Beans - The life cycle

The fragile begining of the Bean's life. Starting them inside in a mini Greenhouse.  Seeing the little green stems come to life and rise from the dirt.  A very cool begining.  This is just 4 days after sowing.

The Beans are quick to germinate and very quick to show true leaves.  This is 11 days after sowing.  Just a short week after the first sprouts were seen.










Here we have them in the ground in the Greenhouse.  They are doing very well.  This is 2 weeks after sprouting started.  Just one week after true leaves were shown. Day 19 over all.








Nearly 5 weeks have gone by and now there are little white flowers all over the place.  The begining of the fruiting has begun.  Over all this is happening on day 53.








The flowers are still blooming and forming.  Some like this one is being pushed off by the Bean.  Such a tiny little pod.  Very skinny as well.  This is just a mear 5 days after the first flowers started to appear.  Over all we are looking at day 57.







They are starting to fatten up.  This is actually almost 3 weeks after they started to appear.  The coloring is starting to change as well.  Hard to tell at first but you can see that the fatter pods apear to be darker as well. At day 76 they are ready to Harvest....or at least the fat ones are. 







The first harvest.  May not look like much but there is plenty more that will be ready soon.  In fact so that we could have them for a meal I took the harvest each day in immediatly froze them.  Once there was enough for my family I cooked them.  They still tasted fresh and good. 








Signs that the beans are nearing the end of their life.  The leaves started to turn yellow brown like this about a week after my first harvest.  Day 83 over all.  As the next 2 weeks went on I harvested what I could when it was ready.  Eventually though the leaves all started turning and it was time to put the plants to rest.





They gave me a great run.  I got enough for 2 good meals (even some left over still frozen)  Tips for following years is to plant less at one time but plant at multiple times.  The average time from sow to harvest is 55 days.  I was a little over that but hey...I still got to harvest.