nancyjane: well, at least she knew it smelled like COW poop- that City gal!!ha Now pig & chicken poop smell entirely different but 'poop' never- the- less! The manure x the dairies around here smells awful ... those cows do not belong in a dirt enclosure & fed heaven- knows- what from bins... they belong in a green pasture to eat normal 'cow food'-grass! The cow manure x a pasture smells different & when dry & dug in the garden actually smells good & makes me homesick for the 'country'which cracks my husband (city slicker) up! Thanks for all the help everyone!! : I put the cut beans in boiling water for about 2 minutes, drained them & fill the kettle with cold water and ice cubes. I then drained the cooled beans & filled gallon zip-loc bags half full, squeezed the air out & froze them. I did not dry them first so wonder what that will do to the texture when I thaw them? Yes, I like to add onion, garlic & crumbled bacon in them & for me I add some vinegar like the Germans back home did but hubby wants none of that vinegar! It has been a long time since I grew beans so I had forgotten how to freeze them correctly as earlier I later just boiled the beans I froze with out blanching them first before freezing & they were TOUGH when thawed & cooked! I had forgotten how many beans a 10 ft. single row would keep producing! The yellow bush wax beans are not quite ready yet & I do like the too!

I like yellow wax beans better than green and purple types. I have grown many green beans Kentucky Wonders included. Once blanched, and frozen, they had a very dissappointing taste. I grow the yellow waxed and trim off the ends and cut them into 1.5 - 2 inch lengths. Then blanch for two minutes, place in ice water and then put in a salad spinner to remove most of the water. I put them in a big bath towel after that and let them sit an hour or so. They get bagged and frozen and are quite loose. To cool, I put some in a covered Corning ware dish and microwave about 4 minutes with NO ADDED WATER. The end result is almost as tasty as fresh and has nearly the same texture. Very hard to know what was frozen compared to fresh. My yellow waxed from last summer are very good, and almost as if they were picked fresh. If you use chemical fertilizers in your garden that may be why you have odd tastes. Years ago, my sister said my tomatoes tasted chemical. After that, I now grow everything with organic fertilizers, NO Miracle Grow, and find all my produce to be very tasty.

Yes, the favas (geez, I had "limas" typed out just then - even still, I'm getting the names confused!) taste quite a lot like edamame. I think that's why I enjoyed them so much. The texture and flavor were similar, but a bit more assertive in the favas than you'd find in a soybean. I was feeling too blah to cook the limas after making a batch of kale chips to snack on (have you all tried them? Holy goodness, they are SO good!), so I'll have to futz with them tomorrow. It sounds like they need a bit of cooking time, as some of the recipes I saw said to boil them for 15 minutes or until tender, and they were referring to fresh limas. That sounds like an awfully long time to boil anything green, so we shall see. I like mealy beans a lot, so that might not be a bad thing. Vall3fam, I hadn't even thought of checking out TJ's or Whole Paycheck for frozen favas, and I was just there today! I'll have to look the next time I go. I'd love to buy them fresh, but even at $1/lb, I'd end up composting 3/4 of it because the shell to bean ratio is so small, and decreases even more when you peel the skins off of the beans.

Galina, the English version of the Ingegnoli site is inoperational at present, and my Italian is very limited... do you know if they will ship to the U.S.? I know that for some time, the restrictive phyto-sanitary requirements discouraged many Continental seed companies (and even some Canadian companies) from shipping here. As you have stated, the information we have in the U.S. is not always current. I know that the regulations for entry of seeds to the U.S. have relaxed somewhat recently (although there are signs that this is only temporary). To your knowledge, are there many European seed companies that will ship here by mail? If you could name any - even just those you know of in the U.K. - it would be of great help to many U.S. gardeners here on GW. Thank you for the listing of additional European seed saving organizations. As a member of SSE, I freely acknowledge that they tend to think of themselves as the center of the seed-saving universe [grinning sheepishly]. While there may be some degree of legitimacy to that claim (based upon the many similar organizations that they have inspired worldwide) they are certainly not the only player on the field, and perhaps not even the first. Just the 500-pound gorilla in the room - for better or worse. ;-) Thanks for setting the record straight.