A tale of two years beans
I have been beside myself for the past few weeks, staring at my green bean plants with just a few flowers on them and then watching the little ones make no progress in their growth. The picture above is from last year’s bumper crop.
Last year I had more beans than I knew what to do with, and I was excited to share with the world my successful bean harvest that extended through October and into November.
On top of it being a favorite vegetable in my family, I can grow pole beans in my planter bed, trellising up the fence, which makes it a perfect choice for someone with limited space in their yard. And, I felt like I had finally figured out the right time to grow the beans in our climate. Green beans don’t like the hot, dry summer in California, and they are more productive in the spring or fall when the weather is slightly cooler.
This year I was ready with seeds to plant them in the late summer, at the same time as I started the year before. I had material to lay over the top of the bed to help keep the seeds moist so that they will germinate in our hot summer. And everything seemed to be proceeding as planned. Then, in early October, just as the blossoms were appearing on the vines, we experienced the most ferocious fall storm that sent our nighttime temperature down into the thirties.
The plants in my backyard get protection from the cold by their proximity to the house, but the cold spell that lasted 4–5 days took its toll on the plants, and though they survived, they never recovered, and I haven’t got more than a handful of beans off the vines.
The weather ruined all of the planning that I had done.
Farmers out there are probably laughing at me right now. They know what this is like, and they go through this every year as they measure and record their local weather trends.
I feel naïve that I don’t understand the different conditions that the weather can bring. One of the worst consequences as we get farther from our food supply is that we have no comprehension of how our food is grown.
I don’t know if I should be more resilient dealing with the loss or if I should have known better not to have tried in the first place and wasted the seed.
When I worked at the farm, my boss would often plant things with the explicit knowledge that we might not get a harvest from those rows. Many things depended on the weather.
At most large farms today, this still happens. The main cost of growing vegetables comes from the labor to harvest them, so if a crop is damaged by bugs or weather, there are only minimal losses by just tilling the plants back into the soil as green manure.
I don’t want to stop my adventurous gardening spirit. My desire to put seeds in the ground and see what grows still endures. I now need to work on my record keeping, a skill that unfortunately needs work, and bounce back from failure.
I can always try again next year.