Cool Beans!

This is the time of year that gardening is so rewarding.  The weather is still relatively cool.  It is not oppressively hot and humid yet.  The healthy green of the leaves is truly something to behold.  I stagger my planting of green beans to spread out the yield throughout the year after learning a technique from a good friend who used to go to church at our church prior to moving.  He told me that his Dad would plant snap beans staggered so that he had a green been harvest from spring through the fall.  Good idea!

As you can see there are some nice blooms on these Blue Lake Variety green beans.  I have some Contender variety planted as well, but the Blue Lake (named after the region in California where they were developed) beans are further along.

Pulling back the foliage from this neighboring plant, you can see beans of various sizes.  These green beans are prolific and require picking, once they start producing, just about every day so that you get them while they are still young and tender.

And here is the point where the dividends in the garden start paying off.  I pulled out some fresh-picked green beans and, it just so happens, the finest accompaniment to green beans were just harvested and ready.  I'm talking about new potatoes.  I just harvested these last week.  I pulled out the small ones - those a little smaller than a golf ball, to cook with the green beans.  

Fresh green beans, new potatoes, butter and a little salt.  You've got yourself a delicious side dish!

As they keep coming in, we'll eat some, give some away, and blanch and freeze the rest.  I'll also get another row planted in order to keep the bountiful green bean harvests coming in.

Harvesting and Blanching Green Beans

Our Fall crop of green beans is thriving.  Without the heat, drought, and pest pressure, they really are keeping our bucket full of fresh green beans.  I should've planted more than two rows of them.  I'll put that on the list for next year.  The beans on the two rows have almost grown together.

Green beans

We've been getting gentle rains every few days and the cooler temperatures keep bright green growth, blooms, and new bean pods on the plants.

New Growth

If you look at the photo above, you might think that it's all just green foliage, but as the photo shows below, all you gotta do is pull back the leaves and just look at the beans that are loaded up and just the perfect size for pickin'!  So let's get picking...

Some nice ones...

After just a few minutes of picking, we've filled up a colander with fresh homegrown beans.  We'll get them washed up and snip off the ends.

Clean the Green Beans

Now this is just nice.  A cast iron dutch oven with some just picked green beans and the very last of the new potatoes (red & white) that we still have on hand from the Spring crop, cooked with some butter and kosher salt.  Mmmmm...  Delicious!

Hard to beat this meal!

The green beans are producing and we want to ensure we have green beans put away to eat later.  In order to do this, we'll blanch some and freeze them.  Blanching is a process where you boil a vegetable, but not until it is cooked.  Blanching allows the beans to maintain their color and texture after freezing.  Blanching stops the enzyme activity that causes decay and keeps the vegetables looking and tasting better, even after freezing.  So let's blanch some beans.  After washing them, we cut off both ends of the beans.

Washed & ends cut off

Here is a nice pile of washed and cut beans and now we'll get a pot of water boiling to get the blanching process started.

Blanching is a process whereby you put them in boiling water for 3 minutes.  So, once the water is boiling, we simply add the green beans to the pot, wait until the water begins to boil again and then set your timer for 3 minutes.

Blanching the beans

When 3 minutes have passed, pull the beans out of the boiling water and drop them into ice water to shock them and immediately stop the cooking process.  Leave them in the ice water until they are completely cooled down.

Cooling the green beans

Then, pour the beans into a colander to drain off the water.

And now we bag them up in quart sized freezer bags and put them in the freezer.  We'll be able to pull them out and eat them as we need them.

Freeze for later

It's nice to have a good inventory of frozen green beans in the freezer.