Harvesting Beans, Beans & Beans!

It was a lovely day here so I was itching to get out but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune kept coming into the inbox, so it was late afternoon before I escaped.

My runner beans may have been a bit late this year but they’re certainly making up for it now. I’ve 7 plants climbing up poles in a wigwam and they gave me nearly a carrier bag full on their own.

We’ll freeze most of them, it’s the easiest way to store runners and they’re one of those crops that do freeze well. On freezing, we often get people saying they don’t blanch before they freeze but, apart from tomatoes, we always blanch our vegetables before freezing.

The fact is that blanched vegetables will keep better in the freezer for longer if they’re blanched. You may well get away with not blanching if you eat the produce within a few months but we’ve often eaten vegetables frozen from the season before last!

As long as the freezer holds the food at minus 20 Celsius, food will store safely indefinitely. The reason some foods, like fish, are only supposed to store for 3 months is not the safety, it’s that there are enzymatic changes that effect the taste.

Blanching vegetables does stop that enzymatic change from happening so even the pack missed at the bottom of the chest freezer will taste well.

There’s more information and a blanching chart on the site: How to Freeze Vegetables

After the runners, it was onto the dwarf French beans, Purple Tipi. I’ve an 8 foot row of them and have already had a couple of pickings. Today was another carrier bag full. This is my standard measuring tool by the way. The standard Morrison’s carrier bag!

Yet another carrier bag full from the wigwam of Cobra French beans and that’s the day’s harvest finished. I do love beans; they’re so easy to grow, take little room and are very productive.

Back over to the greenhouses where I loaded another bag with tomatoes. The Sungold Have been ripening well and now the other varieties are starting to go. I really don’t think you can beat Sungold for a sweet tomato, especially sun warm from the plant. If you’ve got children who think tomatoes are poison, tell them they can’t eat any of them and I guarantee they’ll eat more than goes into bag when they try one.

Yet another couple of cucumbers from the pot grown Egyptian plant (Thanks Haz!) and then some green peppers topped off another carrier.

I watered everything but had a bit of an accident. Dodging a wasp in the greenhouse I managed to pour water from the top of my leg down my trousers. Now if you see a chap with a wet stain running down one leg from the top, you may make an incorrect assumption of how it happened.

Luckily I had enough bags full of crops to protect my reputation as I headed home, not that I met anyone on the way – phew!