Last October, I harvested seeds from dried up bean pods on our pole bean plants. I stored those seeds in a plastic bag over the winter and then planted the seeds in mid-March. Below is a picture of our pole beans today. In nearly 3 months, they have completely covered the fence I built for them last year.

In my experience, pole beans have been really easy to grow by seed and very prolific producers. Nearly all of the seeds sprout without any stratification. And once the beans sprout, they grow quickly with minimal care and little or no fertilizer (at least in our soil which is amended with compost). Although snails and slugs will eat them if they are not protected somehow. Every year that we have grown pole beans (for about the past 4 years), they have produced more beans than we could eat.

Another plant we have had a lot of luck growing is tomatoes. We planted three tomato transplants (early girl, big beef, and champion) in March that we bought from a local nursery. They were about 4 inches tall at the time. They have grown very quickly over the past 3 months, even though the weather here has been much wetter and cooler than average. As shown in the next picture, they have already grown to completely fill their cages.

We also planted San Marzano tomatoes by seed indoors a few months ago. Growing tomatoes by seed is a first for us. Nearly, all of the tomato seeds sprouted, but as soon as I transplanted the first batch of seedlings outside in early May, they died. The remaining batches of tomato seedlings I “hardened off” by gradually exposing them to direct sunlight and the outside temperature a few hours a day. After hardening off for about 2 weeks, I planted the remainder of the seedlings outside in our new raised beds. The tomato seedlings I hardened off survived and are looking better, although they are only about 6 inches high now.

Of course, one of the advantages of growing plants by seed is access to a larger number of varieties, many of which are not easy to find as transplants. San Marzano tomatoes are supposed to be great sauce tomatoes. The next pictures shows the two new raised beds we just added in our yard. The San Marzano tomatoes are growing on the left side of the bed in the foreground.

Some of the plants that we haven’t had much luck with this year are onions and leeks. I planted white onion sets, shallot sets, and leek transplants in one of our raised beds in March. The onions and leeks are growing on the right side of the bed in the foreground in the above picture. Although the onions and shallots sprouted, they haven’t grown much, and many of their leaves are turning yellow. The leeks haven’t grown at all since I planted them. I don’t have any idea why they haven’t grown well. But I tend to think that part of the fun of growing is taking a chance on growing new plants and that often means some of those plants don’t end up growing well.

Potatoes are another new plant we added to our garden this year. I planted yukon gold potatoes, which I ordered online as potato sets. I also planted white potato sets, which I purchased from a local nursery. The yukon gold potatoes look wonderful. They have already grown to about two feet tall and have really filled in the space around them (see picture below). The white potatoes sprouted, but they didn’t grow nearly as much as the yukon gold potatoes, so I ended up removing most of the white potatoes to make room for other plants.

We have been harvesting beans from our pole bean plants since late June. During the summer, they were producing more beans than we wanted to eat, so I didn’t harvest them all. They are starting to wind down their production of beans now, but there are many bean pods left on the vines that have dried up.

Today, I spent about an hour harvesting the dried bean pods and removing the seeds from them. Each fall, I save bean seeds from the dried up beans pods to plant as next year’s crop of pole beans. I place the bean seeds in a zip-locked bag marked with the date I harvested them. Then, I put the bag in a drawer in our kitchen for storage until next spring.

Beans are the only seeds I harvest from our vegetable garden to re-plant for next year. Bean seeds are very easy to harvest, because they are large seeds, and they dry within the pods while they are still on the vine. Other types of vegetable seeds are much smaller and are more of a challenge to pick and dry.

I always make sure to harvest the seeds from bean pods that are completely dried up. The dried up pods crumble in my hands when I break them open. I have noticed that if the bean seeds inside are not completely dry and hard, mildew may start to grow on them while they are in storage.

This year I planted mainly Romano (Italian) beans and some Blue Lake pole beans. The black beans shown in the third picture above are the Romano beans. These types of beans are usually grown for harvest as green beans. But I think the dried black bean seeds from the Romano bean plants can also be cooked and eaten. We have too many dried bean seeds to plant next year in our relatively small vegetable garden, so I am going to try cooking some of them and using them in Mexican dishes.

Our pole beans have now completely covered the 5-foot tall wire fence I erected for them last March. I love this fence structure, because it is strong enough to support the weight of the beans. I made the fence using two wooden posts and a steel wire frame that is used for supporting concrete in construction. But perhaps I should have made it taller. The vines are already 8-9 feet long.

This photograph is a pink climbing rose called America that I planted as a bare root a few years ago. I love this climbing rose. I have planted several climbing roses including Cecil Brunner and Blaze, but this one is my favorite. It has done really well in our yard. It produces lots of beautiful pink flowers, and it has not gotten any black spot or mildew diseases. It grows a moderate amount, but it’s not too vigorous like Cecil Brunner. I got so tried of pruning the numerous long thorny vines of Cecil Brunner, that today I pruned two of ours to the ground, and I plan on uprooting them next weekend.

I planted a new crop of green pole beans back in March around the first day of spring. I planted seeds that I harvested from dried bean pods on the Italian beans growing in our garden last year. I also planted some blue lake pole bean seeds that I bought from a local store.

The seeds sprouted in about 2 weeks and have grown incredibly fast since then, especially in the past few weeks. They have already grown several inches up the support from where they were just a few days ago!

In the past few years since I started growing beans again, I have been growing each group of beans up a single pole. The problem with this technique is that when the beans get large and heavy they tend to slide down the pole. For years, my mom used chicken wire held up by 2 poles on each side to support her annual crop of pole beans. But when the beans get large and heavy by late July, the chicken wire support begins to sag down in the middle.

This year, I decided to use a different technique. I nailed two 6′ tall wooden posts to the edge of one of our raised beds. Then, I screwed small hooks into the posts near the tops of the posts. I then hung a wire frame on the hooks. The wire frame is made up of rigid metal wire that is about 2 mm thick. I think it’s the type of wire frame that’s used in supporting concrete.

The wire is flexible enough to bend, but only with sufficient force. I can bend it with my hands, but it probably won’t bend under the weight of the beans. It’s not flimsy like chicken wire, but it has wider openings between the wires.

I bought a 4′ x 8′ piece of this wire frame from a local hardware store for about $8. I mounted the bottom of the wire frame about 12 inches off the ground. Beans don’t usually need support until they are about a foot tall. So far, our new bean support system seems to be working well.

My parents’ vegetable garden (shown above) is looking incredible right now.  The Italian green beans my mom planted in April have completely covered the wire fence that my dad put up for them to grow on.  The weight of the vines is so heavy that it’s causing the wire fence to sag in the middle.  

The vines are just starting to produce a profusion of green beans.  They are almost producing more beans than they can eat, even though they haven’t fertilized them.  Not only are they fun to harvest, but home-grown green beans are some of the best tasting green beans I have ever eaten.  

Green beans are the most tender and delicious if they are picked when the bean pods are small to medium sized.  If you pick green beans when the bean seeds inside are large, they are usually tough and less tasty.

My mom starting growing Italian beans several years ago.  Last year, she planted bean seeds in my yard.  She had gathered the seeds from dried out leftover beans that were still on the vines the previous fall.  Those seeds grew and produced an abundance of beans, which we used for great dinner side dishes for months.  I saved some of the dried up beans from those plants last fall and planted another generation of beans this spring.  They are now full of fruit (see below).  I probably won’t need to buy green bean seeds again, at least until I want to try a different variety.