Sunday, August 9, 2009

Dragon Tongues

This year we are trying a few new types of beans. One of the new beans is the Dragon tongue beans. The have a great color and are so easy to harvest. The purple really helps you to spot the beans in the plants. They are an heirloom bush bean. The have a taste reminiscent of wax beans but better.



We decided to can some according to the dilly bean recipie in the Bells Blue book. You really need that book if you plan to start canning. We also added one of our small dried Thai peppers to each jar so I hope they end up extra dragony



Rick

3 comments:

Mr. H. said...

I need to get that blue book. I have not had much luck preserving green beans...frozen, lacto fermented, or dried (shuck beans). I have never canned any and hope to try it this year for the first time. Your spicy canned beans look and sound great.

Frustrated Farmer Rick said...

Wow Mr. H you actually took me by surprise on that one. You guys are so much further down most of the homesteading paths than we are. And yes the blue book is my beginners bible of canning. We did save some runner bean that we let dry last year but we have yet to lacto-ferment anything with the possible exception of one batch of beer that went bad.

Mr. H. said...

Yep, canning is our weak link...well one of them. We have spent years preserving food in root cellars, drying, freezing, or just keeping it alive for as long as possible in the garden.

We have done lacto fermented veggies off and on over the years as well, but no canning until this year. I suppose it's because we have not needed to. But, I am forcing myself to learn basic water bath canning this year, I really should at least know the basics don't you think? We hope to can most of our tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers (if I like how they turned out).

Who knows, perhaps next year we will go all out and try pressure canning...I must say that one makes me a tad nervous though.

Luckily I have fellow bloggers like yourself to learn from.:) I'm going to try the dilly beans this week...wish me luck.