Bush beans

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The bean which does not climb is the bush bean. This bean is usually eaten dry.

Regarding to the pole beans which climbs along stakes, the bush beans usually stays with their pods stiffer and fibrous earlier.

Our harvest is done when the pods are already filled, while they are not very dry, we thrash them up and freeze them for consumption either in normal meals or in soups. If the beans are dry, it will be harder to cook and therefore we must boil them.

Pole running green beans

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One kind of bean that is used a lot in Portuguese cuisine are the green beans "feijão verde". The development of the plant which gives this kind of bean is made climbing along stakes. That's why they are called climbing beans.

After the beans germinate and after chop beans which are too close to each other, it's time to put up stakes for the beans so they can climb up as they wish.

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This type of culture needs to be watered more often than other types of beans.

The most important pest of these kind of culture the bean's lice, which we need to be very careful and staying alert.

The green bean "feijão verde" is usually eaten while they are green, usually used in soup or included in a boiled fish meal. But if the aim is to have beans for the entire year, it is best to let them dry first one or two days and put them in the freezer just after. In this case the bean is harvested as dry as possible, threshed, packed and ready to go to the freezer.

First meal of broad beans

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Yesterday I had my first meal of broad beans (fava beans) of the first broad beans harvest. Nothing like a meal of fresh broad beans from which we can feel them full of taste. Of course we usually freeze them to have full year of eating, but like any kind of food if it's fresh it tastes much better. It's a vegetable we really like because it gives us a good feeling of being well fed. The sowing was not different from the potatoes, they were sown just before the potatoes, in the last half of November, and in the same way. Even the fava bean seem to be more stronger against diseases than the potatoes and more stronger against the frost. The only problem now is they are too tall and the wind is taking them down. The lucky thing is that they already have pass the "flower" stage and they all already have at least little fava beans. It doesn't seem we would take much advantage from putting stakes into the ground at this time, now that were waiting for more two weeks to take the full harvest. 

Want to read about seeding potatoes?

So read and enjoy the following article

Preparing potatoes for seed