Purple Green Beans? One of Many Unexpected Delights from the Irving Garden

Purple-hulled green beans from the Irving Garden.

I got my first glimpse of purple-hulled green beans at tonight’s Irving Garden gathering.

Wow those are beautiful. Although, from what I’ve read, they turn green when cooked.

I can tell you, from experience tonight, that they are plenty delicious raw.

I know this because several of us and our future farmkids got together with a few evening snacks to evaluate the garden and brainstorm some ideas for how to share the Fall bounty with the kids who selected the veggies that, in some cases, are overtaking the sidewalk that runs along all 20 grow boxes. A neighbor asked, only slightly joking, whether the imperialistic delicata squash would reach her backyard.

Those ever-advancing squash plants and deep purple beans were just a couple of the many unexpected delights from this year’s planting. 

For the love of basil. Too bad this little girl isn’t such a fan.

To share in the harvest with as many school families as possible, we’re thinking it would be fun to do a stone soup party, sometime in mid-September, when the potatoes, carrots and onions will be good and plump.

We should also have a full load of squash by then. Plus, there may be some color on the pumpkins.

For tonight’s gathering, we tried to have as much on the table from the garden as possible for an after-work tasting.

I made cucumber water (and chocolate zucchini muffins – though we didn’t grow zukes in the Irving plots this year).

A taste of Irving Garden.

The head of this garden effort made a delightful pesto from the leafy bush-like basil plants. She also made cucumber sandwiches, cucumber salsa and fresh chopped cucumber and young broccoli from some of the classroom plots. As an extra special treat, another Irving Garden mom brought a jar of pickled Irving Garden cucumber and onions.

Cucumber sandwiches.

By now I’m betting you can tell that we had tremendous success with cucumbers this year. So much so that we’re thinking we may scale back or find a way to get them to climb so they take up less horizontal space.

I’m looking forward to doing this again and seeing what ideas we get from the kids, teacher and parents when they see how wonderfully their gardens grew while they were out this summer.