Pinto Pinto Pinto

Last month's abrupt and brutal heatwave was a bit much for my poor garden. It tried, and I tried, but the blast of heat was just too much too early for some of my plants and many of them went into deer in headlights mode - they stopped growing, but didn't necessarily die... Except for the few who got squished.

One of the things that got blasted a bit were my pole and pinto (half-runner) beans. They stopped growing, and the bottom two thirds of the plants lost all their leaves. This was not good for pole beans who had only set a few beans each by then, but it was actually beneficial for the harvest of my pinto beans. They had set so many pods, and the heat wave just helped them dry out.

Since then, the temperature has gotten a bit more reasonable and a bit more seasonal (read: it's just as hot but it's appropriate now, and it slowly turned up the heat as opposed to flipping a switch and going from low 80's to 99 overnight). And my pole beans and pinto beans (and my snap beans, as well....) have started flowering and setting beans again. Yay!

Dried pods

Pinto bounty!

 There was something extremely satisfying about shelling the beans late at night after a long day at work - straight into a jar in my pantry they went, and I am so excited to have put something in my pantry!