The great garden glut of 2024: How I survived the summer of 10,000 beans.

Any garden is a work of art. Its creator is able to take a few odd elements and put them together to make something altogether new. Go formal with herbs sheared into an elegant parterre. Assemble native plants and let birds and butterflies help decorate. White flowers, silver foliage, and a punch of fragrance perfect a moonlit stroll. And know what you can make with a few dozen beans?

Ten thousand new beans.

I had no idea. In fact, sometimes I’ve felt a little resentful about the price of a packet of seeds. It’s a tiny packet, with a pretty picture on it, but it might run you four bucks, and when you open it up there’s just this little string of something that looks like flea doo along the bottom. At least with beans there’s some substance, but still. I’m new at vegetable gardening. I usually buy plants that have already graduated from Seed School and are all potted up. But with beans, you just plant beans. 

I’m not that wild about beans. I don’t hate them, but I planted them mainly to have something pretty to climb up my new garden arch. The arch is made from a 16-foot length of cattle fencing that cost me $30 and a good chunk of my serenity, involving a harrowing trip in a borrowed pickup truck that conked out in the middle of an intersection during rush hour. That arch owed me some beauty. 

The beans came through. My arch was soon covered with stunning orange flowers. People coming down the alley grinned and asked what they were. You can get comments like that in the city, where people think vegetables come from the produce aisle. 

But I’m no seasoned farmer, either. I admired my splendid orange arch for a good long time before it occurred to me to see if there were any beans happening on it. I stood under the arch and gave it a good once-over, but couldn’t see any at first – because they were only the size of a canoe paddle. I guess I was looking for something a bit more modest. I was pretty sure they were a long way past palatable at that point, but I hauled in a fleet of them and blanched them and bagged them and hid them in the freezer, so I could throw them out next year. Missed that boat, I said to myself, watching the orange flowers peter out. Maybe next time.

Several weeks later, I noticed the beautiful flowers had started up again. I was getting a lot of orange bang for my four bucks. I let them go for a while and had another look. I’m not proud of this, but I am capable of staring at a hanging curtain of beans sufficient to hide a child behind, and not recognizing a single one. Once I did, though, they were all over the place. Big beans. Little beans. Medium beans that were planning to be big tomorrow. It was terrifying.

I froze a few gallon bags of beans and had some left over, so I took a machete to them and cooked them up for dinner. I was able to chop steaks out of a few. And you know what? Trimmed, blanched, sautéed in butter and garlic pepper, and drizzled in lemon juice, they weren’t bad at all. Same technique works on julienned cardboard.

I saved a half dozen of the biggest ones to dry out and should have free beans next year if I remember where I put them. And then if I do, I’ll have to keep an eye on them every minute. I’ve never had such a successful crop in my life. Bugs don’t eat them. Birds don’t eat them. Squirrels are unmoved. Mold gives them a pass. Too bad they’re not asparagus.

I figure if I start cooking now, I can put away enough green bean casserole to provision church potlucks from Iowa to Montana. I wonder where I can buy french fried onion seeds?