Let's talk about beans

Beans are funny old things. Usually so easy to grow, as long as the slugs and snails don't nip 'em off at ground level before they get big, but then its often a feast or a famine. I used to grow scarlett runners every summer and think they were fabulous. I still they are fabulous, and pretty, but I have two new favourites.




Two of the beans in this salad came from my garden:'

I've been wanting to make a bean salad like KFC or Craigs bean salad for ages, and finally got around to it, using, the KFC recipe (with a bit less sugar and not quite enough green beans). The white beans in my picture are cannelino which I grew myself last summer and dried on the plant. They have been sitting on my windowsill all year waiting for the right recipe. They seemed such a small amount I never got around to using them, but boy did they swell up well once cooked and marinated in bean salad sauce. The green beans are blue lake runners (funnily enough the exact type specified in the KFC recipe), and I wish I had had a few more ready as they are lovely to cook and eat.

Here's what I like about these beans:

Cannelino (white kidney bean): You can eat these as a green bean when flatish, or dry on the bush and wait until the pod dries out and store as dried beans for cooking in minestrone, bean salad or whatever you like. Unlike scarlett runners, which are really only good for storing seed beans for next year if you leave them too long, it doesn't matter if you are busy and miss all the ones that are ready for eating fresh, because as soon as you see them swelling up with fat beans inside you can just leave them on the bush. They are as easy to grow as any other bean and I grew them in old recycling crate very successfully.

Blue Lake runners: These are lovely, straight, long, green beans which are so easy to chop up compared with scarlett runners (I keep comparing to these because it was all I used to grow). I easily lined up 10 and top and tailed them in a flash, which I can never do with those squirmy, curly scarlet runners. They are very tasty and they don't seem to suddenly get too big (and tough) like their scarlett cousins. Next year I'll probably put in one or two scarlett runners and 10 or 12 blue lake runners. I am wondering if they are a bit more sensitive as little beans though, as I have only ended up with one blue lake runner and I'm sure I planted more. Will pay more attention when I'm planting next year I think.

Gardening in tyres

Always keen to save money, I grabbed some freebie tyres from the tyre shop (on strict promise that they were never to be put on a car!) and have experimented with growing different veges in them.

I think they may have been a bit too hot for the lettuce and silver beat, although red lettuces seemed to do OK, but green ones were better in the garden.

Two huge successes, however, were zucchini and cherry tomatoes. Both of these were planted in tyres to try and provide some protection from the free-ranging chooks (which worked well). Initially I covered the zucchini with a 'witches hat' of wire mesh, because the chooks would jump up and scratch around it and nearly ruined the baby plant. Once it had spread to cover the soil I was able to take the cover off and the chooks never bothered it again.

I wrapped a tube of wire around the cherry tomato and that is providing good support (although the rogue self-seeded pumpkin is putting a fair bit of pressure on the wire, so it may need a bit more support soon.

The interesting thing about the plants in the tyres is that they were the 'runts of the litter' from my seedlings. Both of them were languishing in their pots after the bigger plants had been popped out in the main garden, and eventually I decided to do something with them because I couldn't bear to waste them. See for yourself the difference in size.

The 'big' tomato and zucchini planted in raised gardens and mulched with pea straw.

And below are the tomato and zucchini grown in tyres (plus some rogue potatoes and pumpkins).

Of course this is not a scientific experiment because they are not in exactly the same place in the garden and the soil won't be exactly the same, however I would have expected the raised garden plants to be doing at least as well as the others (given their warm positions, shelter etc. and healthier starting size), but the tyre plants are far outstripping the raised garden plants. The zucchini is in two stacked tyres, whereas the tomato is in just one tyre, with a good potting mix because I sat it on hard, dubious soil.

So, I'll be experimenting again next summer, and maybe through the winter as well.

Thought I would throw this picture of dwarf beans or bush beans planted in an old recycling crate because they are doing very well. The plants are covered in flowers so I'm looking forward to some purple teepee and cannelino beans soon.

One final unexpected bonus from the two-tier tyre garden for zucchini was that it provided protection from hedgehogs! At least a couple of my raised garden zucchinis were nibbled by hedgehogs, which was quite surprising.

"Garden Geeky"

After raving to a fellow keen gardener about my latest gardening tools* she remarked that she liked them, but thought they were a little bit garden-geeky.

*a recycled food display cabinet ($5) as propagator and a big sieve (50c), found at a white elephant stall, for deliciously tidy seed planting.

It's a perfect description for me I've decided - a garden geek!

I was quite geeky at school and uni, so its only natural that I apply my geekiness to other passions. I still consider myself a 'beginner gardener' but as I pass new milestones such as 'eating my own produce grown in winter,' then I get excited thinking that maybe one day I will progress to intermediate gardener.

I had a lovely (beginner) vege garden out back, until we got chickens. The chickens do a wonderful job of cleaning up the crawling, slimey pests, and the weeds around the rustic broken up concrete raised garden wall (which were impossible to mow up to), and of laying delicious brown eggs. They also do a marvelous job of destroying all seedlings and eating anything green and healthy that I plant, so I've had to get creative.

Things I'm planning to ramble on about include:

Grow a salad in a window
City chooks make awesome pets
Pesky chickens and how to thwart them
Propagating up a storm
Gardening with littlies
Solar cooking downunder
Fast gardening
Cheap gardening...