Swapping peas for beans

I never imagined that I'd be pulling out sugar snap peas, beet greens, and purple-podded peas just after the first day of summer. But I did that over the weekend, and we enjoyed the harvest.

It took a bit of scrambling to round up the appropriate bean seeds for their trellis replacement, too.  I had some of them at the ready, and thought that I had all of my seeds here, too, but apparently some of the warm season varieties are in a separate container elsewhere.  A quick visit to two local commercial sites took care of that!

I like to grow pole beans: Italian romano, lazy wife greasy beans (an Appalachian heirloom from SowTrue seed), and yard-long beans (which thrive in hot summers). I also sowed a fresh round of cilantro and chard, and planted another Japanese eggplant.  I planted some squash seeds, too, just for fun, and would have planted more, but the woodchuck is definitely too active in the lower beds to make it practical without barriers in place.

Here's my (very) first test audio snippet (too short to be called a podcast) recorded on Garageband and uploaded through Soundcloud.  I've done quite a bit of audio/radio over the years (even video), but with expert support as part of my work. 

This was unedited and not redone, so hardly a smooth piece, but... it's a thrill to see this work.  Magic!
 

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Yard-long beans in Cartagena

Colombia was not a trip for admiring vegetable gardens.  I didn't actually see anything resembling a vegetable garden (outside of a "modern" demonstration edible garden at the botanical garden in Bogota).

So not surprisingly, there aren't many vegetables to be seen in markets, either, aside from the "usual" corn, squash, onions, and tomatoes.

So I was glad to see these yard-long beans, offered up by a street vendor in Cartagena, a UNESCO-designated seaport (a centuries-old city founded in 1533).

Yard-long beans, eggplants, tomatoes, and shell beans (street vendor in Cartagena)

Yard-long beans (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis) have a long history.

Related to cowpeas, they've traveled the globe from their initial origin in Africa, moving to Asia, India, and South America, tweeked along the way in seed and pod color.

In Cartagena, they probably came along with enslaved Africans, and would have thrived in the humid and hot coastal climate.

Similarly, a vegetable vendor of Carribean extraction offered up some unusual (for Colombia) vegetables, too, in the large and sprawling Cartagena market.  She had okra, callalo, and hot peppers in addition to the usual mix.

Both were small-scale growers, I thought, just selling extra from what they grew for themselves.

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