Scarlet Runner Beans in the Almaden Valley

Having experience form Europe of huge crops with runner beans, I thought I'd try these this year after a particularly disappointing experience last year with Kentucky Pole Beans. The last couple of weeks I have had lots of beautiful red flowers - this is one of the more ornamental veggies - but no pods are forming. So once again I trawl the internet, to find that its simply too hot here. To quote: "blossoms will drop - regardless of pollination - until day temps drop into the 70's"
So I can basically write this off for a couple of months. Perhaps thats why my Kentucky Pole Bean crop was so lousy last year, and further reading lets me know thats certainly why my Fava beans stopped setting beans earlier - Fava beans will not crop in warm weather. So overall, it looks like I'm going to have to rethink my planting times with these beans - perhaps sowing for a fall crop, or perhaps even a winter crop. I'll try out a few planting times and see what happens. Unfortunately I only have 5 runner beans seeds left, so I'll have to be judicious in my experimentation for now. However, I have lots of Kentucky Pole seeds saved from last years crop, so I can seed those liberally. I guess the trick will be to label each vine with sowing date, so if I get a good harvest on any, I can look at the label and read off the optimum planting time.

Other tips from the web:
"If you live in a hot climate, try yard long beans (aka asparagus beans.) They love heat."
"Insuk's Wang Kong (Runner bean)... is remarkably heat tolerant for a runner bean."

The Robins nesting have all fledged and flown, its a bit quiet in the garden now, but the Zucchini are cropping well, although they appear to be variable. The plants in some shade are healthier plants, but crop less, whereas the plants in full sun have more yellow and smaller leaves, but seem to crop more. From my dozen plants, I have harvested about 35 zucchini so far - enough to keep me scrambling for ways to cook them.

Here are some ways to eat Zucchini:
(1) In stews - Ratatouille, of course, but also any stew. Simply substitute for hard squash or turnips, etc., using them as filler.
(2) Raw: Either as sticks with a dip, or what I do for salads: Either coarsely grate, or peel them with a peeler into ribbons, and dress with lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. I like to mix with 30% carrots for a colour/crunch improvement.
(3) The old standby: Fried. Slice into rounds and fry with a little olive oil, salt and pepper until golden on both sides. If you're not into oil, you can always simply microwave the zucchini, whole, for a minute or two, then slice into rounds. Either way, they should come out nice and sweet and juicy.

Dec28 2010: Update on shade/sun... later in the season - Sept/Oct - the shade zucchini were bearing well while the sunny zucchini were getting a little yellowed and tired. TIP! - Grow some in shade, some in sun, to stretch the season a little.

June Arrives

The spinach I sowed back in December is starting to flower, so I'm harvesting the crop, such as it is. Although I have harvested some of it earlier, and to be fair, my planting was small - about a five foot row - I dont really count this as a success. For a start, it was slow in germinating, then it was slow in taking off, and when it finally did start growing, its been attacked (like the chard) with something that paints tiny clusters of eggs, 4 or 5 clusters to a leaf. Whether these hatched into the leaf miners that later appeared or not, I dont know, but they certainly made washing the leaves more troublesome. I guess its just a mind-thing, the eggs are so small that theyre hardly going to affect the cooked product. Again, I have to be fair and note that the peas overshadowed the spinach for a month or two, but that to me just indicates that the peas were a far better crop. I'll try spinach again sometime, but for now I'll just say that it wasnt a star performer in my garden. Overall, I harvested about 2 or 3 supermarket bags of the stuff - and I have left the stumps in case it wants to try throwing out another few leaves.

By way of contrast, in the same bed I grew peas, got about 3 or 4 harvests, and then replaced them with lettuce seedlings which are now approaching maturity. The lettuce are needing more watering lately, as the temperatures are rising, despite growing in the shade for most of the day. Its a mixture of red leaves - red cos, red oakleaf, lolla rossa and others ("Lettuce Mesclun Valentine" from Botanical Interests), and is doing quite well.

The Garlic, also in the same bed, appears to be doing well, and will hopefully be ready to harvest within a month - the bulbs are already starting to swell. The plan, such as it is, is to use this as a carrot/leek bed later in the season. I already have the leeks sown now for about a month; they are a few inches high, and look like thin grass. They are sown thickly, so I can then dig them up and plant them out in the summer-shaded bed. They can then grow in the winter when the leaves have fallen and the shade has gone.

The winter-made compost is how ready for use, so I'm crumbling it into a bucket and using it as mulch. Hopefully the worms will dig it in, helping the soil for next year. One of my next projects is to buy more wire mesh to build a bigger bin. It would also help in turning the compost to have two bins, rather than one.

Yesterday, I hand-pollinated the first female Zucchini flower. I can see a few more getting ready to open, so within a week or two the Zucchini harvest should start in earnest.

Over the last few weeks, I have been planting out the runner beans ("Wisley Magic" from Thompson and Morgan), and theyre starting to climb already - just. I dont have as many plants out as I had envisioned, maybe 15, so I planted a few more seeds in pots to follow. Runner beans should provide a much bigger crop than the Kentucky pole beans did last year, but of course they dont have the same taste (poorer, in my opinion). I'm considering planting a few Kentucky seeds in and among the other crops and leaving them to their own devices. Finally on my agenda, I sowed some more sweet corn in pots to fill the gaps, and they need to be planted out. Suddenly, there dont seem to be so many gaps.