I planted a row of TopCrop bush beans and harvested one row of Roma IIs today. They were a little large so I made some beans and sausage for lunch. I like this recipe when I’ve let the beans get a little too mature for steaming or stir fry. Basically you clean and snap enough beans for the meal and place them in a pressure cooker with about 1 cup of water. Add 2 sliced sausage links and one sliced hot sausage link (we use beef but pork is fine). The links are the ones that are about the size of large hotdogs. Put the lid on the PC, bring it up to pressure and cook for 5 mintutes. Take it off the heat, let it cool down so you can get the lid off and serve. The pressure forces the meat juices into the beans and even the larger beans are very tender. mmmm
The blackberries are ripening and had to be covered as the birds were NOT going to leave us any if we didn’t. Those birds just don’t get the meaning of sharing. This is the first year for blackberries here as these vines were just planted last year.
Yum! blackberries. I wish I had some berries in my garden. My husband loves blackberry pie and every year we try to find someone selling them. It would be wonderful if I had my own patch. I may have to start thinking of vegetable/berry gardening. Are blackberries hard to grow? Do they need full sun?
They do take full sun, not sure how low they can go as far as hours of sunshine needed. On blackberries (and some raspberries) the fruit grows on shoots that grow from last year’s cane. Extreme winters can damage the cane and affect fruiting. If you have a lot of snow cover it is better for them if it gets extremely cold where you are.
I did a search on the net and didn’t find too much about blackberry advise for MI. This is a publication put out for KY but maybe it has some info you can use http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/ho/ho15/ho15.htm
I belive raspberries do well in more northern areas where blackberries do not. If you are interested in raspberries I can more than likely send you some starts next spring for the cost of the postage. Last year I planted 6 red raspberry plants and had over 150 come up this year. I planted another 6 this year before I realized how much they would multiply. So… I should be overrun with raspberries next year.