I love the bush bean variety I planted this year, Jade.  Makes an extremely productive, nice-looking, fast-growing stand of beans.

The fuzzy stuff on the right of the photo is fennel.

We’ve harvested beans about every other day, so much that it started to get ahead of what we could eat.  Beans are great, very tasty, but you don’t want to eat them every day for two weeks, so I blanched and froze 6 quarts the other night.  The kids were eating them right out of the freezer, like green bean pops.

It was kind of weird, in a “Aren’t you the same kid who said you don’t like bej’tables?” way.

All’s not completely peachy in beanville, though.

Here’s the perpetrator:

Nice calluses, lady.  Eek.

I think it’s a cotton square borer, which must know I planted cotton for the first time this year.  They’re getting ready, beefing up on beans for now so they can tuck into my cotton bolls later on.

If you look carefully at the top photo, you can also see holes in the leaves which are probably due to bean leaf beetles.  I’ve only had eyes on one beetle, may it rest in peace, but I remain vigilant.  They don’t seem to be getting the better of the beans, though, so far.

Then there’s this:

Could be some sort of bean bacterial wilt, weather damage, blight, but the good news is it doesn’t seem to be spreading.  Yet.

Despite the perils, it’s hard to beat the feeling of pulling back leaves to see these great pods and feel their weight as they knock against each other.

Grow, beans, grow.

Got beans?