Very very late season greens.

 Too dry at Dogs Plot  this spring for watercress to thrive, now it's wet warmish winter, and I can harvest some.  It just ain't right.

Return of the Native

 
   These pole beans are  the third generation grown here at Dogs Plot   desended  from the ones given me by my old friend  Gene Peters, who (as he tell us in th text below) had already been growing them for thirty five years since having been given some by his  aunt, who had arrived in this country from Italy as a girl around the turn of the twentieth century carrying a pouch of the beans …. which had already been cultivated by her family for long enough that she may not have known that she was bringing them back to their country of origin, and it could be that they are closer to the early native American beans than the ones growing on Indian Land today.
         If you want a few of these beans to plant, send me a hundred fifty bucks.  Shipping is free if you act now. If that seems a steep price to pay for purity, take heart in the suspicion that there are good reasons for the traits introduced by generations of breeders of the modern varrities.
    I don’t care; I’m fine with these.


Roman Pole Beans                                     2015

Carolina Sementelli was my mother’s godmother (in proper Italian: Madrina)

At age 13, she brought these bean seeds from Italy when her family
emigrated to this country.

Carolina’s family (I don’t remember her maiden name!) came from a small
town in Lazio, the region surrounding Rome.

She would be about 130 now, which means these beans have been in American
115 20 120 years.

Carolina asked me “to keep them going!” I have passed a handful of seed to
whomever was interested to “keep them going!”

The beans love sun and water. You must use a tall trellis-for they are
vigorous growers and prolific producers. They seem to have few natural
enemies and do not succumb to plant diseases in my 35 years of experience
with them.

They are unsurpassed in flavor. Pick them early (before the beans plump
the pods), blanch them briefly 90 to 100 seconds in boiling salted water.
I like them chilled in a salad with onions and vinegar or hot with oil and
garlic or just plain butter.

When the pods mature I shell them, cook the beans with water with a little
celery & onion, then freeze them in one pint containers for the winter.

Perfect for pasta e fagiolii, or a nice minestrone!

Just remember to keep a few pods for seeds for the next year.

Keep the pods unshelled in a paper bag in a low humidity spot. I use the
Attic.

Shell them on the day you plant them. They germinate at about 98%, even
after several years in my attic!


Gene Peters.

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