This evening, just after 6 o'clock, R. spotted a mama deer and three little ones quietly having supper in our garden. They seemed to enjoy the crabapples best, though the lettuce and sunflowers that were in the south garden compost pile were close seconds. They are such gentle little souls and so enjoyable to watch. They stayed for a half hour or so before moving on to explore other things.
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If the heat and periods of strong wind made for a dismal tomato year, it had the opposite impact on the dry beans I was growing. In 15+ years, this is the first time the dry beans dried down almost completely on the plants. No pulling entire plants in early September and hanging them indoors to avoid heavy rain or a string of "killer frost" days!
Two of the varieties grown this year – Early Warwick and Wiener Treib - proved to be very early to dry. I only grew out a small amount of them and wish I’d planted more. Overall, the varieties of dry beans I’ve found to be the earliest (listed as best I can from the very earliest on down) are:
Wiener Treib (dry/bush) - 2022
Early Warwick (dry/bush) - 2022
Beka Brown (dry/bush)
Ireland Creek Annie
(dry/bush) - 2022
Swedish Brown (dry bush w/short runners)
Mitla Black (dry bush w/short runners)
Small White Navy (dry bush w/short runners)
Purple Amish Gnuttle (dry bush w/short runners)
Honorable Mentions for early dry bush beans: Ruckle (2022), Cattle (2022 - also called, “Jacob’s Cattle”) and Painted Pony.
Incidentally, if your beans have begun to dry down and rain is in the forecast, for Heaven's sake, get them inside right away. I will never forget the year I had a beautiful bed of healthy, productive Painted Pony plants, drying down nicely, when the weather suddenly turned cool and wet. The temperatures bounced back the following day, the sun beamed…and all the beans sprouted inside the pods. Arhg!
Of the few dry pole beans I have grown, Flagg (also called, “Skunk” and “Chester”) and Dolloff have been the earliest to dry. That being said, many of the pods had to complete drying down indoors after being picked in late August/early September.
Dry beans grown in 2022
(Click to enlarge photos)
Wiener Treib
A small white and speckled gold heirloom with Dutch origins. Rare. Very early for a dry bean. Rich flavour, meaty texture, nice for stews, chilis, and soups. Easy to pick and shell. Seeds obtained from a member of Seeds of Diversity, through the Member Seed Directory.
Early Warwick
A dark red speckled bean from Warwick England, grown pre-1890. I find them quite pretty! Very tasty in chilis and baked beans, and they hold their shape when cooked. Productive, early, and cool weather tolerant. Seeds obtained from a member of Seeds of Diversity, through the Member Seed Directory.
Ireland Creek Annie
Productive, reliable, and early (~80DTM). A nice soup bean that makes it's own sauce/broth. According to Annapolis Seeds, where I originally purchased these beans, it was named after Ireland Creek Farm in the Fraser Valley (BC, Canada) where it has been grown since the 1930s.
Mrociumere
An heirloom bean from the Kenyan region of Africa. They have a thin skin and creamy texture. Narrow kidney shape and a finely speckled lavender colour. About 90DTM for dry beans. I have read they are best for creamy soups and dips. Seeds were obtained in a trade and grown out.
Ruckle
An heirloom named by Gwen Ruckle of Salt Spring Island. A white kidney bean that matures early on productive plants. Mild, sweet flavour. Originally purchased through Salt Spring Seeds.
Tiger Eye (dry bush w/short runners)
A beautiful, large gold/orange bean with burgundy stripes. Not the most productive bean I have grown, but I've grown it often because it looks and tastes so nice. When planted in a plot with short stakes between the rows, the runners have something to cling to and the pods dry down more quickly and evenly. I bought these years ago and am unsure now where. Possibly The Cottage Gardener. (I still miss their lovely catalog, and trust they are enjoying their semi-retirement! :)
Tene’s Beans
White, egg-shaped, an heirloom marrowfat type bean. It has it's roots in Grand Manan, New Brunswick, where it was grown by the Locke family for generations. Great for traditional baked beans, or cooked and eaten just as they are. Approximately 90DTM. I originally bought these seeds from Heritage Harvest Seed.
Coco Jaune de Chine
According to Heritage Harvest Seed (where I originally purchased this bean), this is a very rare original strain of the China Yellow or Sulphur bean. It cooks down to a thick sauce, making it great for soups and stews. Though a small bean, I find it fairly late to dry down (~100-110 DTM), so don't grow it as often as I would like.
Cattle beans
A productive and reliable heirloom from New England that strikes me as surprisingly early for it's size. Plump, oblong seeds that are white with maroon speckles and splotches. Good for baked bean dishes and soups. The plants grow close to 2' tall. ~90DTM. Obtained in a trade.
And...Gold Harvest dry pea!
An heirloom from Salt Spring Seeds. The plants are compact (2-3 feet tall), productive, and early to dry down. The pods are small and contain just a few peas each. The flowers are lovely - pink and coral in colour. Though I haven't tried them yet, they apparently have a distinct chestnut flavour.
After last summer’s intense heat wave and August hail storm (most of the plants ended up in the compost), I had high hopes for a bumper tomato crop this year. That, to put it mildly, did not pan out. While enough were harvested to enjoy some fresh and freeze some diced, the visions I had this Spring of shelves lined with litres of canned sauce and whole tomatoes were for naught.
Late May/early June were on the cool side, and then things shifted. As I type, it has been two months since it’s rained. Late July brought strong winds and August was hot and dry. We went through the water in our rain barrels (most of it accumulated early this summer) and have had to water from our taps for the last month and a half.
The harsh weather and our attempts to keep the garden well watered resulted in a high percentage of the tomatoes being plagued with Blossom End Rot. Many plants were also still loaded with unpollinated yellow flowers in mid-August. Flowers that had been pollinated and were just starting to grow were burned to a crisp and fell off the plant during a particularly hot week in August. Overall, the tomato plants produced a fraction of the fruit they would in a typical year.
The varieties that did the best were Indigo Pear Drops (sweet, fruity, and abundant - click on picture to enlarge)…
…Reinhard’s Chocolate Heart (rich, complex flavour that reminds me of Black Sea Man)
…Japanese Black Trifele (none of these made it into a sauce or the freezer – I ate them fresh as soon as they were ripe. Delicious.)...
…and Black Sea Man. Planted in a raised bed, they behaved more like indeterminates than
determinates this year. No pictures from this year, but you can see what they look like here.
EM-Champion (no pictures from this year, but they can be seen here) and Early Annie, which are usually workhorses and extremely abundant, produced about a quarter of what they have in the past.
Early Annie - August 16th:
Emalia, a rare variety. I ended up with a single plant from the few seeds I started. They produced loads of flowers that remained unpollinated due to the heat and dry weather. I saved seeds from the first two small tomatoes that ripened.
Poor Emalias. These are about as ripe as any of them are going to get. The colouring and shape are right, but they are a fraction of the size they are supposed to be. (They're sitting on a saucer in the picture below, not a dinner plate!)
Andean is supposed be early and productive, but they only produced between 4-8 fruit per plant (not including the ones ruined by BER - those ended up in the compost bin). Though it was against the house and protected, I think this variety prefers a cooler, wetter growing season than we had.
It was obvious that Petitbec (the earliest to ripen this summer) and Clear Pink Early (not pictured) have huge potential, but neither did very well this year. Both seem worth another try.
Petitbec - these have been popped whole into baggies and into the freezer for use in sauces and stews.
Monomakh’s Hat is another one that is an obvious workhorse in optimal conditions. It developed fruit early and is the earliest-maturing large tomato I have grown. They have few seeds and are very meaty. The taste was much milder and sweeter than expected, but the flavour of most tomatoes this year has suffered. This is another “grow again!” variety.
Beauty King Dwarf was a disappointment. The plants (rugose foliage) are compact and the fruit are pretty (they’d be prettier if they weren’t cat-faced or marred with blossom end rot), but production was extremely low and the fruit was late to mature. I’ll have to chalk a lot of that up to the poor growing conditions this summer, though what I’m seeing reminds me of the year I tried growing another rugose-foliage variety: Coastal Pride Orange. That followed a similar pattern and provided the same lackluster results.
Beautiful striping...
...but BER on the bottom.
It is a chilly, misty morning, tinged with the smell of smoke in the air from wildfires in the province. It got down to zero overnight for the second night in a row. I harvested most of the tomatoes on September 11th, the day before the first frost of the season (Indigo Pear Drops are the only tomato plants still in-ground).
Sunflowers in the East garden/potato patch. The tall ones are Lemon Queen, the short ones are Sunspot.
A little volunteer sunflower grew in the compost bin. :)
These are the Galeux D'Eysines plants earlier in the month. We covered the squash, but most of the plants were zapped by frost overnight on the 12th. We harvested them that morning.
Usually, the Galeux D'Eysines give us 6-8 squash, but this year we got four. Happy to have them! They'll stay in the plant room until their skins toughen up and then they'll be placed somewhere cool for storage.
The Burpee's Butterbush plants earlier this month (with Taiyo sunflowers in the back). I completely forgot to cover things in the garden last night before going to bed. Seeing the frost this morning, my heart sank. Presumably, the plants got zapped. Fingers crossed that the squash themselves made it through the frost unscathed.
I made a beeline for the cabbage bed this morning upon realizing I'd forgotten to cover things in the garden last night. I breathed a sigh of relief, seeing the cabbage intact, and thought, "The deer must not have come by last night". The next moment, turning to walk back to the house, I saw a little face with large ears peeking at me from behind the house! The deer was either behind the house, or in the alley behind the house. By the time I got to the back of the property, it was gone.
The cabbage didn't get very large this year and several were chewed by deer. This red cabbage (along with a huge, gorgeous red cabbage given to me by friends) ended up in a Spiced Red Cabbage canning recipe. That was a lengthier and more tedious project than anticipated. It smelled wonderful, though, like mulled red wine at Christmas.
Ah, the Late Flat Dutch cabbage. What was I thinking, with the word "late" right there in it's name? The heads are still very small. The plants will remain in the raised bed as long as possible. It would have been better to grow Brunswick or any of the early varieties (Golden Acre, Copenhagen, Cuor di Bue).
A few of the sunflowers that were munched on by The Midnight Snacker.
R. dug up a few potatoes last night to have mashed with supper. Delicious! Most of the potatoes will remain in the ground until the plants are killed by heavy frosts. The carrots will be harvested in the next week or two.
Making up for being away last summer, I went on a bit of a preserving spree this year. Blueberry Lime jam, crabapple and raspberry jellies, mint jelly, Dilled relish, Zesty Zucchini relish, Cucumber Relish (I usually substitute zucchini), Spiced Red Cabbage, and a few jars of tomato sauce. Some of the jellies and relishes have made their way to Nova Scotia this month. If a zucchini and pepper fairly left a basketful of each, it would be tempting to keep making relishes. They're so tasty!
