Beth and the Bean Stalk

An antique Ball jar can make dirt look good.

A single jar of beans, not even full, is all I have to show for an entire seasons worth of growing beans. If I’m honest, I have even less lentils. You might think there were bug issues or maybe some bad weather scuppered our plans, but no, the beans grew really well and I even succession planted! When you’re growing in a small space, trellises and all, beans and lentils require a lot of real-estate and resources, especially lentils. 

My family never grew much in the way of drying beans and definitely no lentils, so I had very little context for knowing what it would be like to grow them myself. I really didn’t expect to end the season with an Azure Standard size sack or beans to feed us through winter, but I thought surely I’d get at least a few jars full. When all I had to show was a pint of lentils and this Ball jar of mixed beans, I’ll admit feeling a bit like I wasted my time, but then I reminded myself, sustainability was never the goal of growing these, with our small garden, it couldn’t be; the goal was and still is, to learn, period.

This learning process isn’t just the bare bones of learning to grow a thing either; it’s about finding the plants that we like best, thinning that down to ones that produce in the way we need them to, and then winnowing that down even further, through seed saving, to eventually consistently grow the plants that are best for our climate and ecosystem needs. This is likely going to be a lifelong project and an heirloom we will pass on to the next generation, but how inspiring is that! And this isn’t just how we’re handling our bean growing. Every plant we sow, at this point, is hovering in one of these stages of our learning process. 

We also had to be really honest with ourselves about what we will actually eat and what we just want to grow to say we did. For instance, I love pickles, but in order to get enough cucumbers at one time to make a batch or two of bread and butters, we would need to grow way too many cucumber plants. Not only would there be more than we could eat, it would waste precious ground and trellis space.

The dryer the Bean, the easier the shelling.

Now that I know how to grow cucumbers and what kind I like, I’d prefer to support my local farmer and purchase enough cucumbers to make a couple jars of pickles without the glut that comes from growing them ourselves. In reality, a couple cucumber plants will keep me happily supplied with cucumber sandwiches, and give me the seeds to save for future growing.

 I have a similar stance on zucchini, which I NEVER grow and always have far too much of… which leads me to my next and equally as important module of education: learn how to use each thing grown to its fullest potential (You’ve heard of nose to tail? Well we call it root to seed). And this goes even a step farther when you start considering companion planting! The uses of a single plant are most often, very numerous. This might even be part of your requirements for growing a plant, that it serve multiple purposes. 

Don’t waste that precious compost!

Back to the Pulse; now that I know I can successfully grow and harvest lentils, if down the road we finally get our large patch of land, and I want to dedicate a quarter acre to lentils, I can. More than likely, I will just purchase lentils in bulk from a trusted source. During the process of growing them, I quickly realized the effort wasn’t worth the outcome. Lentils are an easily obtained and cheap food, but if I hadn’t taken the time to experiment and grow them now, I might not have realized that til my future self planted the full 1/4 acre and expended a lot more time and resources for what might be considered, insignificant gains.

“If the end is right,
It justifies
The beans!”

~Stephen Sondheim

We hope to share more of what we’re growing and learning throughout the year, and if you have growing stories of your own that you’d like to share, or just some good old community knowledge and experience that could help a fellow gardener out, please post in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

May your gardens grow green and your bugs be few!