Texas summers are warm! From around mid June to almost the end of July, we had no rain. Watering the garden was a necessity but the plants love that special touch that only rain can offer. Temperatures consistently in the nineties do not help either. Most of the cucumbers died, and the zucchini is barely hanging on.
Beans of three different kinds have a lot of vegetative growth but there are very few flowers, and very few beans as a result. After a 40 day dry spell, it rained a little and a few flowers appeared on the beans, but that led to just 3-4 beans on each plant. It has been very disappointing. I was told to water the plants less, and that might trigger flower production and subsequently beans.
This morning, I managed to collect a decent amount of Long Beans, enough to make a side dish to go with lunch. There were also some Fava Beans ready to be plucked.
Earlier in the year, I had two seedlings of Long Beans and they were planted alongside the Opo Squash. They grow fast and purple flowers adorn the plant at regular intervals. These flowers bloom in the morning. By noon, they are pollinated and then they close.
When the flowers are pollinated, they fold up and form these little triangle shaped pouches that are a pale shade of yellow. They are future bean pods.
You can see a bean pod growing on the left and a pollinated flower on the right. A hint of the purple color is visible as the petals close.
Two bean pods grow out at tips of branches where the flowers once bloomed. If they are not plucked when they are still young, the seeds inside grow and then there is a lot of competition from the birds, squirrels and even ants.
Ants get inside the bean pods and hollow it out leaving the shell intact. There were times when I saw beans and decided to pluck them in a day or two and went back to find nothing, or half of a bean pod would be waiting for me.
A Fava Bean plant have flowers that are a different shade of purple. These beans are flat and broad, and much smaller in size than the Long Beans. They have a unique flavor that adds a nice variation as a side dish.
Beans of three different kinds have a lot of vegetative growth but there are very few flowers, and very few beans as a result. After a 40 day dry spell, it rained a little and a few flowers appeared on the beans, but that led to just 3-4 beans on each plant. It has been very disappointing. I was told to water the plants less, and that might trigger flower production and subsequently beans.
This morning, I managed to collect a decent amount of Long Beans, enough to make a side dish to go with lunch. There were also some Fava Beans ready to be plucked.
When the flowers are pollinated, they fold up and form these little triangle shaped pouches that are a pale shade of yellow. They are future bean pods.
You can see a bean pod growing on the left and a pollinated flower on the right. A hint of the purple color is visible as the petals close.
Two bean pods grow out at tips of branches where the flowers once bloomed. If they are not plucked when they are still young, the seeds inside grow and then there is a lot of competition from the birds, squirrels and even ants.
Ants get inside the bean pods and hollow it out leaving the shell intact. There were times when I saw beans and decided to pluck them in a day or two and went back to find nothing, or half of a bean pod would be waiting for me.
A Fava Bean plant have flowers that are a different shade of purple. These beans are flat and broad, and much smaller in size than the Long Beans. They have a unique flavor that adds a nice variation as a side dish.
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