2026 CW34 - Preserving Exotic Beans and a Garden Check-In
Welcome back! I want to take a moment just to thank all of you who find yourself reading my blog. This started as something for Sara and me to journal our garden progress through, but since starting this weekly publication 5 months ago it has grown to be read by over 200 people every month! I can only hope that some of you get a fraction of the enjoyment out of it that I do.
Moving on, we start this week’s blog off with a big picture look at the backyard. As always, the grass (both Centipede and St. Augustine pictured here) is looking spectacular! The vegetable garden from a distance looks magical with its towering trellis arches full of Black-Eyed Susan and Luffa, potted Princess Flower trees, and towering Lemon Grass. The Dragon Wing Begonias hanging from the Live Oak continue to stun us, especially in the early morning when the sun lights up this area!
Exotic Bean Preservation!
Moving on to our cover story for the week, we finally harvested enough of our Purple Yard Long Beans to justify a preservation session! We gave a preview of this last week when we collected enough for a meal one night, but now it is time to stock the freezer. Follow along as we prep, blanch, flash freeze, and vacuum seal these impressively long deeply colored specimens!
The first step is to snap the ends of the beans off and then break them into reasonable length sections for storage. As fun as the unusually long beans are, and as productive as the plants can be, they’re just not practical in their natural form for long term storage. The process of snapping the tips and breaking the beans into sections is very satisfying and does result in the occasional bean being jettisoned across the kitchen.
The next step in the process is Blanching! For those unfamiliar with blanching, it is a simple two-step process in which an item is briefly cooked in boiling water before being immediately submerged in an ice bath. This process increases the long-term storage quality of vegetables by deactivating enzymes within them. This deactivation helps to preserve the color, texture, and nutritional value of the produce!
After a few minutes in the ice bath, the beans are removed and spread across towels in a single layer to dry completely. This drying step is critical to the next step of the process which I seemingly forgot to photograph: Flash Freezing. This process involves arranging the beans in a single layer on baking sheets and placing them in the freezer for a few hours. Doing this freezes the beans individually, reduces the chances of the beans being crushed in the vacuum packing process, and ensures they will not stick together once frozen in bags.
Lastly, once flash frozen, the beans are loaded into appropriately sized vacuum bags, sealed, labelled, and loaded into the vegetable freezer. It may not be full yet, but the vegetable freezer is well on its way to sustaining us through the winter by the end of this growing season!
Produce Progress
Beyond the bean preservation, there is a steady flow of edible products streaming from the garden! This week alone, we also harvested another batch of Cayenne Peppers, a few Lima Bean pods, a handful of Okra, and a singular Summer Squash.
Out front we have a Lime Tree that has never been happier since we moved it from its pot earlier this season! We’re expecting to get a few dozen homegrown limes this year with much more to come next year! Sara has been cutting the grass for the past few weeks, and unbeknownst to me she has been harboring a secret Tomato plant in the middle of the yard! She insists on carefully mowing around this little guy in hopes he will persist throughout the remainder of the season.
In the pepper row we continue to see strong signs of continued production! Here you can see more Red-Ripened Jalapeños (soon to be turned to Chipotles in next week’s blog!) and some freshly opened Pepper Blooms.
Perhaps one of the more mature looking plants is the Cantaloupe which has begun to develop that familiar veiny texture. Soon these fruits will be providing us with delectable refreshing late-summer treats!
Form over Function
Moving on to those plants that will not be going into the freezer, we first check in on the Orchid Cactus which is throwing out another round of these very unique blooms that emerge from the ridges in its leaves.
Further out in the backyard, our current high performers include the Mexican Heather anchoring two corners of a raised bed and the recently added Cat Whiskers plant.
The New Garden Encyclopedia
Last week was my birthday. I have a lot of hobbies and passions, but one of the more consistent ones across my life is Books. For that reason, my family often presents me with unique and thoughtful pieces of literature around this time of year. For my 28th birthday my parents did not disappoint! They found this [incredibly good smelling] old garden encyclopedia from 1946. I think this may be the start of a new permanent section in the garden where we take an excerpt from this book each week relating to the blog.
Another gift presented to us this week was an incredible Bougainvillea plant brought over by Sara’s mom. This is an especially timely gift, as our Bougainvillea died the past winter. In reading the related section from my new encyclopedia, I learned (or I guess noticed) something I had never paid attention to before. At first, I was stunned to see the flowers described as “inconspicuous” as I have always considered this to be one of the most dazzling displays of color in the South. But then, upon further review, it seems that the flowers are quite inconspicuous.
The actual flowers are the small white elements suspended from what appears to be a bloom. It turns out, these awe-inspiring pink “blooms” are actually bracts. Bracts are a specialized type of leaf just below the actual flower. I was amazed to learn something from this relatively ancient text so soon!
Pests and Pets
As is often the case, there are no real pests to speak of. Instead, we have a visit from a female Pipevine Swallowtail Butterfly and a Bumblebee. The butterfly found itself enjoying some freshly bloomed Ginger while the bumblebee rested upon some Salvia.
As far as garden supervisors go, Scout and Henry were relatively camera shy this week! In their place we have the garden OG, Yoda, resting beneath the Black-Eyed Susan trellis.
