Beth,

The heat is becoming unbearable here, although it really is the heat index that is so extremely bad. I'm sorry to hear that your heat is arriving there.....and just in time for summer to begin, it seems!

With the beans, if you want to harvest your pinto beans in the green stage, you can harvest them any time after pods form. You do want to let the individual beans inside the pods grow a little bit first, but harvest before they get too large and the bean pods begin to budge out a little. If you wait too long to harvest as green beans, the individual beans inside the pod will be a bit tough. If you want to leave the pinto beans on the pods for dry beans, just leave them there until the pods dry and have a crisp papery texture to them. Then you harvest them there for dry beans.

With black beans, the beans are light-colored (white, I think) until you let them dry. You can harvest them green as green beans too, or let them stay on the plant until the pods are dry and crackly (sort of dry like paper) and the beans have turned black.

With black-eyed peas, I assume these are grocery store peas too? So, in that case you don't know if they are bush, semi-vining or vining types? Just plant them in the ground. about 1 to 1.5" down beneath the soil surface. Plant one about every 2 to 3 inches, and thin them out to 6" apart once they are about 4-6" tall. Normally, you'd space them slightly farther apart if you knew for sure they were vining types,but there's no way to know that without knowing the variety. They'll grow just fine.

If they are bush or semi-vining types, they will do fine without support. If they are vining types, you'll have to put in stakes at some point unless you're growing them alongside a fence or something similar. Keep them well-watered until they sprout and get started growing. After that, they do fine with only occasional deep watering. They are one of our most drought-tolerant crops, so you don't have to water them a lot. With most types of southern peas, you'll be able to harvest about 2 to 3 months after you plant.

Hope this info helps.

Dawn

Thank you, yet again Dawn! Yes, the black eyed peas are a bag from the store, I'll just plant them like you said and see what I get. Kinda fun that way! :)

I appreciate you running over the basics of beans with me too. Honestly? I've been looking it all up on the web and I was thinking, "That CAN'T be right..." LOL! It was hard for my mind to wrap around the idea that THAT is what a "green bean" was! NOW I GET IT. I don't feel too bad, my husband was the same way. When I told him he was amazed... lol... :).

Our heat index is 99, so I can imagine a bit of what you're feeling! Makes me consider sleeping during the day and working at night, but then people would think I was weirder than usual... :). Instead, I'll just keep doing like I'm doing... work a bit, come in for a bit. Drink a WHOLE lot of water.

Maybe I'll lose some weight doing this... LOL! ;)

Beth

Beth,

We had an "easy" day today. The wind blew at a decent speed out of the southwest and south which helped us stay relatively cool, and the heat index didn't get up real high until between 4 and 5 p.m., I think, and that is when it went to 105. Before that it had been only 102 for a couple of hours. Still, we've had worse days this year, or maybe I'm acclimating, because it didn't feel "that bad" to me. LOL

Green beans are easier than they sound. Look at your pods when they first appear. Then look at them every day and you'll see the little oval beans forming inside each pod. Every day, those beans are a little larger. It is your choice when to harvest some for fresh green beans, and it is better, when you are new at harvesting them, to do it "earlier" rather than "later". So, harvest some when you think they are ready. Look carefully at how filled out the pods are with the little oval beans. If you like their flavor and texture when you cook then and eat them, then try to pick them in the future when they are the same size. If the beans inside the pod seemed a bit tough and the pod itself seemed too fibrous and not tender enough, harvest them when they are a little less filled-out next time. If the beans inside were fine, but you wonder how much longer you could let them stay on the vine next time, then the next time let them get a little larger and a little more filled out, and see how you like those once they are cooked. Like everything else in the garden, you'll have to try it different ways and see what works best for you.

Frequent trips indoors to cool off and drink something cold is the smart way to do it! And a heat index of 99 is plenty hot! I used to love summer the most, but now I am partial to the milder weather we have in spring and fall.

Dawn

Beth, last year I planted black beans and chickpeas from the grocery store. I wanted them for dried beans as I already had enough green beans growing. The black beans germinated better than the chickpeas and also produced better. Actually the chickpeas didn't even set seed although the few measly plants did bloom. So that made me wonder if like the favas that I planted too late this year chickpeas are a cold weather bean. Anyone know? Anyway, I got enough shelled out dry black beans to make the experiment worth while.

Concerning pintos. Fresh shelled pintos are a favorite around here. You wait for the beans to get mature inside the pod but NOT dry. You pick and shell them out while they--both pod and seed--are still softish but the seeds are as big as they are going to get. These can be blanched and frozen for "fresh" pintos all winter.

Dorothy,

I've never tried freezing fresh pinto beans, and I don't know why because I freeze everything else! I'll try that next year (but I really need a larger deep freeze before I try freezing "more" of anything else).

The chickpeas (we called them garbanzo beans when I was a kid) are "supposed to" be warm-season beans but I haven't grown them myself. I got out my "Seed to Seed" book to double check that fact and here's a brief synopsis on what Suzanne Ashworth says about chickpeas (Cicer arietinum): She decribes the plants as bushy, upright and vining annuals, growing up to 2' tall and producing 1" pods that contain 1 or 2 seeds per pod. She does mention the plants are covered with sticky hair that produces malic acid and this makes some people break out in a rash if they touch the plants. They're inbreeding. She suggests withholding water once the seeds have set and says many people pull up the entire plant and dry them, under cover, or let them dry in the fields in drier areas, and thresh them to harvest the beans without touching the plant pods and breaking out in that rash.

Direct seed and expect good germination when soils are in the 70-85 degree range. She says germination usually occurs in about 10 days and you should thin the plants to 12-18" apart. Ms. Ashworth says nothing in the chickpea section about them being daylength sensitive. Her recommended planting dates are: Southeast/Gulf Coast: Apr. 15 - May 15 and her comment is "The plants like full sun and are drought tolerant." For the Upper Midwest, she suggest direct seeding through May 1. For the Southwest, she suggests Sept. 15 - Feb. 15th, but I assume that is in frost-free regions since she had previously described them as "heat loving". Hope this info helps.

Dawn

Dawn,
I call 'em garbanzos too... just using the name I hear more often now! But when I eat three bean salad, it's always garbanzos to me! lol... :).
I've got the heat thing BEAT NOW. I'm far enough ahead in my chores that I can do my work very early in the morning and very late in the afternoon. I'm in the cool house during the heat of the day! I suppose it's a good thing I didn't get the garden as big as I was planning this year... much easier to manage when it's small. The blackeyed peas are going in this weekend. I'm gonna assume they're gonna vine up and plant them teepee style.

Mulberryknob,
I actually had good germination on my garbanzo/chickpeas, but they're not vining like Dawn said in her description. I'm seriously thinking about taking them out and planting more tomatoes where they were... I have no patience I guess... lol! They're interesting looking plants tho!

And THANKS for that description of the shelled beans! That's the "shellies" that I've been reading about, I'm assuming. I remember my Grandma having giant bowls full of shelled beans, but never really thought about what kind of plant they came from or whatever. I'm definitely going to do shellies this year.

I so desperately need a deep freeze... LOL!

Beth

Beth, Watch your local Craig's List and you might find a deep freeze at a good price. My son found a refrigerator for our garage for $50 on Craig's List and it looks great and works just fine, which is my way of saying it was not an old piece of junk! LOL

Dawn