Hey JrSlick, so do you concur about thinning the seedlings down to just 1 shoot per spot? They're currently 2 and 3 per spot, spaced every 6". They haven't been growing very fast the last couple weeks, though they look fine and healthy. We've also had a cold snap, so that could be the reason. Either way, we're going to have some nice heat in a couple days so I better decided whether or not I'm brave enough to thin to 1 plant per spot. I have an 8' long trellis, and I have 12 spots for them spaced every 6-ish inches. So really the question is 12 plants, or more like 24 plants. My brother came over the other day and laughed. He said I'm gonna have enough to sell them at the farmer's market and give them away to every single person we know. LOL Anyway, thought I'd also mention I'm not a *brand* new gardener, it's my second year of this but I still consider myself a newbie. I did my pole beans last year in a large terra cotta pot with a tee pee and got a small yield but the pot was hard to keep watered consistently. I started with a few small SFG beds last year, and this year I have expanded to include 2 ginormous 2'-deep raised beds and I've been converting a bunch of my other landscaping to edibles. I figure if we're gonna have a drought and water rationing here in california, I'm gonna use my water for something useful. Hence, fruit trees and veggies! Thanks again for the input. -kmama

All bets are off for green house or house grown plants. For open field growing. All fruits are perennials and most vegetables are annuals or biennials. There are many tropical perennials in the vegetable group but in most of North American , they are grown as annuals. That includes fruiting vegetables like tomatoes and peppers and root vegetables like sweet potatoes. Kale will go until it sends up a seed head, which normally happens in the spring ( increasing daylight) It will stand mild freezes but not hard frozen ground. Peas (Pisum) like cool damp weather. tolerate frost but not hard freezes. Beans go down with the first frost. In the south heat can be a problem in midsummer for many crops, but should not bother you in New York State. I doubt that you ever see 30 or more days of triple digit temps. There are many annual flowers, even perennials have their season. I doubt that you have roses blooming in january unless you are using a green house. In general tho, treat your vegetables as you would annual flowers and you will be ok.

All beans can be harvested as young snaps. Some just taste better than others. Were it me I would harvest what you want, and let the rest go to seed. You'll likely have trouble telling the Kentucky Blue and Blue Lake apart, though. Visually they are very similar. You'll have no trouble IDing the Cranberry and Tiger Eye beans, though, because their seed color/patterns are very distinct. What you may want to do, therefore, is reserve the seed from them for planting next year, but use the Kentucky Blue/Blue Lake as soup beans, and order new seed for them next year---if that's what you really want to grow.

Each pod has a seam, which runs top and bottom from the stem to the tip of the bean. In a true string bean that seam has a fiber which runs along the top and bottom seam. It is literally like a little string. if you fail to get rid of it, you will be pulling it out of your mouth when you eat that bean, as it does not chew up very well. True string beans have almost all their fiber along the seams of the pods. It's as if the bean plant localizes all that tough fiber into the seam of the pods, leaving the rest of the pod exceptionally tender, when it begins to age, rather than becoming tough and fiberous. So the advantage of the tender podded bean is that you can eat and enjoy it when it is much older than a normal modern variety. In parts of the South, it is traditional to let the seeds fill out before picking and cooking string beans. This results in a pot of pods and shelly beans, all mixed together. The disadvantage of the string bean, is that you have to string it, which takes a little extra time. Barksdale Wax is a tender podded bean, just like so many string beans. But it never has any strings either. More common snaps are stringless, but their pods develop tough fiber in them when they are maturing their seed. This is not to say that a stringless (or tough podded bean, as I would sometimes say) is a tough bean. It can be succulent when young. But it won't be tender when the seed in its pods is maturing. George