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I shelled the 'Stanley' bush bean pods tonight. That was a truly stellar green bean, a standout of 2025. And it stood out again as a sheller - it nearly drove me to madness. Those itty bitty pods all dried & suctioned onto the itty bitty seeds. There is no kind of bean more tedious to shell...

One of the things that has been a major surprise to me since joining TEG is how common it is for people in the US to have backyard birds. It doesn't seem to matter the state either, but rather a cultural condition. To some extent I envy it, not that I need any more responsibilities than I...

Waiting for the nice weather next week to get some tulips in the ground. Last year I got red with white edges, this year I did a 50/50 split of midnight purple and bright yellow varieties. I really dislike digging in freezing cold soil so that little blip of warmth will get taken advantage of...

Nothing haunts me like the plants I didn't buy......

The 2026 plantings are in the works, you're a true gardener, the garden is in you as much as you're in it! @digitS' ;)

I wish I had gotten a picture of them freshly shelled, they've lost a bit of brightness in the last month sitting dried, but my crop of network bean 'Blaugraue' this year has been really good. Complete turnaround from last year's feeble attempt. Such a fabulous bean variety, productive, so...

The shelling continues and I'm taking mental notes as I go along. I must say, the 'Dakota Bumble' bush beans are just blowing me away with their health and production, especially considering I really crowded them in a small grow box. The pods are really hard, but you can tell they will resist...

Apparently, #2. She said she eats them like potato chips. Personally, I think I'd like kale chips but hard to imagine them without a bit of oil and salt, I don't think you could do it like that in a dehydrator though. That method is probably oven only. I grew too many kale for sure. So far...

I gambled in a huge way re-planting the mere 30 seeds I collected from the 'Ho Lan Dao' pea starts I got at Rona's. In hindsight it was a risk I shouldn't have taken because nobody sells those seeds that I know of in CA. But, I may yet get lucky and have the plants make it to maturity. The...

All the pods I've shelled so far, as well as all the dried garden plants, got wood chipper-ed and I spread the crumbs across the beds that I thought needed them most. This is where we're at now. I'm hoping to finish the bean shelling this week and get everything through the chipper and spread...

Yah, I guess they are pretty similar!

Update with the longkeeper affairs. One of the quirky things about this season has been the longkeeper surprises. I did grow one row dedicated to that type, but others by happy surprise showed up elsewhere unexpectedly. One of them was the mini-dwarf 'Fat Frog'. This is all the more...

I am just loving this new bean, Siebenbürgen-Kärnten! It's looking pink right now, but I can see it's color shifting quickly to a salmon shade. The first pods I opened are already distinct from the latest ones I've shelled. I had a single seed left to grow this year after bombing with it last...

The 2025 beans are nearly all fully dry, just waiting on a small number of stragglers, some of the later formed runner beans in particular. I've shelled a few varieties so far, did Ocean View tonight. That is such a pretty bean, and I got almost no reverts in this batch, a dozen seeds looked...

I grew Gialet della Val Bellaluna this year too @Decoy1 and had the very same experience with it! Went from not dry to very dry quite quickly.

I DM'ed you! 👍

Made an easy supper tonight with 'garden dregs' which turned out to be very good, so I thought I'd post here. A healthy supper using end of season produce, which might need to get used up before perishing if it hasn't been canned or dried or frozen. A handful of leeks 6 potatoes 4 big carrots...

I didn't even think of that!

Almost filled up my first XL leaf bag tonight with pea & bean shells! 😌 Took me a little bit to find my stride, but once I got going all the copper bottomed thrills showed up. I've probably said it many times at this point, but the rejoicing that comes with savouring the year end seed harvest...

Is it difficult to pull out your stakes at the end of the season @Bluejay ? Or do they dislodge fairly easily? I imagine you probably drive them in over a foot? I'm wondering if the time is coming for me to switch to stakes like you have, instead of my trees. It is so much work to cut them...