The Beans Are Up

    I don’t know why I am always so worried, things usually work out.  Lately I have been worried about the dry beans I planted.

    Last year was the first year that I ever grew dry beans.  Our corner of the interior of BC is not really prime dry bean country, but I like eating beans and wanted to try growing them.  I bought some seeds and they grew well, but they need time for the bean pods to turn a golden color and dry on the plant.  Unfortunately our growing season is usually cut short by frost, so I pulled the still green bean plants with their still green bean pods out of the ground and hung them upside down in the barn before they were killed by frost.

    When they had dried out I stripped the beans out of the pods and let the beans do some more drying .  They were hard and seemed to be like normal dried beans, so I put most of them in a jar for eating and saved some for planting this year.  The ones I ate tasted fine, but I worried that maybe my seed beans weren’t viable.  A week ago I planted them and crossed my fingers.

    It was with great relief that I saw them finally poke themselves out of the ground.  That worry over, now I can start worrying about getting a frost that will kill the young plants.

You can take a look at my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca