Not exactly a bumper crop in volume today, but definitely in flavour:
A huge amount of time and care (and a bit of worry) is spent on each plant. I don’t have many, so it’s a big event for me when it is time to reap the rewards. I shall have to decide what to do with it for Sunday dinner… or maybe save it for a nice dinner treat later in the week. I shall see…
-cvj
If you do grow them, I say don’t bother buying seed at the garden shop. The dried BEPs they sell by the pound grow just fine. If you ever see anasazi beans for sale, be sure and buy a few pounds. They are the most delicious dried bean grown, as far as I know, and also among the most beautiful.
One of the useful things a somewhat scientific home grower can do with beans is to take the bush varieties that are optimized for modern field production and to select seed to convert them (back) into a pole variety more suitable for home growing.
I grew up with them. I’m very familiar with them. I did actually wonder about growing them some time. Perhaps next year.
Cheers,
-cvj
If I lived down in a warm climate I’d be growing blackeyed peas instead of green beans. The dried ones you get in bags, and most of the ones sold in cans have only a faint echo of how good the fresh ones taste.
My granddad would grow about 50 feet of them. You might find them in the farmer’s markets. You get them fresh and shell them. Any southern cookbook will have recipes.
The better canned black eyed peas are made from fresh peas rather than dried – and they will brag about this on the can. Such cans will include “snaps”, immature beans that are left whole instead of shelled. I’ve not found a source for these cans in Seattle so I bring them back in my luggage when returning from Texas.
I’ve never got them to grow well in Seattle because of the cold soil temperatures in the early part of the growing season. I would guess that England is also too cold for them.
Pingback: Morning Computations - Asymptotia