Bean Harvest

Hello everyone. :) I'm fairly new to Dave's Garden but not new to gardening in general.

I have a complaint this year with my green beans. I have about 200 feet of bush beans planted and I tried to time the planting to coincide with my vacation for harvesting the biggest portion.

Welp, here I am in to the second week of that aforesaid vacation and I have picked no more than a double handful of beans. I'm beginning to think either the beans are snickering at me or this is something along the lines of that watched pot that won't boil.

The vines are durn well loaded with blooms and teeny little beans... I just know now that they will be quite ready to cooperate next week when I go back to work.

And yeap, I did pay attention to the days to harvest on the bean paks. I planted them a week earlier than usual because the weather was so warm here this spring but I think there must be something that tells those beans it ain't time to get picked quite yet.

That is so true. Climatic conditions have an awful lot to do with harvest times. Plant em early and they sit until the conditions are right.

I agree with farmerdill...regradless of the 'air' temp it's the ground temp that matters most to seelings and seeds.
Good luck with your beans.......
Do you can or freeze your surplus?

I can my surplus. For some reason, the family doesn't like frozen green beans.

Oh, they are coming along and it looks like a real *bumper* crop. I usually don't try to time it out that close and guess it's almost impossible even with /days to harvest/ information. Our spring had been unusually warm but then we had some cool and lots of wet weather after they were up and growing. It's just slowed them down to where planting a week earlier than usual really made no difference whatsoever.

Vashur...

Last time I canned my snap beans they came out mushy/over-cooked. (I really went by the canning times!)

Not to get to far off topic but is there a secret to canning snaps that will keep them in a nice fairly firm fresh state? I declare I had the water in the canner good and hot...just wonder if it took too much time to bring the steam up to par or something.

canning beans http://www.mortonsalt.com/recipes/recipeex.asp?recipeid=41 , http://www.extension.umn.edu/info-u/nutrition/BJ628.html , http://www.foodpres.com/bean.htm

Many thanks, "Ma Friend Rose"!

Will check out all the links!

Good to see ya again! Keep smilin'!

u're very welcome Friend Shoe =)! always a pleasure to give a helping hand.

I don't see anything in those links as to why beans would come out mushy/overcooked. Mine have always had just about the consistency of canned beans you buy in the store but the flavor is much better.

If you want really crisp beans, you need to freeze.

A sidenote: I notice those links say ten pounds pressure for canning. My new Presto canner says 11 pounds at sea level and new literature from the extension service here also says 11 pounds. It's hard sometimes to keep track of changes over time. I've always used 11 pounds anyway since we are at about 1300 ft here and that is unchanged.

It's been years since I canned beans...since that one time I've always froze 'em.

You have a point on the pressure...it makes me wonder if I used too high of a pressure and that's why my beans "over cooked"...I sure can't tell ya what pressure I used, too long ago.

I've got lots of beans in the garden this year though! Will give it another go!

I've finally been harvesting beans this week. :) As I was picking them yesterday and looking at the vines, I think I've figured out what happened to slow them down. We had a very bad storm just about the time they started blooming. I really think it knocked off at least half of the first blooms. The plants are now getting taller and producing more blooms. What I am picking is the remainder of the first blooms. I never had that big *flush* of beans you usually get first off. The weather has just been plain weird even for Kansas. Usually we start having dry weather just about the time the beans bloom and set on. (just about wheat harvest time can we say?) The farmers can't get in their fields either so my complaint is minor compared to theirs.

Hopefully the weather will remain cool enough this blooming of beans will set on and grow before it gets so hot the vines start drying up.

I'll bet that big storm was your culprit. And then , like you said, weather and temps will make a difference too. Corn is like that. It always seems to be perfect for harvest just as you are leaving on vacation.

Shoe, we'll get the low-down on beans and other stuff shortly. I've got a new computer and am giving Mom my old one. She'll be an official DG member by next month. She has forgotten more about canning and preserving than all of us put together.

Don't know what her username will be...she's thinking on that...but Virginia is taken already...as well as Quiltlady and quite a few others.

Sorry to hi-jack your thread for a moment Vashur, but Shoe has met Mom on a few occasions and he can tell everyone how valuable she'll be to this community. (please help her navigating...she's very new to computers!)

She sounds like my grandma who died in 1998.. I inherited her old recipe collection and her stove. She taught me to cook and I think I was the only one of the 14 grandchildren who were too interested in the old ways. My mother was more the type who would blow the top off her canner. She did that when I was 13 and I think that was her last load of jars. She decided to let me handle it.

Great Mel! Will be good to see your Mom here.
(Hmmm...."Craftlady"? "Mel's Mom"? "Quilt Guru"!)

Vashur, I'm glad those pressure canners have come a long way since the days of the tops blowing off!

I've never been afraid of them....guess I should be. I do replace my gaskets every 2 seasons. ( I have 2)

In 1949 I remember a family shopping trip to the big city to buy one of those . Oh boy that was the high point of my life going to the store instead of boy thing. Anyway by todays standard it was an antiquea twis to lock lid and a weight to control the temp by.

After my mother used it to can with a few times she decided to cook with it and everything was good untill she did some navy beans it the thing and the lid blew off and blew beans and ham everyhere up. what a mess no one was in the kitchen when it went so only a bit of mess and a beanless dinner were the only casualitys. I still remember my mothers reply to my dads asking her why she did . She said she was redecorating and started laughing. In time she mastered that thing and she used it untill I threw it away about ten years ago.

The pressure cookers used in the salmon industry are 5 feet in diameter and 42 feet long these are the standard and the operate just like your pressure cookers. Ernie

I am vintage 1970 bt am offering on a few older than my self on eBay right now. As long as I can still get a new Gasket they shoudl be good!

My beans are finally starting to produce halfway decently. I've gotten about 25 quarts off them so far. :)

My old canner was bought as a *second* from Presto in 1975... It went through a flood last year in my basement. One handle had gotten broken off when the nephews salvaged things down there so even if I could have bought a new handle and refurbished it I didn't want to take any chances on it. It would have cost almost as much to buy the parts as the new one cost and I decided I deserved a new one after almost 30 years.

Been reading through this.. this is my first season of growing veggies and Im very excited, I guess my reply to the earlier stuff about timing being off is agreement with you guys that Ive always been told late plantings will catch up with early ones and vice versa. That greens dont grow til theyre good and ready. Probably has to do with the day/sun cycle and the moon and the tempatures and the gravitational pull.... and the frogs chirping..... and the japanese beatles and the water shed and.... stop me anytime here.