Here is the sweet potato bed (with leeks on one side and the volunteer beans in the back). Haven't yet dug any of the White Triumph sweets yet--probably not til a hard frost is predicted. I want to give them every day possible to grow larger.
Leeks fight with the sweet potatoes for space! 
Here are some of the blue shackamaxon beans that volunteered in my foursquare (from last year). You can see in the pod the beans beginning to gain their blue color; the ones on the table show their lovely characteristic sapphire blue. Eventually, they will dry black. I got about 7 lbs of fresh green beans so far from the plant, and many more remain on there now, making the dried blue beans for the winter. I made a second planting, too, elsewhere in the garden, following my pea harvest. 
Some of the harvest from my second foursquare. Notice the very hilarious St. Valery carrots! I've seen forked carrots before , but this is ridiculous! Several that I've pulled have had 3, 4, and even 5 roots. We had the carrots last night grated with a vinaigrette of lemon juice, wine vinegar, mint, olive oil, salt & pepper. 
Here is the state of the carrot/beet bed in mid-September. I've noticed that the St. Valery carrots have enormous top growth. The gorgeous beets continue to have lovely tops but the beets themselves remain rather small.
Shackamaxons reach to the top of the porch! And a closer look at the contents of the foursquare: 
Bull's Blood beets, with their gorgeous tops.
4 comments:
I was thinking about the St. Valery carrots and their hilarious multiple roots. It occurred to me that maybe the transplanting I did in the first couple weeks to even out the spacing contributed to the splitting. I'm going to pay attention to where they show up, because the transplanting was confined to mostly one area. I'll keep you all informed of what I discover.
Basically, I discovered that the St. Valery carrots were just very variable: some slender, some fat and blunt, and many with multiple stems.
I harvested about 16# of carrots for storage and 8# of White Triumph sweet potatoes.
Hi- I was just wondering where you got your blue shackamaxon beans?
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