Time To Talk About Next Year

[Ridgerunner]

Marshall on So Lucky's Greasy Bean question. When do you harvest them as green beans and exactly how do you cook them? I get confused when I try to look that up but they sound interesting.

 

[digitS']

. . .

And digitS', do your soldier beans have another name? Are they for dried only?

They do but it is something like "Classic" soldier beans and "Redcoat" soldier beans and it seems like there is a third. Problem is, I'm not sure of which one I have but they are from Jung's.

They would make terrible green beans, I'd bet! However, that pod is just as easy to open when it is dry as it could be! There's no real struggle and messing with chaff.

Steve

 

[ducks4you]

I'm gonna plant sweet potatoes again. I got 1/2 of a 5 gallon bucket for my first harvest and most are big and heavy. I'm also gonna plant more carrots. I still haven't harvested them despite last night's snow, but I know that they'll wait for me. I definitely will plant another full bed of beets. I have nearly 20 quarts of them from this year to enjoy this winter.

 

[so lucky]

I am just now beginning to understand that the green beans we are all accustomed to, the ones like Blue Lake and Jade and Derby and Tenderette, are just the tip of the iceberg in the bean world. Just as in tomatoes, modernization for mechanical harvest has unfortunately made green beans evolve to something less than they were 100 years ago. What was gained in uniformity and ease of picking probably doesn't match what was lost in flavor, variety and vigor. (to say nothing of nutritive content!) Oh well. We're here to learn, then decide what to do with the knowledge.

 

[journey11]

New to me this year were bok choy and a new variety of hybrid bi-color sweet corn I tried called Delectable. Both were real winners with my family at the table.

What didn't work was taking on too much too soon! I'm just too busy with my two girls right now and I need to scale back on some of my gardening and other projects to make more time for fun and memories with them. I spent too much of this summer being stressed. I pulled it all off, but looking back now, I don't think it was worth it.

Next year I'm only going to garden in my 3 raised beds, a little of this, that and the other... Enough variety to eat off of it fresh. I'll plant the small plot to sweet corn again and tuck a few squash and melons in there. The big garden I am going to cover crop for a whole year and run the chicken tractor over it. Depending on how well my toddler behaves, I may have to do that for a couple of years. LOL. Also, DH's job is becoming very stressful and consuming for him and I am going to keep everything on a level that I can manage it entirely by myself...so he won't have to till or anything. He needs more time for his own pursuits, not just to be my slave.

I'm going to focus the rest of my energies on my several fruit trees, blueberry bushes and raspberry and blackberry patches...giving them the proper attention and maintenance. For everything else that I like to can, I am going to hit the U-picks and farmer's markets. It is so much easier to can everything in big batches and be done with it anyway. That's going to be my pace for awhile, until the kids are a little more independent, can help pitch in, and I have a little more free-time to myself.

 

[so lucky]

That sounds like a good plan, journey. Build some fun memories for the kids and for yourself, too.

 

[digitS']

Chickie'sMoma said something about regional differences and that book Marshall is writing, So Lucky.

I went back (in time) and looked at the University of New Hampshire plant breeding program . Yeah, I'm going to have Chickie'sMoma open up a pipeline to the UNH so that I can just grow whatever they have put out . She might want the return line for Oregon State U, I'm thinkin'.

Anyway, the US made big strides in developing and bringing in new varieties post-WW2. Then, the modern soopermarket opened and we seemed to go off the tracks.

I'd to grow Royalty Purple Pod and Greencrop beans but . . . a younger-than-me DW doesn't like their looks . What are you gonna do? Cosmetics have run over good taste. Or, am I just lost in the 1950's.

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

What I'd like to do next year is maintain my enthusiasm for the entire season.

I'm going to go a little easy on myself for my 2013 garden since there were things going on in my life that were wearying, and that chapter still hasn't closed, but I'm just going to keep moving forward.

Of the 12 new varieties of tomatoes I grew nothing really stands out. Alaskan Fancy did because it was the first to ripen, and some of my saved seed starts ( Dr. Wyches Yellow particularly ) ripened okay. So those two will return next year.

All of the peppers did great, jalapeno, cayenne, Jimmy Nardello sweet, and 2 other sweets. Keepers.

Kale was a first for me and I loved it, so that will double or triple next year because the only animals around here that didn't eat it were the dogs and cats! Even the little horse likes it. Oh, and the people too...

Potatoes will be back, naturally! I am very impressed with Bintje, I harvested mostly big ones from that variety and they're supposed to be really good keepers too. Another one that was just for fun but I really like is Magic Molly. It has the deepest purple sheen on the skin and is the same rich dark purple all the way through. Makes a pretty plate of roast potatoes when mixed with the yellows and whites. Oh and Huckleberry performed well too. I only planted a few hills of it but got a lot of tubers out of it. And it's flesh is pink. Keeper.

One thing I do every year is start the season with good records and then fizzle so I have to rely on my faulty memory about any problems or ideas to do better the next year. I just looked at my garden notebook to refresh my memory about what potatoes I planted and I didn't even enter it. Sheesh. Definitely need some improvement there .

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

same here on keeping a record of what i bought and got in the ground. i may keep up with some of what i'm growing, others i may forget to keep record of what went wrong and why i wouldn't want to keep growing it. this year i had some Roma tomatoes i started from seed-3 different sources too. then i had some volunteer in the garden from plants i bought last year. those in the garden grew nicely while the ones i did in pots just fizzled out and gave me a couple miserable looking tomatoes and then just died. i've done Roma's in pots before and they never looked as bad as these did. i'm thinking they could have been affected with blight from the looks of them while other plants around them were nice and healthy and unfazed by their poor neighbors.

potatoes did their usual for me. i've been keeping spuds each year from Purple Viking since that has been a good reliable producer for me in all kinds of weather. the other i keep is the Irish Cobbler which tends to be on the small side, it did better than it had last year spud size wise. i did have 2 new ones i tried. one i did was All Blue but i only had a couple of those that got to the ground since they were a farmers market find and some critter kept kicking the spuds out of the patch when i first planted them. i had 2 good sized spuds harvested and a lot of itty bitty ones. the other variety i think was Green Mountain which did ok. it was a very late type and it took till mid October before i got to pull those plants. i did get them in the ground a little later that i normally do. i will keep some of the best spuds for next year's patch and see if it was just our wacky weather that held them back.

i also planted apple trees i grafted this year. out of 27 trees grafted and showed at first they were taking to the grafts, about 14 actually flourished and look strong enough to survive our weather. the others that looked like they had slow growth i'm crossing my fingers but i'm not holding out they will survive. they weren't good matches for this area and i read they may not take to grafting with Bud 9 rootstock, i just happen to get them as freebies in an auction i won for other scions i wanted.

i want to add to next year's fruits in the garden so i will be watching out for some hardy kiwi plants. i'm also looking into getting some grapevines and possibly some fig trees-these will be kept in pots to bring in during the winter-at least that's the plan!

 

[journey11]

The kids love to help in the garden too and we have a lot of fun at that too. DD6 has even taken to saving her own seeds...a little of this and that and all lumped together. But once summer was all said and done, we didn't get to go fishing or camping once this year. So I gotta find a little balance, I guess.

Every year I tell myself I am going to keep a garden journal, but as far as a notebook, that has yet to happen. What I have done well with though is making notes all over my calendar. I need to be more thorough with everything, but that does give me a record of important things like first frost or when the apples bloomed. If I remember, I like to write on the date when I planted things.

Our ag extension puts out a garden calendar every year that already has notes about when to plant what for our area and other tidbits of garden wisdom. I had been getting the .pdf copy online and looking at it on the computer, but I think I'll start making a point to get a real one at the feed store before they run out and collect those to use as my annual garden journal, making my notes all on there and keeping them from year to year. Maybe I'll even put them together in a binder!