Time to Start Thinking about Fall

Tomorrow is August.  The sultry heat saps your energy.  The lack of rainfall is concerning as the grass withers and is 'crispy' when you walk on it.  We wonder out loud, "when will we get respite from the heat?"  We patiently wait.  But, we prepare, too, for cooler days ahead.

With a change of season and, hopefully, rainfall, we anticipate putting in the fall garden.  We begin looking at our inventory of purchased and saved seeds.  We start looking at planting dates for different crops.  We've always saved seeds to plant from our best produce.  This year, for the first time in forever, we saved our snap bean seeds.

Toward the end of the spring crop, I marked several of our best plants and marked them.  We stopped harvesting the snap beans from the marked plants and allowed them to mature and then dry on the plant.  When totally dry, I picked the pods and set them on our drying rack to continue drying.  We had just finished curing our onions on the rack, so we had space.

I cracked open the brittle bean pods to expose the snow white seeds.  This variety is Blue Lake Bush.  We also saved three other varieties.

Some of the seeds had blemishes, but some were absolutely perfect.

We packed them away in dark vitamin bottles that we save for this purpose.  We label the bottles and date them. 

We should have enough saved so that we don't need to purchase any - at least for the fall.  We really enjoy eating fresh green beans that we harvest whole and then bundle and wrap in bacon.  It is a nice side dish for Thanksgiving Dinner.  We'll see what type of germination we get on the saved beans.  In looking at my planting calendar, you can plant a fall crop of snap beans in mid to late August.  Goodness, that's only two weeks away.  If we get a good rain, you can bet your bottom dollar, these seeds will be in the dirt.