ALBANY PARK — We’re midway through the gardening season and if it hasn’t been all that entertaining til now, well you’re probably not growing beans.
Boy, are you missing out. When it comes to harvesting, beans are a total gas.
Bush beans. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
For the past three years I’ve planted bush beans, which are not the same as pole beans. The difference between the two is spelled out in their names: one grows like a bush — low and wide — and the other winds its way up a pole, tall and leggy.
I opted for the bush variety because I’m a freakishly competitive person. It's not a narrative exaggeration to say that I passed on poles because I couldn’t bear the pressure of having to design a trellis from found objects in a bid to out-Martha Stewart my fellow gardeners.
It's a sickness, I know, but out of such lunacy, I lucked into the most fun I’ve had as a gardener.
Walk up to a clump of bush beans and on first blush, you'll see maybe three or four pods ripe for the picking. This is where the hunt for treasure begins.
Part the branches, and jackpot — a cluster here, a cluster there.
Now wade in deeper. Look, there’s a pod lying low to the ground. And another one tucked behind a leaf. And another one camouflaged by a stem.
When you think you’ve found them all, there’s another one, hiding in plain sight. And you can't walk away, because what if there's one more?
I tell you, it’s an endorphin rush — like a runner’s high minus the sweat and pain.
Picture an Easter egg hunt, every couple of days. That’s how often I have a new crop of beans to pick. So far, I’ve harvested more than three pounds, and last year my bushes stayed productive through September.
This game of hide-and-seek, which I'm not sure the beans know we're playing, has brought me a disproportionate amount of joy. The reward of finding those little pods of gold (or purple and gold, as the case may be) is one of the reasons I return to gardening year after year even after failures like tomato blight or a corn crop decimated by squirrels.
A more talented writer would be able to convey the delight of this experience in words. Instead, I was fortunate to have Kyla Gardner, DNAinfo's videographer extraordinaire, film a recent harvest.
Enjoy the hunt.
Vegetable Plot Update
Corn tassels. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
The big news this week at Global Garden — the tassels are coming, the tassels are coming!
Without tassels, there's no corn. With tassels, we're one step closer to the War of the Squirrels.
Vegetable plot, week 11. [DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]
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