Behold The Hyacinth Bean

Back in early May of this year, I posted about the Hyacinth Bean.  You can click on that hyperlink, if you wish, and read about how we got this interesting, beautiful, and deadly (Gasp!) plant in a seed swap.  We grew the seeds and they grew, slowly at first, but then they spread out, competing with the vines of the luffa gourd to cover the 'tunnel' trellis we created with a fence we bent over.

This would have been a beautiful tunnel, but the goats had other ideas than an aesthetic addition to the garden and promptly stretched their long necks with their feet on the fence and ate the hyacinth bean vines that got close to them.  So a half tunnel trellis it will be.  Thank you, goats.

The purple stems of the hyacinth bean and the purple veins in the leaves make this plant a knockout in the garden.  But the flowers of this plant are stunning, and I'm not a flower guy.

Ain't that something?!  The honeybees buzz around them doing their thing.  I should have some seeds of this beautiful plant to share, just as they were shared with me.  If you are interested, just let me know and I'll send you some.  

But that's not the only pretty thing about this plant.  Once the flowers are done, they put on pods.  Pretty purple pods that contain beans.  The beans are edible, I've read, until they are dried, with a few caveats.  According to THIS POST:

Important Note: Uncooked seeds are poisonous as they contain high concentrations of cyanogenic glucosides. They can cause breathing problems, vomiting problems, and convulsions. They need to be boiled for a long time, changing the water twice, to make them edible. Better to leave the cooking to someone experienced with them and save your seed for planting.

That information makes me pause a little before trying to eat them, but I am curious about how they taste.  If they are that pretty, they must taste good, right?  Sometimes, you gotta take a measured risk.  I think about the guy or gal that ate the first raw oyster.  Or boiled the first crawfish?  What culinary delights we would have missed out on if we allowed fear to guide our decisions?

The jury's still out on if we'll try to eat them.  I'll let you know when/if we do.  Until then, it's a crazy world out there, ya'll HOLD ON!  These two hyacinth beans being entwined by the tendrils of a luffa gourd beautifully illustrate that:

That photo also reminds me of a song I used to like in high school by .38 Special whose lyrics went like this:

You see it all around you
Good lovin' gone bad
And usually it's too late when you
Realize what you had

And my mind goes back to a girl I left
Long years ago who told me

Just hold on loosely
But don't let go
If you cling too tightly
You're gonna lose control

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Sugar Snap Peas, If You Please!

Every year at this time I post the same thing - my favorite thing in the garden to grow and to eat.  That would be Sugar Snap Peas.  I have two 15 foot rows of them and they are five feet tall right now, trellising on some cattle panels that I have secured to t-posts.  They are so doggone easy to grow, and they are one of the most pleasing things to look at. 

Their tendrils wrap around the trellis to hold while they shoot upward.  Their bright green foliage is like a living wall.  They are growing on the same trellis that I had cucumbers growing on last year.  When they first spring up, you have to train their tendrils to attach to the trellis.  It is important to weave them in and out, so that they hold tight.  We've had years where strong winds blew them down, and they became a tangled mess in which it was hard to find the peas to harvest.  This year they are latched on tight.

Sweet peas put out beautiful flowers-and lots of them.  Honeybees zero in on the garden and buzz from flower to flower.

Those flowers quickly produce pods of peas - and plenty of them.  This is one of those things that you can pick right off the vine and eat while you're standing in the garden.  They are so sweet.  I like to snack on them before the peas inside the pods have matured.  The pods are crisp, tender and sweet as candy.  Now, you can buy pre-packaged vegetable trays in stores that have something like sugar snap peas on them.  You've probably seen them.  The flavor and freshness are NOTHING like the ones you can grow in your garden.  I normally purchase mine from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, but if you are diligent in saving your seeds year after year, you won't have to purchase many.

If you let the peas develop and mature, to me, they aren't as sweet.  At the end of the season, I do let some of them get mature and dry on the stalk.  I save these for seed for next year.  Sugar snap peas are prolific producers.  Growing upright on a trellis, the footprint is small and they don't take up much space and that means your yield per square foot beats most anything else you can grow.

We're out in the garden every other day, pickin' and eatin'.  Just as fast as you pick, more are coming.  They'll produce until it warms up. 

In addition to snacking on them raw, Tricia likes to stir fry them in butter where they are still slightly crisp.  She'll also add them to fried rice, stews and soups.

At this time, we're picking more than we can eat, so Tricia has been blanching them and then freezing the excess in quart-sized freezer bags.  We've found that by doing so, you can quickly cook them up as a side dish and they truly taste like you just picked them!  By the time the sugar snap peas have finished, I'll use the trellis for the two varieties of cucumbers that I just planted in seed pots this afternoon.

Cucumbers and Critters

Our cucumbers are planted on the very highest part of the garden.  With all the rain we have gotten that is a very fortunate place to be planted.  The cukes are thriving due to the well-drained soil. Unfortunately the tomatoes and potatoes and corn that were planted on lower land are really struggling.  Their "feet" stay wet, and their foliage is yellow.  There's more rain on the way all this week.

Let's focus on the positive, though.  Look at how healthy the cucumbers are.  The leaves are broad and green and they are climbing up a cattle panel that I've positioned for them to grow vertically.

Cucumbers

The leaves have almost completely shaded out the panel, allowing only slivers of light through and making the front part of the garden resemble a tropical rain forest.

Made in the Shade

There are lots of blooms and that lets you know that lots of cucumbers are on the way.  Here is one below that is about four inches long right now.  It is a Japanese Long Cucumber, so it will grow much longer.  They are long, skinny and don't have many seeds.  They are crisp and tasty and very refreshing to eat on a hot day.

Japanese Long Cucumber

The vines of the cucumber send out tendrils.  They look like springs and they reach out and grab onto the trellis and hold tight.  The spring-like tendrils give the vines some flexibility when strong winds blow.

Spring Action

Here is a very small cucumber of the Boston Pickling variety.  These are small and crispy and as the name states, they are great for pickling.  Last year we didn't pickle any.  We didn't have a great crop of cucumbers for some reason and we ended up eating them all fresh with vinegar, salt and pepper.

Boston pickling cucumber

In the morning there are tons of yellow flowers.  Now it is important that we have bees and other pollinators doing their work at this time and we have some news to report on that.  The honeybees that have inhabited the column near the side door to our house have recently packed their bags and moved out.  The side entrance is now much more hospitable to our guests without a swarm of bees buzzing around, but we miss the bees.  I enjoyed having them do their job pollinating in the garden and around the yard.  Although I don't have the time nor desire to take up beekeeping, I'm going to ask a friend if he'd put a box of bees on our property to pollinate our crops.  I need some worker bees to take the place of our bees that left.

Cucumber flower

As I was observing the multitude of flowers, something else caught my eye - a bunch of bugs crawling all over the vines, tendrils, and flowers.  Can you see them? They are orange, with long legs and long antenna.

Orange-colored bugs

They were all bunched up on the top of one leaf.  Usually there is safety in numbers, but in this case, it doomed them.  They were in perfect position for me to reach my hands out underneath and on top of the leaf and with one swift clap, I smashed the bugs to smithereens.  And it is a good thing I did. You know what kind of bugs these are?

A bunch of bugs

These bugs are juvenile leaf-footed bugs.  When they mature they look like this:

Image Credit

If you look at their hind legs, you can see how they got their name.  These bugs wreak havoc on tomatoes, stinging them and sucking out moisture, leaving the tomatoes scarred and ugly.  They cause damage to citrus crops, too, stinging the fruit and causing it to drop.  I've got to do my part in reducing their number, so we avoid the damage they cause.  I'll patrol the garden and kill the juveniles before they grow up.

Sugar Snap Peas

Our sugar snap peas are blooming and putting on little pods filled with fat, sweet, peas.  This is the closest thing to candy in the garden.  You can snap them off the plant and pop them in your mouth raw.  I planted them on a trellis made out of some concrete reinforcement wire.  In addition to providing delicious peas for salads, stir fried dishes like fried rice, or just eating them raw, they provide some nice flowers for the garden.

Sugar Snap Peas

The nice looking flowers quickly become pods containing sweet peas that we pick. Many of them never make them inside as I eat them outside while plucking them off the vines.  The little tendrils that hold them to the trellis are a little fragile, so when you pick them, you really need two hands - one to pull them and one to support the plant so you don't pull the plant down.

Flowers and pods

One thing I need to work on, though, is some of the sweet peas have fallen off the trellis.  They became so heavy that the tendrils that hold them to the trellis did not hold and they fell - right on top of the garlic.  Our garlic is growing to the left in the photo below and you can see the piles of sugar snap peas that has covered them. Today I did my best to lift them up and off of the garlic.

Falling sugar snap peas

I liked the way that the sunlight filtering through this pod exposed the growing peas inside.  I count eight peas so far. 

Some of the peas have pink and white blooms and some of the peas have solid white blooms. Regardless the color, they produce peas that we all love to eat.  Sugar snap peas is a crop that even those in your family that aren't crazy about vegetables will love.

White flowers on sugar snap peas

Here is a pea pod that I popped open while harvesting this afternoon.  I quickly ate them up.

Like peas in a pod

As far the rest of them, I brought them inside and along with some fresh picked Red Romaine lettuce, they made a nice fresh salad.

Observances from a Spring Walk

Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take some refreshment; but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not very politely, declined eating any thing; and then, rising up, said to Elizabeth,
"Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favour me with your company."
"Go, my dear," cried her mother, "and shew her ladyship about the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage."  - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Tricia loves books by Jane Austen and got introduced to the phrase, "take a turn" in the yard from the dialogue from Pride and Prejudice quoted above.  Taking a turn simply means to go out and take a leisurely stroll, enjoying the weather and scenery. We like to do that now.  Sometimes she'll ask, in her best English accent, if I'd like to go take a turn in the yard.  I'll always oblige the Lady.

So let's take a virtual 'turn' to see what's going on in our garden and yard.  First, many old timers will tell you that it is not Spring until the pecan trees have begun to put on leaves.  They're typically the last trees in our area to put out leaves. Well, it is officially Spring!  The pecan trees in the yard are putting out their leaves, signalling the arrival of Spring.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Spring has arrived!

Thanks to a load of composted chicken manure mixed with old wood shavings that was given to me and subsequently incorporated into the raised bed where I planted our potatoes almost a month ago, we have the most healthy potato crop we have ever had.  Just look at them grow!  Now, we don't want to count our chickens before they hatch.  With potatoes, it's what's under the ground that counts, not what's on top. But it certainly looks like a great start.

Here's an up close photo of a potato plant about to bloom.  When the potato plant blooms, it is a signal that tubers are forming.

Potatoes about to flower

The sugar snap peas are extending their tendrils and attaching themselves to the cattle panel that I have for them to grow on.  I did see one flower already which is good news.  Sugar snap peas do best in cooler weather, so they need to produce quickly as South Louisiana is not known for having a lengthy Spring.

Sugar Snap pea tendrils

This photo highlights the tendril, reaching out looking for the next thing on which to grab as it climbs upward.

Reaching out for something to hold onto

This is a weed that grows in the garden right next to our garlic chives.  I looked it up on the Internet and learned that it is called the Oxalis or Pink Flowering Shamrock or wood sorrel.  Although a "weed," it is pretty in the garden and this weed won't get pulled up.

Something pretty that came up on its own

As we move out of the garden and around the yard on the east side, you can see that the little peaches are already forming and have peach fuzz on them.  I hope this fella ends up in a warm cobbler with homemade ice cream on top!

Peach fuzz

Moving along, we come to the azaleas whose fuschia blooms light up the neighborhood.  This particular bush was at my grandmother's house.  We transplanted it in our yard and it seems to be very happy in its new location 30 miles south of Kinder.  If you look closely, you can see the barn and one of the cows in the background.

Azalea

How can one be depressed when standing next to this bush?  It is so bright and happy and cheerful that you'd have to really try hard to be melancholy in front of this plant.

Pretty in Pink

This is probably a good place to end our walk as the sun goes down and the setting sun sends out its last rays of light through the red leaves that the Japanese Maple is putting out.

Filtered light through the Japanese Maple

You don't have to be a Romantic or a fan of Jane Austen to enjoy "taking a turn" about the yard.  Anyone who appreciates just slowing down the pace and relishing the Great Outdoors and appreciating the sights, sounds, and smells of nature that we all overlook from time to time can do it.  Take hold of the opportunity that awaits you right outside your back door.