I'm not a vegetarian, but...

Doggonit if I couldn't live on fresh picked green beans and new potatoes for a good while. They both ripen at the same time and compliment each other so well as a side dish, especially if cooked with butter and a little sausage, tasso, or bacon for some extra flavoring.  Talk about good!

After we picked a bunch of them three weeks ago, we blanched and froze a nice amount of them to enjoy later and then Tricia cooked up a big pot of them for us to enjoy NOW.  The quality was good. They were tender with little to no blemishes or pest damage:

Fresh Picked Contender Green Beans with new potatoes

Here's a closer look:

Mmmmmm!

I picked another bucketful yesterday.  As the weather heats up, the quality of the green beans you harvest tends to fall off and you see smaller pods with bigger seeds and lots of pest damage.  I read that the heat causes many of the blooms to not set pods.  The blooms will just fall off.  In fact I notice that LSU doesn't recommend planting them in the months of May, June, or July.  I'll try to plant some more in either August or September.  I'd like to freeze some more and pressure can some for the winter months.  We even pickled some a couple of years ago.  They were delicious.

There's an old expression that some people use that says, "He ain't worth a hill of beans!"  That means that the person isn't worth much and they think poorly of him. I'm not sure how that saying originated, because to me, a hill of beans is worth quite a bit.  Many fine meals can be gotten off of a hill of beans!

Beans are an extraordinarily easy crop to grow and our beans were a successful crop this year because they were planted on the high side of the garden - up on hills or rows.  The excessive rains caused me to not even plant the lower portion that makes up about a quarter of the garden area, but when things finally dry up, I'm going to fix that problem by purchasing some additional top soil to raise the level of the garden higher.  My goal is to be able to grow enough to build the inventory of canned goods in our pantry and share with family, friends, and neighbors.  There's just no beating homegrown vegetables.