canning green beans

We used the canner two nights in a row! We're on fire!

We harvested the beans this morning - some were overdue to be picked, which will affect the flavor, but not much we can do about that now. We mostly harvested kentucky wonders and a few cannellini lingots. The blue lake are not ready to be picked yet.

We got one jar of cannellini lingots, and we used a special jar for them because we want to be able to compare the taste after canning - seed catalogs do not consisently talk about the preserving profile of different varieties, so we have to do our own experiments.

The only other choices we made were: whether to cut the beans into one inch sections or leave them whole (after clipping off the ends), and whether to cook the beans before canning them. We got a late start so I chose the lazy option both times - we left them whole and we cold packed them.

Looking forward to eating them! This run with the canner went a little bit more smoothly. We're getting this stuff under our feet.

(7/21)

first green bean harvest

Here are the green beans we harvested. The top photo shows the cannellini lingots - a pretty small harvest. Later I was looking at my records from when I ordered seeds, and it turns out I intended these for dry soup beans, not for canning green beans. That's okay, they can be used for both.


The next photo shows the harvest from the kentucky wonders. Seems like so much!


We picked beans that were long, and rounded - particularly where we could see the actual beans inside the pod. I'll let you know how they taste once we start opening up the cans, but one of my sources said that when the beans are bulging out (as the bottom bean is in the photo below) they are actually a little overripe, and they won't taste as tender as the flatter beans (the top bean) will.


There were quite a few that were ready! We will can tonight.

I want to separate out the kentucky wonder and the blue lake, so that I know if one of them has a better flavor or holds up better in canning. But the way the beans grew, it is hard to tell which is which. I'm trying to do at least one can that it all one edge of the bed so that I can be pretty sure they are kentucky wonder, and at least one can that is all the other edge of the bed so I can be pretty sure they are blue lake. My spouse picked these beans and he thinks we really didn't get any blue lakes, only the kentucky wonders.

re-doing the bean trellis

The bean trellis failed on us - after it broke in the wind storm, my spouse propped it up with extra support, but a few weeks later the bamboo poles were completely falling over with the weight of the beans.

He went and bought relatively inexpensive wood and built a taller, stronger trellis. He built the frame without using his saw, he just screwed the wood together and braced it using string to the fence and to the ground using stakes. Then he tied string between the old top and the new top. At this point, it really seems impossible to undo the strings, so hopefully the bean vines will figure out that they have new room to grow up.


I really like the way it looks, and it's easier to walk around when I'm doing japanese beetle duty. I don't have to duck under six strings, there is only one that is in my way now. We only spent about 30 bucks on the wood and twine, and we should be able to unscrew the wood to store it over the winter. The photo above was taken a few weeks after the new trellising was built - as you can see, the beans quickly vined to the top of the new trellis. I think it's about eight feet tall - I can't reach the top leaves for picking japanese beetles.

It is important to me to garden inexpensively, and this seems like a good option for beans. Ideally we would have had a plan for this last fall and we could've been on the lookout for something free, something re-used...but it is what it is. We also should have switched the new, taller trellis more quickly - the vines wrapped around each other into huge clusters that are really hard to pick beans out of.

bean update - time for canning!

I've been so focused on finding japanese beetles on my bean plants that I didn't notice that there are a TON of beans ready for harvest! Usually I really enjoy finding the baby vegetables and watching them grow until they are ready to be eaten, but this time I didn't even notice what was going on. Pictured above is a baby bean - I didn't get a good photo of the more mature beans.

I'm not exactly sure how many will be ready to be picked. Only one of my resources gives a tip for knowing when to harvest, and it says to pick them when they are still immature because they taste better - before the beans start to swell. That makes it seem like they should be flat. But every time I buy green beans at the farmers market or get them in my CSA, they are nice and round. It seems like that is what I would be looking for, so I'm just going to pick the ones that I would want to eat and can them.

I was not prepared to can this early - I need to wash the jars, buy rings (I got several canning jars off freecycle but they didn't have any type of lid), take stock of the other canning supplies I have, figure out exactly how this whole canning thing works, and then find a chunk of time to actually do the work!

japanese beetles

Well, it happened. I found dozens of Japanese beetles on the beans, and a few on my potatoes. From what I've observed, they are THE major pest to contend with in central Illinois. I was surprised because all of my friends and neighbors assured me that although they'd heard Japanese beetles were a problem, they'd never actually experienced them. I was not so lucky.

I had already been advised that the best way to get rid of them was to take a bucket of soapy water, set it under the plant, and shake the plant gently. Their instinct is to drop to the ground when the plant shakes, so they land in the bucket and quickly drown. I'll spare you the photo of the floating bugs:)

For me, this was only somewhat effective. Any that fell in the bucket were taken care of - they swim around for a while but they aren't able to get out, so they do die (perhaps cruel, I know). BUT the problem was that many of them would fly away rather than dropping. Perhaps the species is adapting, but I don't even think I was able to get half of them. Plus, it might work for certain types of plants but for the beans, it was logistically difficult to put the bucket in just the right spot.

What I found works best is to wear garden gloves, put one gloved hand underneath a leaf with a beetle on it (in case the beetle does drop off), then pick the beetles one by one and throw them into the bucket on the ground. This way they couldn't fly away, and I could tell if each individual was taken care of by the splash in the bucket. I did this three times a day and sometimes it took a half hour, because even doing this one by one some of them escaped (for example, there are often several on one leaf, and they fly away easily). I would do several loops around the bean bed, staying out there until I couldn't find any more. I found that they were the thickest at the hottest part of the day, which motivated me to get out to the garden at a time I would normally insist on staying inside. Also, I've noticed that the beetles are more likely to just drop off the leaf in the early morning before the sun is out, but later in the day they are more likely to fly away.

I was really panicked about this because they did an incredible amount of damage in a short period of time [see sample of demolished leaf photo below], and I found them soon before we were leaving on a week-long trip. When I returned, I was prepared to mourn the loss of my bean crop...


but to my surprise, the beans were living and continuing to grow. Yes, the beetles were still there and yes, they had continued to do damage in the week I was gone. But they didn't destroy any of the crops. They may have stunted their growth, and we will see what happens in the rest of the summer...but for now, I feel like my bean crop is safe. Hooray!

I would recommend taking care of the beetles the way I did. It can seem daunting to remove the beetles one by one, and perhaps gross - but as long as I had gloves on, it didn't bother me to pick up the beetles. And I could definitely tell each day that there were fewer beetles than there had been the day before at that time. Plus, beetles reproduce, so each beetle you get rid of is saving you exponential headache the following year. I would say about 1/3 of the beetles I find are engaged in reproductive activities when I snatch them and dunk them in the water. After they mate, they deposit eggs in the soil that turn into grubs, that turn into more beetles. Best to nip that in the bud!

Lesson learned:)

Some things I've learned about beans, particularly pole beans:

Thin them before they begin to vine!!!!!!! Sure, we probably should've known better - but we're busy and it didn't seem like a big deal until I'd spent four hours of a Saturday gently (read: s-l-o-w-l-y) and methodically unravelling bean vines. Since we hadn't installed the trellising system yet, they had nothing to wrap themselves around except each other. It was painstaking work - but the good news is, since it's been several weeks since this happened, we know it didn't damage any of them. I was worried because some of them broke, and some of them looked very wilted after the whole ordeal. But they bounced back. It was like unraveling a huge ball of delicate chain necklaces that all look exactly the same. I wish I had a picture of how inter-twined the vines were, but I was too focused on the task at hand.

The other thing - stay on top of the weeds. Once we installed the bird netting, we weren't able to weed...and once we took the bird netting off, we prioritized thinning the beans over weeding, for better or worse. Then the beans got too tall to reach in and weed, particularly with the trellising in the way. This is one of the biggest changes I would make next year - I think I would have spent less time weeding overall if I had made more of an effort early on to hoe the small weeds. I would also use bark or grass clippings or some sort of mulch, to suppress the weeds. On the beds we prepared and planted later, we've done this, and it's made a PHENOMENAL difference.

By the way, all of the beans that we thought were bush beans have turned out to be bush beans. This is a relief, since I was worried about trellising in an earlier post. And although I'm irritated that the cannellini beans are bush instead of pole, it hasn't caused any practical problems.

trellising

We decided to try something new with trellising systems. Mainly because we wanted to do it cheap - tomato cages seem to regularly cost 10+ each, a price we could not afford for 22 plants. We bought bamboo poles, put them in the ground, and zig zagged twine across to support tomatoes. We did a similar thing for the pole beans. The bamboo poles were quite cheap - maybe 10 or 20 dollars total for all we needed for both crops.

It just isn't working, for either crop. We could instantly tell that it wouldn't work for the tomatoes, as the poles weren't strong enough for the plants even before they set fruit. Below you can see a photo of the poles as we were beginning to tie the string around.


The bean poles were better supported, my spouse used anchors and counterweights but it still dragged the strings way down. i thought they would be six feet high but they are less than four feet when we first installed the trellising. The situation has gone from questionable to bad, as some of the bean poles snapped in a storm. My spouse fixed them, but a couple of weeks later the beans have gotten so heavy that the poles are bending way down. I think it is too late to try something new so we will continue to prop up the current trellising systems. The photo below is from the day we first installed the bean trellising.


The poles came in a package so we couldn't really tell how strong they were until we got home and began trying to put them in the ground. I think we both knew it probably wasn't going to be a successful experiment but we tried anyway. I will definitely do something different next year - either I will look for some free or cheap rebar or I will have my spouse build me a large sturdy wooden frame for stringing the twine for the beans. I do not have any ideas for the tomatoes yet - even if we got free tomato cages, I would rather not use them because in my experience they are not strong enough and they are awkward to store. If you've got ideas, hit me.

Beans continued

Here are photos of the baby beans, as promised. The first photo is of the dry soup beans, and the second photo is of the green beans.





We ended up putting bird netting around the green beans because I kept seeing crows hanging out in that bed, and when I would run out there it looked like they were pulling plants out just for fun. Jerks. Turns out that if they were the culprits, they were probably just looking for worms. It seems that they moved on to the carrot bed instead.

Anyway, I wanted to use this post also to talk about one of the problems I've encountered with the beans. Not all of the seed packets make it clear whether that variety is a bush type or a pole (vining) type! I wanted to plant the pole types together, of course, so that it will be easier to build the trellising. It has been a few weeks since these photos were taken, and it is clear we planted one bush type in with the pole beans. That is not the end of the world, but it also looks like one of the ones we thought was a bush type is actually a pole type. This would be tricky to cope with. It isn't certain so we're going to wait and see, but it's a frustration that could have been avoided if seed companies labelled their packages more carefully. In the future, I will take this into account when purchasing my bean seeds.

Fourth planting!

Fourth planting included six types of beans! According to the seed packets, they needed 60 degree soil at least for germination.

I chose all heirlooms varieties, four for dry soup beans and three for green beans (for canning). The dry soup beans included yin yang and tiger's eye from territorial, and hutterite and indian woman yellow from seeds of change. These were chosen mostly for taste (I was hoping for a bean experience you don't get with the few varieties available at the supermarket - I love beans, so extra tasty ones are especially exciting) but also for appearance - the yin yang and tiger's eye both look fun! The green beans included cannellini, blue lake, and kentucky wonder, all from territorial. These were chosen for flavor. I've never liked green beans very much until two years ago when we had some delicious fresh ones from our CSA in Eugene. Since I'm pretty new to the green bean experience, I chose tried-and-true varieties.

To plant them, my resources didn't give directions on the best method - some seeds do well with competition and others don't. Those that do well with competition should be planted with a few seeds together in one spot, keeping the same spacing between seed groups that you will eventually want for your mature plants. Those that do not do well with competition should be put in individual holes but with less space between them than you eventually want. As they grow, you will thin either one out to get the strongest, fastest plants. Each bean bed had two rows, so I did one of each. I think beans do better with competition, because the side where I planted them four inches apart with 3-4 seeds in each hole looked strongest and grew fastest. Yin Yang had disappointing germination (maybe about 60%), but everything else looked as good as you would want.

Monday I'll post pictures of the young bean plants! They were so cute when they germinated!