Kentucky Wonder Wax

To go along with my green pole beans I also bought these Wonder Wax yellow beans.  These are from the McKenzie seed company and grew exactly like the green beans.  They were a few days earlier maturing but that was about the only difference.  

They were not however fully yellow beans.  Most of them were tinged green or had part of the bean green part yellow but in no apparent order or sequence.  This was defiantly a turn off as they weren’t very astatically pleasing.  The flavor was ok nothing outstanding       and they did like the green beans become very meaty if left on the vine too long.

This is a bean that I don’t think I would grow again.  It wasn’t terrible but didn’t really meet the expectations I had for it compared to the Kentucky wonder green.

Kentucky Wonder Green Beans

This is the first year I have grown pole beans. I wanted to try out more vegetables that I could trellis and grow vertically.  The seeds were bought from OSC and came with this description

“A strong, hardy and vigorous climber that is a prolific producer of round, meaty pods 18-20cm (7-8") long. A tried and true variety producing top quality green beans with a distinctive pleasing taste.”

I did have a little trouble when they germinated because of some heavy rain that washed away the soil covering them.  But they still germinated above ground and set down roots. The packaging said that they will grow >70cm, that was a significant understatement.  The trellis its self was 6’ and the poles on either end were 10’.  The plants went up one side and down the other with a number of plants that went up the poles and started to grow into the tree.  The plants were very hardy and were able to withstand the light frost.

The beans themselves were plentiful. Once they reached about 6’’ they were ideal for picking.  Much larger than that and I found they because very meaty and not as tender as they should be.  They grew in clusters of 4 beans all together that made it easy to pick as long as you could find them amongst the tangled mass of vines.

They were grown on 6’x 12’ plastic netting.  It worked ok, but the weight of the vines made the middle sag about a foot.  As well at the end of the season it is almost impossible to pull the vines out of the netting.  They were so intertwined I left them there and will just use as is this year.

I would defiantly grow these beans again. The next time i grow these the trellis will be taller and use different materials.  I do have some different ideas for this year that I am still working on.

A Varietal Report

I saw this on the Seasonal Ontario Food blog and found it incredibly helpful.  When I was looking at potential varieties of vegetables to grow I was able to read all of that first hand information off of her reports and to help me decide what would work well where I am located.  So I have decided that I will write a varietal report on the vegetables I grow, so that in future years when I can’t remember I can just look back at these notes.  Did I like it, how did it turn out, where was it planted etc.

It will defiantly be better than what I am doing now, which is nothing.  In fact I have already found my blog to be incredibly helpful as I looked back to check out some garlic information and it was already right there in an old post.

Seed Ordering

So although it is the middle of winter I have already ordered seeds for this spring.  Last year I just bought seeds from a number of different greenhouses and stores that I passed by.  This year I wanted to try out a few new specific plants, so I ordered seeds from the Cottage Gardener, Hawthorn Farm and Mandy’s Greenhouse.  I am also going to be buying the remaining seeds I need from OSC and McKenzie Seeds.  As well as anything else interesting that I find and can’t resist.

I ordered from Mandy's last week and I know she received my order because she ran out of one item and called me so I could choose a substitute.  On Tuesday I ordered from Cottage Gardener and Hawthorn Farm and today they arrived.  I am pretty impressed that it only took 3 days to get my seeds.

From the Cottage Gardener I ordered alma paprika, jimmy nardello, chocolate and king of the north peppers. I also ordered atomic red carrots, black prince tomatoes.  For lettuce I chose paris cos romaine and Queen of Ices.  I also picked out sweet Siberian, golden midget and small shining light watermelon.  From the outside of the packaging it has your basic info about the seeds everything that I expected.  The seed count seems to be on par with what it says, some do seem kind of skimpy but 50 pepper seeds do not take up that much room so it is hard to tell.

From Hawthorn Farm I ordered tongue of fire, northeastern and true red cranberry beans, mammoth melting snow peas and blue pod capucijners. I also got polish linguisa and black cherry tomatoes and purple beauty peppers. They are well packaged with good information on them.  I especially like that they had the germination % on them.  The packages seem to be nice and full although most of these seeds are significantly larger.  Until you open packages it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re getting.

I just have to wait for my order from mandy and then a few packages of various other vegetables that I would like to get.