Drew, that looks like a great cool weather dinner. Have you considered trying it with casava instead of potato? Of course, potatoes from the garden would be my #1 choice, too.
When it comes to enchiladas, everyone here prefers green to red. So, green are the only kind we make.
I have never made green before, but at restaurants is my favorite. El Az Teco though in Lansing MI makes a mean red sauce. The family who owns the place is from Texas. I like the red there, but like the green sauce on burritos at that place. My favorite restaurant. Both sauces rock there.
Yeah I’m looking for ways to use them up. Yukon Gold is not really a baking potato. It’s like a red skin, thin skin, smaller size. Except it’s yellow. Great for mashed potatoes, and also for stews like this one.
Overall it’s been a good year.
Thanks all for the fantastic photos in this thread. It’s like a resource of ideas for gardening. It’s so cool to see so many approaches and such. To see what people like to grow and where. To share seeds, and techniques, and of course help with problems. This place rocks!
I have some extra beans and wanting to put them in the freezer. Do I need to cook them up first? Or just simply put raw beans in the bag and freeze them as-is?
Tom
For beans that remain in their pods, I give them a quick blanching, spread them on cookie sheets to freeze so that I can do a loose pack, and then dump those frozen beans into my vacuum sealer bags. You can use whatever kind of freezer container you prefer, but the blanching both kills some bacteria and stops enzyme reactions that deteriorate even frozen food. And freezing them on the cookie sheet helps keep from having one big frozen block so you still have individual beans when you go to use them.
Drew, I only saw the first part of your post the other day. Just now read the rest.
Yeah, YG potatoes are delicious fresh, but they aren’t storage taters. I can tell that we’ve finally turned the bend on our summer heat and drought combo because mine are once again sprouting up in the garden. Today’s high was only 93 and we’ve been getting some rain. The tops have been dead since sometime in June. I dig what I want to use and leave some behind. Then I get a second crop for fall/winter. Those tops will eventually get hit by the cold in early January or so, but could resprout in Feb. or March. In theory, I could do that in perpetuity, but realistically, disease would eventually set in. Worse, rodents might decide the bed makes a good home.
You’ve enjoyed the thread for all the reasons I have. The exception is that it was an awful summer for production from my garden. But it was a major learning experience there, too. Since it was such a bad year in mine, I’ve been vicariously enjoying the range of other gardens, gaining ideas and inspiration, and am looking forward to trying some new things.
It’s silly of me, but I hope that people who have enjoyed this thread will go to the top and give the topic post a like. Things like that make my day. (I’m so easy to make happy.) 
I grow green yard long beans. I like to pick them when they are tender and stringless. We stir-fry them with garlic. I like it better than green beans. Every year I grow about one raised bed (4x12 ft) and pickle them on peak harvest time. At winter, I really enjoy the chopped pickle bean stir fried with ground meat.
other than my beautiful sugar cane stalk, my garden isn’t doing much of anything at the moment. I’m between plantings…hoping to get another crop of tomatoes, some pole beans and greens planted in the next week.
The tomatoes next to the sugar cane don’t look like any around here that have made it through the summer. There’s no brown on them. Actually I do have a patch that still looks good. They’re in a somewhat shady protected area, not in the regular veggie area.
I haven’t grown sugar cane in quite a few years. When I had it growing I put it in a patch of butterfly ginger. I just bought a cane from a Mexican market, cut it up, and stuck the cuttings in the ground. What do you plan to do with yours? When I read about how to process it for sugar, it did not seem like something I could really do well at home.
I harvested some okra and eggplant today. along with a handful of raspberries. A couple of weeks ago something (I suspect grasshopper) denuded an entire row of okra. It left no leaves or buds. Just naked stems sticking out of the ground. I’m blaming insects, but since those are by a road, it’s also possible that some not too bright hominid mistook the leaves for something they desired.
Today was the first day in what feels like a very long time that I was able to tolerate working outside for any length of time during midday. It was supposed to rain, but didn’t. Instead, it was cloudy and overcast all day. I don’t think the mercury even broke 90 degrees! We’re supposed to have a string of days in the 80’s. Hooray for cool weather!
Even though rain would have been welcome, I was able to take advantage of what we did get. There is still some moisture in the soil from the rain a week ago. I was able to pull weeds and work a section of the garden to ready it for fall planting.
I got a row of beet seeds planted. They weren’t presoaked because I didn’t know ahead of time that it would be a working day. So, who knows when they’ll actually sprout. They should at least be able to germinate without being baked in clay first. I did plant them heavily because the spring planting had low germination and could have been thicker. I hope that I planted heavily enough that they will require thinning. I had hoped to get some spinach and carrots planted as well, but was called away.
I also hope that grasshoppers don’t have an appetite for young beet greens, or that the grasshopper life cycles are over before they come up. This is the first year that I’ve had issues with grasshoppers or Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs. The giant grasshoppers are too big for the frogs and most of my lizards. But I hope that birds or the garden spiders, or SOMETHING useful will decide they are tasty morsels and control them. It seems like almost every day I find something new that those grasshoppers like to eat.
It does seem like the insect pressures are going down now. I’ve been using the volunteer brassicas from where some broccoli reseeded to judge when it’s safer to put my transplants out. The rate their leaves have been devoured appears to have eased up. Poor tender little volunteers don’t really have a chance against the insects in late summer, but they do serve as a bellweather for when the fall crop can be planted.
My veggie gardens look so pitiful by midsummer. But I think the time for revitalization may have arrived! 
I should have some veggies ready to harvest for Thanksgiving. It always makes me happy to have fresh from the garden veggies for that dinner.
Yes, Muddy, you will have a lot of vegetables, your growing season is beginning. Ours is going to end very soon. It’s getting colder here.
I shelled some beans. I picked them out from the store bought bean mix. To my surprise they sprouted and I planted them in the forgotten corner of my garden. They happened to be pole beans. I picked several batches of green beans and I left the rest to dry. As you can see they have quite beautiful red color which is similar to raspberries, so I call them raspberry beans. I do not know their actual name.
Oh, Maria, those ARE beautiful beans! I love it when you can take something from the grocers, plant some of the extras, and have it multiply like that. It’s about as close as you can get to free food aside from foraging. From my understanding, beans are something that tends to grow true to parents.
Up north people have a more condensed growing season. But I think that season is better overall than single growing season here. During the time that you can grow, I’ve seen from this thread that you can grow a broader variety at one time, and that your gardens tend to grow more rapidly. Not only are your summer temperatures better in terms of actual Growing Degree Hours, but your sunlight is less intense and lasts more hours per day.
Now that our temperatures are moderating here and we are starting to get rainfall again, our day lengths are shortening, as well. My winter temps will be erratic and risky, but through most of the winter the day lengths, though shorter, will be long enough to sustain at least slow growth, but insect and disease pressures will be close to zero. It’s tricky getting the timing right so that plants can be established enough to take the colder weather and shorter days, but not get cooked by the sun or eaten by insects while still tiny and tender.
Every season is full of possibilities, hope, and challenges.
that particular plant was a hybrid called a mighty 'mato. It produced fruit slightly larger than a cherry tomator that had a purplish color to it…it was the only one of my tomatoes that wasn’t completely destroyed by tomato fruit worms…
not sure what I’m going to do with the sugar cane, it was more of an experiment than anything else and you’re right, processing it is a real hassle…it seems to grow pretty well in this soil, so I might try planting some more in the area behind my fence…
Maria those beans look great! I’m growing some runner beans this year for the first time. i want to use them dry. I have plenty of green beans and don’t need them as fresh. Scarlet Runner is the name. Dark red to black in color. Beautiful orange flowers.
My grandmother grew runner beans many years ago back in Russia when I was a little girl. I liked to look at the bright flowers and to play with the seeds as they were so colorful and unusual. I do not think that we ever tried to eat them. Next year I’ll try to plant some of them in the memory of this time. There are so many beautiful and interesting varieties of beans exist: giasint (I do not think I spelled it right, sorry) beans with very beautiful purple color (I grew them last year), runner beans, yard long Chinese beans and even regular beans such as this raspberry colored kind, shown above.
I grew runner bean couple years ago. Runner bean is larger and meaty It tastes way better than garden beans. If I have room in the garden next year I will grow it again.
Here are the beans left over from the seed package. Anybody want some just PM me, and how many you want.
It seems though to be more ornamental it has not set that many pods. I’m growing three plants.
I grew scarlet runners one year. Had them grow up and over the sort of arbor that houses a bench. They looked very nice and provided a shaded canopy for the seating. We also enjoyed eating them.
I’m not asking for any because I’m sure I can buy my own for next year. I’ve seen small packets of them on pre-stocked seed shelving displays since then and found it amusing that they were marketed under the flowers instead of vegetables.
I grew Idaho Silver soft neck garlic this year. A great soft neck for cold areas. I like the soft necks as they are easy to braid. Cloves are not super huge, but good size for a soft neck.
I also grew some hard necks. The two cloves in my palm are mine (Killarney Red). the ones on my fingers are from a guy in Wisconsin who has been growing his own strain for 20 years. The cloves on both are huge!
Beautiful garlic and not a vampire in sight!
