Green Beans From Farm to Fork

Welcome to my page all about green beans! Here you will find information taking you from the farm all the way to your fork. This will include tried and true recipes, planting, harvesting, and preserving tips for all things green beans.

Quick Links to Topics on this Page:

• Favorite Green Bean Recipes
• Planting Green Beans
• Maintenance for Bush Green Beans
• Harvesting Green Beans
• Preserving Green Beans

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The best part of raising your own farm-fresh green beans is the amazing crisp taste. So let’s start with my favorite ways to prepare green beans.

Favorite Green Bean Recipes

We love to eat freshly picked raw or steamed green beans plain, but we also enjoy them in the following recipes. After checking them out, keep scrolling through to find info about raising green bean bushes in your backyard garden. I hope you enjoy it and feel free to share your favorite green bean recipes with me!

Planting Green Beans

If this is your first garden consider reading Gardening 101 to get off to a good start. We plant green bean seeds straight in the ground in our main vegetable garden. They grow well in the warm season and should be planted after the threat of frost has passed, but will also grow in a fall garden.

We like to plant Blue Lake Bush beans, so unlike pole beans there is no climbing structure necessary.

Maintenance for Bush Green Beans 

Green beans, like most garden vegetables, require frequent watering on the order of 2 inches per square foot per week. If they do not get enough water the plants can shrink and can stop producing. Keeping the weeds down will also promote growth and prevent the new plants from being choked out.

Keep the plants watered and weeded and they will produce green beans many times over. Green beans are the most prolific vegetable that we grow on our hobby farm. One green bean plant will generally produce around 120 green beans!

Harvesting Green Beans

Green beans germinate in 6-10 days and mature in 50-60 days. Pick green beans, or pluck them stem and all, from the bush when they are about 3 inches long. Be sure to catch them before the seeds begin to bulge and grow plump. They are then past their peak and can have undesirable texture and hard to chew strings.

If you can, avoid picking green beans from bushes when the leaves are wet, and when the weather is too hot or very cold. If the beans are continuously picked when they are mature the plant will continue to flower and produce new pods. If seeds are left to mature on the bush the plant will die.

Preserving Green Beans

Freshly picked Green Beans can be kept for up to a week in the refrigerator. For longer storage time they can be canned or stored in the freezer.

To can beans you need to use a pressure canner. I don’t have one of these but have been told to follow the raw pack method with the presto recipe.

I don’t have a pressure canner so we blanch & freeze our beans by following the preservation method below:

Blanching Green Beans

It's necessary to blanch green beans because it stops enzyme actions which can cause a loss of flavor, color, and texture. Further, it cleanses the surface of dirt and organisms, brightens the color, and helps to prevent loss of vitamins.

Print

Ingredients

• Fresh Green Beans, washed and ends trimmed
• Pot of boiling water
• Ice water bath

Instructions

1. Bring a pot of water to boil and submerge the beans for 3 minutes.
2. Remove the beans immediately and place them in an iced water bath.
3. Finally, drain off the excess water and place the beans in plastic freezer bags. You can chop them into smaller pieces before bagging, or leave them whole. Be sure to carefully get all the air out of the bag before you seal it, or you can use a vacuum food sealer at this point if you have one.
4. Store the bags in the freezer until you are ready to use them.

Notes

We tend to pick, stem and blanch many beans at once. (Remember the Barton motto: More is better!) So I blanch beans in my big pot with the steamer insert. I fill the water level high enough to not boil out the side, fill it with beans (as many and I can with all beans submerged). After it sits for 3 minutes, I lift the steamer basket from the pot and let the water drain. This way I can reuse the boiling water a bit more, eventually, you should change the water. I'm not sure what the magic number of cycles you can blanch in the same water, I'm sure I push it. I have an ice water bath ready in the sink with a colander and I dump the boiled beans in and return the strainer basket to my pot. When the beans in the ice water bath are cold, I drain them well and start filling my freezer bags. (Sometimes we chopped them into smaller beans at this point, they will stack better in the freezer this way.) As soon as the pot is boiling again I put more beans in again and start the process over again.

Blog Posts about Hobby Farming

Check out the blog for more information about what’s new at Barton Craft & Barn including the following post about our hobby farming experiences.

Just Getting Started Gardening?

I put together a list of my top garden tools to help the newbie get the needed gardening essentials. If you are getting started gardening, or want to be more prepared this season, check out the printable in my free resource library for my favorite garden tools to get your gardening on. Hope you enjoy!