Pole Bean Harvest

 The Blue Lakes are done!  We managed 33.75 lbs over 23 days on 34 square feet.  That’s just a hair under 1 lb per square foot (to keep me humble).  I averaged picking about 3 lbs every two days.  My Lovely Wife tipped, blanched, sliced and bagged them for the freezer.

In years past I’d let the plants stay up the poles for the occasional flowering and an extended season for the odd fresh meal.  But this year I pulled the plants down from their poles as soon the main crop was done.  This was to inhibit the food supply of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug recently (also) imported from China.  

There were fewer stink bugs this year than last year --- I only ran into a handful each picking.  I didn’t see any building population until right near the end of the bean harvest.  They prefer my younger beans and turn them into skinny, limp, rubbery things. 

Taking down the bean plants I first cut all the stems a couple of inches above the ground.  This leaves the roots in the ground where the root nodules that have soil building fixed nitrogen in them can be absorbed into the soil.  

Next I cut out the twine holding the cross pieces at the tops of the poles, then slid the plants down the 10 foot poles.  I pulled out the poles and carried out the spiral like bundles of vines, tossing them into the chicken’s run. 

My hope being any bugs were taken care of by my two birds. To build the soil in the hen’s run I need to add a lot of organic matter to combine with their droppings and these bean vines should be just the ticket for now.   I like to hose off most dirt from the bottoms of the poles before I tie them into a bundle and slide them under the deck’s floor joists.  My poles are very rot free after all these years. 

I left the remaining two poles in the corner with their vines intact – the corner pole being the one that I never picked.  

The plan is for these to ripen for future seed.  I’ve been successfully saving my own Blue Lake seed for over 10 years.  My Blue Lakes are Stringless and are a better selection than many store-bought examples of the same strain.  These last two poles will stay up until the bean pods turn golden yellow.  If they mature but don’t quite dry out before the fall rains come, I’ll lift the whole pole with the vines intact and lay it under the deck to totally ripen / dry. 

I’m hoping the stink bugs will leave these mature beans alone.  Last year after the beans were done, the big evil things moved over to my two hop plants.  

My son TOG had later harvested the hops while I was away and first met up with the stink bugs here.  But his Cascade Pale Ale still tasted most excellent.