new location and see if it does better.  I need to balance keeping it in the most compost-enriched area with giving it enough sunlight to thrive.
• Alpine strawberries – The ones I planted from plants have done great in the back garden over the past two years (and the strawberry-thieving squirrels sure appreciate the steady supply of fruit).  I’m going to try growing out more plants from seeds this year.   I ordered ‘Red Wonder’ and ‘Yellow Wonder’ from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Upcoming posts: Flower plans for 2009 and a general post.