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Author Archives: jkmcintyre
Beans Beans the Magical Fruit
Possibly the most exciting time of the garden year is when I pick my shelling beans. Planted in May when the soil gets nice and toasty, the bush beans grow like snap beans at first – and can be eaten as such if you are not waiting for the dry September jewels. Continue reading
Posted in beans, vegetable garden, vegetables
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Potatoes by Olla or Not – Here is the Answer!
In the last post I compared potatoes watered by olla vs hand-watering. I found that I got similar yields, but higher efficiency using ollas (pounds/seed).
How does using ollas compare to my control plot in 2010? Check it out: Continue reading
Posted in olla irrigation
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Digging Potatoes II
On Aug 14 we dug the Red Sangre potatoes in the olla bed.
Red Sangre Summary
2009: Planted April 11, harvested Sept 4, 9.5# from 12 seeds, 0.8 #/seed
2010: Planted April 16, harvested Aug 30, 9.75# from 6 seeds, 1.6 #/seed
Compare this with the russett results from July 27: Continue reading
Posted in olla irrigation, potatoes
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Burgandy Beauties
Royal Burgandy Beans!
These lovely beans are dark purple, but bright green just under the skin. The purple pigment is a built-in indicator of done-ness in the kitchen – the whole bean turns green when ready to eat. Often I steam my beans, or put them through a light boil. The purple slowly fades to green. When we sauteed them the other day (with our freshly harvested garlic – YUM!), some spots were cooking and others were not – creating these gorgeous purple-and-green patterns on the beans. We left some of them with purple blotches, but they were indeed not quite cooked!
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