Most important to Grow in the garden for food

[Chic Rustler]

Which Squash is the best/easiest?

yellow squash, crook neck, and zucchini

 

[Chic Rustler]

Good question... I would say beans and legumes, it kind of hard to go wrong with those. I should grow more than I do. Like navy beans, which we eat several times a year. We make up a big pot of ham beans and can the remaining to eat throughout the year. I've been wanting to try and grow peanuts. I might try them next year as something new.

Jesus is Lord and Christ

ive never grown navy beans. are they a pole bean? do you wait for the pods to dry before harvest?

 

[Chic Rustler]

Tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers are a good bang for your buck to grow at home.

With the price of cabbage at H-mart, I'm not big on growing it. They always have good looking produce as well.

Squash grow very well here. It's one of the most cost efficient things to grow for me. Summer squash is a good chicken food supplement. The large fowl like smaller ones, but the silkies like the older ones and love the seeds.

my chickens LOVE cucumbers. i grow nation pickling and always let a few get big and yellow for the birds.

 

[Chic Rustler]

I have found that bush beans have a shorter season than vining beans. If you want to can a lot at one time, plant bush beans. If you want to eat fresh beans until frost, plant vining beans.

plamt enough pole beans and you will be canning until the frost!.

we still have 30 qts from last year. a man can only eat green beans so much.

 

[flowerbug]

...
I can never find just Black bean seeds. There is always some fancy name for them LOL

because in my experience is that people want the name and the story. just saying Black Beans doesn't get many takers when you are trying to give them away.

i've not gotten into solid black bean collecting, but i have some different patterns of black and white and also some others. Turtle beans are probably the easiest beans to start with and they seem to tolerate heat pretty well compared to the others i've grown. since you already have those i'd just start with them. to me Turtle beans are the only black bean and i didn't know there were others at first, but came across several through the years.

 

[flowerbug]

Dry black beans from the grocery store. What do you think @flowerbug ?

turtle beans.

 

[flowerbug]

ive never grown navy beans. are they a pole bean? do you wait for the pods to dry before harvest?

no, they're a bush bean. i'm sure there are pole versions of similar beans though as there are a lot of white bean varieties.

 

[flowerbug]

plamt enough pole beans and you will be canning until the frost!.

we still have 30 qts from last year. a man can only eat green beans so much.

i can eat fresh steamed beans quite often, and canned beans are ok, but not nearly as good in comparison. still could eat those a few times a week too. i also like to eat them while picking in the garden or just wandering by.

 

[CrealCritter]

ive never grown navy beans. are they a pole bean? do you wait for the pods to dry before harvest?

It's been a long time since I grew navy beans. But I believe navy beans are a open pollinated bush bean. Yes you'll want to dry the pods before shelling for dry beans.

With green beans for seed saving, I mark a few plants in the row so everyone knows not to pick those. I let the pods mature then I pull up the plant and pick the pods off of it. I run a length of fishing line with a large needle through the pods and hang them in a warm dry area to dry before shelling the seeds for next year's garden.

You can also use a modified method. I don't recall exactly where the term "Stitching Britches" came from, but was probably one of my aunts who taught me the term while helping with bean harvest when I was a kid. Stitching britches refers to stringing up bean pods to dry for making "Leather Britches". See here https://www.farmersalmanac.com/string-beans-leather-britches-137792

Jesus is Lord and Christ

 

[flowerbug]

for squash, we don't much eat summer squash and i try to grow the winter types of squash that will survive our bugs (squash bugs, squash borers) and the hopes are the animals will mostly leave them alone.

buttercup is our favorite but they don't seem to like our soils, i have some others that have been grown here many years that are a green kabocha type squash and then some of those have cross bred with some other pumpkins and so we have some green and orange and some that are all orange. the more orange in them the less they keep, but they're still tasty squash. also grow baby blue hubbard squash and those are not as dense and sweet as the buttercups or the kabochas but i mix them all together when i'm roasting and freezing the cooked squash so some extra moisture is ok.

i also have some other squash that cross-bred and those were good eating and much larger than our other squash so i planted some of those seeds this year to see what happens next.

new to me for squash are the green seeded (aka naked seeded) squash. it is an experimental project from TEG to grow smaller versions so the fruits are not as large. my first year growing them was not a success for the experiment as i didn't get any smaller fruited kinds and also had some which had hulls on the seeds so they weren't even the kind we wanted but for the fruits that had green seeds i roasted them and they were delicious. easy to grow. the flesh of the squash was not super edible but would do if you were hungry (about the same flavor as a summer squash). this season i have four new batches of seeds planted so perhaps some of these plants will be the right ones. i think the hope is eventually we'll get an edible fleshed naked seeded squash and that would be great.

it's good food and we enjoy eating almost all squash. the ones we don't really like as much are the acorn squash. sweet dumpling squash were too sweet for us. i do have seeds for them now but i didn't plant those this year.