Every garden cycle we try some new vegetables in the garden and either add them to the annual rotation or abandon them because they weren’t what we hoped. For example, instead of filling the garden full of Yukon Gold potatoes that you can buy in the store really cheap, we plant fingerlings and purple potatoes. Instead of traditional dark green zucchini, we plant the yellow and light green/Armenian varieties because they have a much sweeter taste.
This year we tried Asparagus Beans and Armenian Cucumbers (pictured above) and they will both have a place in the garden next year. The cucumbers are huge but sweet and tender without huge seeds. The pole variety beans are a foot long and mild with small seeds. They are sweeter than regular green beans and slightly chalky when raw. We’ll cook them up tonight in a Thai stir fry. After stuffing ourselves with Kentucky Wonders and Royal Burgunys they offer a nice change of pace. If you haven’t tried Royal Burgundy beans, they are another winning experiment from last year. They are dark purple and turn green when you cook them. They taste just like regular green beans.
I also grew Yard Long Beans (another name for asparagus beans) this year. Though they all failed in our garden for some reason! Since all our other beans did very well I can only assume it was a seed issue. I will have to try again next year.
Do you save seeds? I believe that variety is an open pollinated one so you could save them for next year.
Posted by: Jaspenelle | August 31, 2009 at 04:57 PM
Yay, always looking for new things to grow, but it's hard when you don't know the track record.
Posted by: April | September 01, 2009 at 12:03 PM