The Yellow French Filet climbing beans I planted this year have been terrific! These are my new favorite and will have a place in my garden every year.
Summer is over!!! My kitchen garden could use a few more weeks of it. And I don’t mean “calendar weeks” of summer. I mean stinking hot, sunny weeks that encourage maturing fruits and vegetables.
So far, I’ve only one winter squash that has even started to ripen. Others appear full-grown, but they are as green as the day they were pollinated. My lima bean plants are covered with blossoms and pods in various stages of maturity. So far, not one has bulged enough to suggest there are actually lima beans inside.
What I’m Eating from my Garden
I planted purple bush beans this season because they look so awesome! They do, however, turn green when I cook them, and they taste like beans. So, it seems pointless to choose purple beans over more common green beans. In fact, my dream is to eliminate bush beans from my garden and grow exclusively climbing beans. I’ve identified the wax beans I’ll grow in future years (see the photo above), but I’ve not yet grown a climbing green bean that has won me over.
Happily, I’m finding plenty to eat in my garden. While there are dozens of green tomatoes on the plants, I’ve about half a bushel of ripe or ripening tomatoes in bowls on the porch. I’ve canned some tomatoes and made sauce from others, but I’d hate for an early frost to steal the ones still in the garden.
Beans are my garden’s other great success. Yellow French Filet climbing beans have been very productive, and two short rows of bush beans have contributed to many meals. I’ve frozen and bagged about a gallon of them and hope to preserve another gallon before the season ends.
In any case, photos provide more detail about what’s happening in my garden. Now, what’s happening in yours? Post about what you’re harvesting, then use the linky widget below to link to your blog.
Nearly all the squash in my garden is green. These two fairytale squashes hold each other in balance as the stem connecting them drapes over the top of my garden fence. It’s hard to judge scale, but each squash is about the diameter of a basketball… I wish they’d at least start to ripen!
There are quite a few peppers ready to harvest in my small kitchen garden. Mostly, purple jalapenos have ripened to red, and a few orange bell peppers look juicy. There are also many gorgeous banana peppers waiting for attention. Poblanos and Sweet Italian peppers are the holdouts. The sweet Italians have grown large, but they’re stuck on green. The poblanos have grown the largest plants, but they are only just starting to make peppers.
Stupice were the earliest tomatoes to ripen in my garden. That’s the only compelling reason I’ve found to consider them for future seasons. Most of my stupice tomatoes are no bigger than cherry tomatoes, though a few are significantly larger… I’m harvesting seeds from the largest (all on just two of the five or so plants) and will try again next season. Stupice tomatoes are perfectly acceptable flavor-wise, and it’s nice to see red in late July. I hope these turn red before the first frost of autumn.
I’ve enjoyed canning my stupice tomatoes. The jar on the left holds some along with Indigo Rose tomatoes. I’ve put up eight jars of whole, peeled tomatoes, and I love the way they look. The jar on the right holds Moonglow tomatoes mixed with White Queens. I planted several Moonglow tomato plants, but they haven’t produced well. I suspect this is because the plants didn’t receive enough water early in the season; next year I hope to grow a lot more orange tomatoes.