Oh. I thought different vegies needed different ratios of salt and water, for safety reasons. Is that all wrong? Different veggies may benefit flavor-wise from different brine levels but that is a matter of taste. As long as you use one of the recommended salt brine levels - see salt brine charts referenced above in Joy of Pickling (JOP) for example - then you can safely ferment any vegetable or mixture of vegetables. This, of course, assumes you use the proper fermenting techniques too - enough brine to cover the amount of vegetables, time, air temps, cover, skimming, etc. Dave PS: Randy - feel free to start a new thread. That way the OP won'r be getting all the emails if it turns into a long discussion. :) This post was edited by digdirt on Sat, Oct 26, 13 at 11:16

Dennis, I just want to say that I love your white garden idea. You know I love vegetable gardening, but my strong suit is still flower gardening. I do a fair amount of design work around the community and my favorite designs are always gardens designed with green and white. If you do entries at a garden show or state fair, I should think that a green and white veggie bed would be an award winner. Zipper Cream cowpeas have cream colored bean shells when they are ripe and ready to pick. And our southern Scuppernong grapes are a pale cream to yellow colored. (Don't know if they'd do as far north as you are.) Also, you might want to consider white variegated foliage. It seems to me that I have read of this in beans, but I can't remember where. There is definitely white variegated basil and white variegated mint (though, of course, that would be aggressive).

Bush Blue Lake is good. My family likes the round cross-section beans better than the flat beans (grew Kentucky Wonder and BBL last year). I'm getting ready to plant some new (to me) varieties incl. a yellow for mid-summer harvest, will let you know what we think.

Jade is a wonderful bean, but I haven't planted it. A friend did and I got some from him. He stated that Jade will hold on the plant longer than most, and I'll have to admit that I didn't get mine preserved as soon as I should have, probably 5-7 days after picking. the amazing thing is without refrigeration, they still SNAPPED like freshly picked. My bean standbys are Provider, Contender, Cherokee Wax (black seed)and Royal Burgundry. Marla