The Great Bean Experiment--Part II

          Time for an update on the five varieties of beans I planted in my garden. As expected, the Royal Burgundy snap beans are performing wonderfully. They are busy growing leaves on their sturdy purple stems. No hint of bean pods as of yet, but it is still too early.

 

 

          The Northeaster pole beans are amazing. Some of the plants have already sent out tendrils to the top of the trellis. I am having fun watching that.

 

          The Blue Lake bush beans in the foreground are probably the most delicate of all the beans I planted. A few nasty rolly-polly bugs--also known as pill bugs or sow bugs--have already killed a few of them by eating through the stem at the base of the plant. I hate, hate, hate, using pesticides but did spritz these seedlings lightly to save their lives. Some folks think that rolly-polly bugs are cute, but I have found them to be voracious. One year, they ate so many of my beets that they literally turned purple.

 

 

                The black-eye peas in the foreground of this picture seem to be hardy and coming right along. The yard-long Red Noodle beans are in the background. I set up a wire trellis so they would have support, but then noticed that they are not sending out tendrils and climbing like the Northeaster beans. I looked on the seed package and was surprised to see that they weren't called pole beans, which designates a climber. Maybe I was presuming that they were going to have to climb if they were going to produce that yard-long bean and keep it off the ground. Hmmmm.....  This will be an interesting one to watch.

 

 

          So far, so good.