Painted Lady Pole Beans

I harvested my Painted Lady Beans, all 5 pods! I planted 5 seeds, two came up, and I harvested these 11 beauties. Next year I will have a 10' trellis for them to climb on, and will have to harvest the beans while on a ladder! I think that they need humming birds to pollinate the flowers, and my hummer feeder broke before the bean flowers appeared. The only time I saw the seed pods was right after I put up my new feeder; but with the heat, it empties out within hours, so I just gave up for now. I will start setting out the new feeder again once the temperatures stay below 100' consistently, and by then the hummers will probably need the food more (as summer wanes, so does the hummer food supply). Always make notes as to what you will do differently in the garden next year, because looking back and asking yourself what it was that you wanted to try/change/do likely won't help much!

Painted Lady Pole Beans

These are pictures of my Painted Lady Pole Beans. I am growing them out to increase the number of seeds for future plantings. The flower stems are getting longer and the earlier blossoms are dropping off. I wondered why they weren't being pollinated, so I took a closer look. I saw that bees were going for the nectar at the base of the flower (the pink part), on the outside. They get the nectar, but don't touch the pollen. I will try pollinating them with a small paint brush and see what happens.
The Painted Lady bean is 12" long and is very flavorful. It is excellent for canning and freezing. It is an heirloom bean, and grows 10' tall (I didn't know that when I planted it! I read that it got to 6"!). It is said to attract hummingbirds, and I suppose, that is who would be the pollinator. My hummingbird feeder developed a hole and kept draining a couple of weeks ago--I just bought another feeder yesterday. I'd better get that new feeder up so the hummers will hang around!

[update: The hummingbird feeder is up and the hummers are enjoying it. I took apart one of the Painted Lady bean flowers and could not see any pollen. Hopefully, the hummers will be able to help].

My Garden

In just the past couple of weeks my garden box has exploded with growth. The top picture is looking from west to east, and the other picture is the opposite. The tall trellis holds my Painted Lady Pole Beans. I planted 5, but only 2 came up. It has an interesting flower, which I will show in the next post. I have a lot of Roma Tomatoes in this raised bed, with beans across the front, and my squash in the middle.