We picked the last of the beans this week. While we were gone to the beach friends came and picked from them and the bean bugs got their share too.
This year we planted what has become my favorite bean Mother Stallard, along with a green bean shared with us several years ago from a gentleman who said his grandmother planted them as long as he could remember. He called them Grammy beans in her honor. They are similar to the white half runners Granny and Pap grew when I was a girl.
We planted a short row of Ed beans. They didn’t do very good this year. I wonder if it’s where we planted them.
In the back of the house we planted a short row of a bean called May Flower that was sent to us. It didn’t do very well either because the bean bugs started on the vines early in the summer.
All the beans in the gardens around our house are pole beans which means you need something for them to climb up.
In the big garden we planted several different bush beans. The ones that did the best were peanut beans which Matt really loves.
Most of the beans we picked this week will be saved for seed. We’ve canned all summer and have plenty of jars for winter eating.
We saved out a big mess of Mother Stallard beans to cook for supper last night. They were so good! Paul ate with us and he bragged on them too.
They have a large bean so that’s part of the reason I like them so much. The pods have a velvety texture to them when cooked and they have a really good flavor. They can well and another plus is they don’t really have strings.
Most folks who grow Mother Stallard use them as a dried bean. We’ve eaten them like that too, but to me they are best cooked like green beans in the traditional Appalachian way.
Last night’s video: I Ain’t Complaining I’ve Beds & Bread on the Table – From My Highest Hill 5.
Tipper
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I love those big harvest baskets, Tipper! Are they homemade? I can’t even believe you are at your last bean picking. This summer has flown by faster than one I ever recall. It’s very hot and muggy here this week, but next week it should start to feel like fall.
Thank you Allie! They are store bought 🙂
It it time for me to pull our Rattlesnake beans up to. The vines look OK and I keep looking but I see no beans. So along about now they are cumbering the ground. My fall planting needs rain badly but forecast doesn’t look too hopeful. Only things doing any good from the summer garden is peppers. I’ll let them go till cold gets’em.
I planted Mother Stallard beans for the first time, and they have grown to nearly 11! I will try picking some to cook for dinner tonight. Tipper, do you cook them for a good long time also?
It’s unfortunate that the Cherokee Purple tomato plant that had a nice, ripening tomato (the others are green), got eaten probably by a raccoon. It was fairly high up the vine, so it wasn’t mice or chipmunks. It also at half of the next ripening tomato. Now I’ve put up fencing around the plants in hopes of saving the rest of the fruit.
I do cook them. Long time 🙂
My oh my the bean bugs have been terrible in northeastern Tennessee this summer………
Your recommendation swayed me this year and I planted Good Mother Stallard. My trellis was small so I only planted 6 seeds on each side. Our cooler spring gave them a slow start but once the heat and humidity set in they took off. Grew over the arched trellis, through the arched trellis and reached out to the corn. Up the corn, over to the cucumber fence, over that and down the side of the raised bed. Produced about a bushel of beans fresh and now drying out another bushel or so for seed and dried beans. Heat, humidity and excessive rainfall seemed to be their jam.
You and Matt have had an abundant harvest this year. Even though things started out rough with the bad soil and loss of so many plants, many plants produce a great harvest. Definitely with green beans! Thankfully Corie had an abundance of tomatoes to share so y’all could combine with yours to have more than enough for canning. A harvest blessing for sure!
I haven’t grown beans in years. I do enjoy eating a mess of fresh green beans and oh, how my momma LOVED them!!! We added a tad bit of sugar, bacon, onion and new potatoes and let them cook for hours. The pot liquor was as tasty as the beans. Here’s the reason I don’t grow them 😀 I do not like picking and snapping/stringing beans. My mom made me help when I was a kid. With most things like that, once I had my own home, garden, etc I didn’t mind the chore but this….now, compound it with the ex who was an exuberant gardener. That’s great, except he didn’t help with snapping and canning. It was a sore spot every year and once I kicked his worthless tail on down the road I have only grown what makes me or my grandkids happy♡ If my cousin brings me a mess, I happily prepare and enjoy several meals but I’m keeping my streak of not growing beans alive since 2001!!! I love seeing you and Matt in the garden, working side by side and him joining in the canning (hard part of gardening) process. Trust me! The green beans weren’t why he got booted lol they’re just a small victory that brings a smile to my face. Prayers to those of you needing/desiring them. I’d appreciate the same as I continue with this never-ending chemo. It’s not shrinking, but it’s also barely growing & all things considered, I feel good to great ♡ Please continue to keep my 3 grandchildren in your prayers. They’re working! The youngest finally found a job at Walgreen’s and is on her 3rd day of training! Thank you, Tipper, and Acorns ♡
I will keep praying 🙂
It’s been fun watching you grow and harvest your gardens this season. The pictures you post are bright and colorful. We suddenly have red tomatoes hanging all over our vines. It’s such a pleasure to walk out on the porch and pick a ripe one to enjoy. It’s dark and stormy here in WV this morning. We opened the front door so we can listen to all the big booms of thunder. It feels like fall is just around the corner. I am getting excited for it.
Many years ago when I was in FFA and needed a project I planted Blue Ribbon Stick Beans in “new ground” we had cleared. I made teepees for them with 8 foot strips from a local sawmill. They grew beyond the 7 foot height and hung down another 2-3 feet. The owner of a store in town came by and bought a few things from the garden and saw some of the beans were ready. He said if I would pick them and bring them to the store he would pay $14 a bushel for them. I picked about 3/4s of a bushel and asked Dad to take me to town. I had dreams of making a fortune on beans. I was about 13 years old and making 35 cents an hour when I worked for other farmers around us. Dad drove to the pastor’s house and made me give them to the preacher saying, “First fruits belong to the Lord and the preacher is The Lord’s local representative.” By the time I had enough beans gathered for another attempt to GET RICH the store was paying $5 a bushel. By the end of the season it was hard to get $1.50 a bushel even when I picked them. The last couple of times I picked I gave them to an aunt who canned them “on the halves”. We still had a few jars of those green beans in the basement when I left home five years later.
Nothing quite like a mess of “shelly” beans at the end of summer!!!! Mama liked the last picking because it usually meant a lot of beans in the pod. She’d shell them and cook them with any beans still green. Good eating!!!!!
Have a restful Labor Day weekend.
After reading earlier reviews for the Mother Stallard beans I planted them in April. The vines grew up
to ten feet tall, I never got a bean or even a bloom. The seed was new seed I got this spring.
I’m sorry LeRoy. I wish they had made for you!