Well, I can see we are just where we left off . . . with questions about Annie's salsa, what to do with 30 limes if you're not at a Jimmy Buffett concert, and "when is that Cabana Boy going to _________ (fill in you're own blanks)?" To answer all of the "where have you been" comments, I've been taking care of two parents, (and now) two gardens, three yards of grass (approximately two acres of mowing with some recently discovered yellow jacket nests) and other miscellaneous time burners not involving anything to do with salsa, limes, beach music, or cabanas. Not complaining, it is a part of life most, if not all, of us have to deal with at some time or another. Looking forward to get back into the mix and thanks for all of the nice comments. TIM

Happyday- I do see some nice plump voles that might have a squeeze, but I suppose you're right, and 1/2" hardware cloth is very expensive. I have 2 cats plus a stray that is here daily, one cat is quite a hunter and I saw her catch one, came back in about 5 minutes, and all that was left was a skull. Ewww. I like to plant carcasses (and spoiled meat) down the tops of vole and mole holes in hopes of spreading some disease, or at least stopping the tunneling in that area. But the vole damage has been getting worse. They nipped off about 5 large squash plants at the ground, like they do the pole bean stems, I think because they don't like stems in their way, not to eat them. I put a 4" galvanized nail (warning: danger) and sprinkle cayenne pepper in each pole bean hole so I can get any plants up at all, then wrap each stem in aluminum foil after that. It actually works pretty well. But bush beans are harder. I may try thickly interplanting with greens, that may slow them down. I tried trapping voles with mouse and rat traps under inverted tubs. They work a time or two then I stop catching any, maybe they smell suspicious. I tried poison bait in pop bottles with the ends cut off, as I don't like the idea of the stuff in the soil and didn't want the cats to get into it. I have no way of knowing if it succeeded at all. I'm going to try getting a fertilizer wand you poke into the ground and hook up to a hose to put water into their holes and drown them some. It might slow them down a little. I also tried planting some gopher purge and encourage garter snakes by building up some piles of brush near my beds and putting down some tarps or newspaper (which can also encourage voles unfortunately); I've seen a lot more snakes since, it seemed the cats were wiping them out at first. Or maybe the cats lost interest. Thanks, Nancy

Bon, The world of beans and southern peas is incredibly diverse and many of them are multipurpose and can be eaten as snap beans/peas, shelly beans/peas or dried beans/peas. An old southern method of drying them in the pods gives you "leather britches" to store and cook later. Some varieties make better leather britches than others. You'll have a ball exploring the world of legumes. We almost always only eat our home-grown beans and southern peas in the green stage, whether frozen or fresh. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of us sitting on the porch, snapping beans or shelling peas, with glasses of lemonade or kool-aid sitting beside us, while big luna moths flailed around, beating their wings against the screen door beneath the porch light. Now...that is a great childhood memory! Forget Disneyland or Carlsbad Caverns, which were fun in their own way. I treasure simpler memories a lot more. I normally do not dry the beans I raise. Dried beans are as cheap as can be at the store, especially black-eyed peas (although the commercial varieties sold usually are inferior to the pinkeye purple hulls) and pinto beans. I'd rather use the ones we raise as snaps or shellies, which are a lot more expensive at the store than dry beans. A couple of weeks ago we were at Central Market in Southlake and they had shelled fresh pink eye purplehull peas in a container that might have had 10-12 oz. in it and cost either $5 or $6. I tried to imagine what it would cost to buy all the peas I raise annually, and couldn't even imagine it. I grow tons of beans and tons of southern peas. I like diversity so plant many varieties of each. Just in the southern pea category, you have pinkeye purple hulls, crowders, black-eyed peas, zipper peas, lady peas and cream peas, with many named varieties of each. One thing to remember is that heat has the same effect on bean (but not southern pea) blooms that it has on tomato blossoms, so you have to plant them at the right time in spring (April) for a summer harvest, and keep your fingers crossed that the weather won't heat up too early. If you plant late, most varieties won't produce well because they'll be blooming when temperatures are over 90 degrees and a lot of the blossoms will drop without forming beans. You can, however, plant beans again in the mid-summer for a fall harvest. We call those October beans here, with October not being a variety, but rather being the main time you're generally harvesting them. With southern peas, there's tons of varieties and I'm not happy unless I plant at least six kinds every year, but it is okay with me if most of those six varieties are some form of pink eye purplehull. So far I have planted the following southern peas: CT Pinkeye Purple Hull, Pinkeye Purple Hull BVR, Big Boy Pinkeye Purple Hull, Quick Pick Pinkeye Purple Hull, Red Ripper and Mackey (said to be a family selection of PEPH from Louisiana). Still waiting for a spot in the garden? Whippoorwill and Tohono O'odham, The latter is a southern pea from the native people of the southwestern part of the USA. This bean has the black and white markings like a holstein cow and is very drought-tolerant and heat-tolerant. To see a great selection of plants from the Native peoples of this county, check out Native Seed/SEARCH at the link below. With green beans, we eat most of them as snap beans but every now and then I'll grow a variety or two to use as shelly beans. Of course, Lima Beans always are shelled for cooking. I grow 6 to 10 varieties of snap beans every year, but mostly in the fall if the cold weather hangs on deeply into late spring like it did this year. The late cold is too often followed by a quick warm-up that makes bean blossoms fall. We were in the upper 90s today, so with that sort of weather already arriving, I do not have high hopes for my FM1K pole beans that I have growing on the garden fence. They might be able to hang on all summer and produce in the fall though. Regardless, I can plant more in July for a fall harvest if these look too tired from fighting the heat, pests and diseases by then. Your general fall planting dates for legumes here are: Southern peas and Pole Snap Peas July 15-30, Bush Snap Beans and Lima Beans August 10-20. If you plant later than that, you run the risk of losing the peas and beans to frost before they mature. If you plant earlier (and sometimes I risk it in a rainy and cooler-than-average summer), your plants will be subjected to the stress of a lot of extra heat and pests but won't produce earlier unless the weather cools down early (sure, like that is ever gonna happen). You just have to experiment with both beans and southern peas and figure out what types of each your family likes to eat. Experimenting with the different tastes and textures is as much fun as growing them. My family likes to eat the broad/wide Romano-type snap beans, which are a good, meaty bean with a strong beany flavor. A more colorful diet is a more healthy diet, so I grow beans in a huge variety of colors. For this fall I have Tanya's Pink Pod (pink, obviously), and Puriat (purple), Capitano (yellow), as well as Garrafal d'oro (green), and also Purple Dove (purple). Then, in the haricot verts category, I'm growing Slenderette (green), Purple Queen (purple) and Golden Roc d'Or (yellow). I've got Contender and Provider for plain old green snap beans, and Purple Velour for tasty and tender purple snaps for fresh eating only. (They don't freeze well). I've also got Tenderstar for fall, and some Insuk's Wang Kong. Some years I grow some cutshorts and some greasy beans, and I may plant some odds and ends I have left over from previous years for fall, if it manages to rain between now and planting time in July. Pole beans are beautiful and very productive and you don't have to bend or stoop over to pick them, and there's tons of good ones. I usually grow some of the following most years: Rattlesnake, Louisiana Purple Pole, Blue Coco, Jeminez, Cherokee Greasy, Cherokee Cornfield, Garrafal d'Or, Musica, Red-Striped Greasy and sometimes McCaslan or Potomac or other cutshort or greasy bean varieties. Scarlet Runner Beans do not produce well in heat, so are better for fall harvest than summer harvest, and Insuk's Wang Kong is the one I've grown for several years now. I never get a great many beans from them, but usually plant them to climb my 12-foot-tall ornamental windmill and the hummingbirds love their blossoms. Don't forget Lima Beans. There is so much more to Lima Beans than just plain old green ones. I like to grow all kinds of butterbeans, include Violet's Multicolored Beans, Worcester Indian Red, Henderson Bush Bean and Christmas. While most snap beans are either bush form or vining form, there's some that are somewhere in between and they usually are called half-runners. Some half-runners I've grown get taller than bush beans but not quite as tall as pole beans if they have nothing to climb. Give them something to climb, though, and some of the half-runners climb almost as tall as traditional pole beans. In this category I usually grow State Half-Runner or Mountaineer Half-Runner. We haven't even discussed yardlong (asparagus) beans (which are more like southern peas than traditional beans), or dried beans. I usually grow the red asparagus beans. With dried beans, I like to grow Borlotto Tongue of Fire or Signora della Campagna. And we haven't touched on moth beans, tepary beans, fava beans or Edamame (soybeans). All the talk of pinkeye purplehull jelly makes me smile and brings back fond memories. As with tomatoes, there's thousands of bean varieties and at least a few dozen varieties of southern peas, so you can explore them forever and never run out of new varieties to try. John Withee collected and save just under 1,200 bean varieties. I cannot even imagine all the work it took to raise them and save the seeds and keep all those varieties pure. Oh, and there's rice beans too. The bean world is endlessly fascinating, and my favorite bean varieties change constantly depending on which ones had the best flavor and productivity in any given year. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NativeSeeds/SEARCH

For pole dry beans: Brita's Foot Long (white seeded, similar to Great Northern in size) Dolloff (a New England native) some of the pole Cranberry beans I have also grown several heirlooms with high dry seed yields. Striped Cornfield is a cranberry type, with nearly round seeds packed tightly in short pods. Sargas has seeds that start out golden yellow, and darken to orange-brown. Bosnian Pole has a high yield whether used as Romano-type snaps, or as dry beans. Under good conditions, any of the above should produce about 2 pounds from an eight foot row. Some pole snap beans can also produce large amounts of seed if let go (such as the KY Wonder) but the taste & texture can vary from good, to bland, to unpleasant. KY Wonder White (a.k.a. Pole 191) is a snap whose seeds are plentiful & nearly indistinguishable from Brita's Foot Long, but inferior in flavor.