"MARCHETTO" heirloom green beans

The story of 'Marchetto' green beans:

My grandfather, Alessandro Marchetto, emigrated from Gambellara, Italy to the US in 1920 shortly after the birth of my mother Gemma.  My grandmother Maria joined Alessandro in 1921 with their older child Valentino, age 6 and Gemma age 1 year.  Either Alessandro, Maria or possibly a cousin who had emigrated earlier brought green bean seeds with them from the old country.

The green beans are a pole bean type called Anellino which means 'little ring' due to their curved shape.  Still popular in northeastern Italy to this day - these green beans are what I grew up eating from my grandfather's garden.

After Alessandro and Maria passed away in 1970 the tradition of growing these green beans was carried on by aunts and uncles, friends and other relatives.  As this next generation aged, stopped gardening and passed on, it seemed that these beans might have been lost.

My oldest sister Paula has always maintained contact with the old relatives and friends in our hometown (Pittsfield, MA).  When I asked if there was anyone left who might still be growing these delicious beans from our childhood, she thought that an old family friend of our parents generation who was still with us might be a source for some seeds.

Orlando Domenichini was in his 90's when Paula visited him in Pittsfield.  Sure enough he had some seeds and assured her that yes indeed these were the same beans that he had been growing for decades from seeds he had gotten from Alessandro.  Orlando had also given up gardening at his advanced age.  The seeds (about 25) were a couple of years old.

I send about 1/2 the seeds to my ex-wife Liz in California to see if she could grow them out for seed and I tried to grow out the other seeds in Tucson, AZ where I was living at the time.  Liz got 2 or 3 seeds to germinate and nurtured 2 plants to a feeble maturity and got about 25-30 seeds which she sent to me.  I got nothing.  nada.  zip.

In 2015 I direct sowed about 15 seeds and got a few to germinate but they didn't thrive.  In 2016 I planted the last of the seeds in paper pots and transplanted them to the garden.  I got 6 plants to grow but only two really thrived from which I saved seeds.  In 2017 I repeated the process with the best seeds I had saved. SUCCESS!  I didn't dare eat a single bean and saved a pint jar full of beautiful seeds from the best and most robust plants.  This year I direct sowed seeds in the garden and have been rewarded with an abundance of beautiful plants and lots and lots of beans.

 The bean plants and the beans themselves are remarkably bug, wilt, virus, fungus and mildew resistant and produce a ton of beans.  The vines need a taller trellis than I provided this year.  The vines are about 12 feet long!

A favorite way of eating these beans in our family is cooked tender-crisp, cooled and dressed with olive oil, red wine vinegar, minced garlic, thin sliced onions, salt & pepper and eaten at room temp or slightly chilled.

2018 Garden Highlights

It's been an unusual gardening year.  Cold wet spring.  Too much rain.  Ridiculous hot weather with lots of rain.  But despite the difficulties there are always lots of things that thrive and lots of things that suffer.  Bad spring for critters this year.  A ground hog was ravaging our early spring broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower until we trapped it and let to go down by the river 5 miles from home.  We plant sweet corn in weekly successions with the intent on having corn for a solid 2 month period or more starting the 3rd week in June through the end of August.  A raccoon repeatedly raided the corn patch just a each batch was ripening and almost ready to pick and wiped out our first three successions until we trapped it also and again released it down by the river.  Finally we started getting corn.  Deer discovered the sweet potatoes who love to munch the leaves.  The plants got set back some but once we put row cover over them the munching stopped and they recovered.

The last batch of corn for the season is an heirloom dent corn which is left to dry in the field which we grind for polenta.  It's about 9-10' tall.

The watermelon patch.  Crimson Sweet variety.  Absurdly large for this variety due to the excessive rain. (38+ lbs.)  Very sweet as always but somewhat watery as you might expect.  Alongside the watermelons is a planting of muskmelons (cantaloupes) - also very sweet but a little watery also this year.

Tomatoes on the left - Reisentraube cherry tomatoes, San Marzano paste tomatoes, Roma paste tomatoes, Radiator Charlies Mortgage Lifter slicing tomatoes, German Johnson slicing tomatoes, and Principe Borghese tomatoes for sun drying.  Peppers on the right - Santa Fe Grande, cayenne, jalapeno, Hatch Big Jim chile, Regular sweet green / red peppers and poblano peppers.  Also in the picture are tomatilllos used to make salsa verde.

Principe Borghese tomatoes.  They are about the size of a golf ball.  The seeds I use are imported from Italy.  Used to make sun-dried tomatoes though with our super high humidity I have to dry them in a dehydrator.  Really yummy.

Regular green / red bell pepper

 

Hatch Big Jim Chile - some still green

Cayenne peppers

Poblano peppers

 This is our old - I mean oooold corn crib with tumble down shedrow.  Equipment is parked under the shedrow and the corn crib itself is used as a drying shed.

The interior of the corn crib is completely lined with 1/4" hardware cloth - slat walls, ceiling and under the flooring - making it totally rodent proof.  The slat walls provide good airflow.  Here is part of this year's onion crop.

Raised beds along the bottom edge of the garden.  Basil, shallots, leeks, Saffon crocus, strawberries, kitchen herbs and asparagus.  The long term plan is to convert most or all of the main garden (65' x 100') to raised beds.

Two varieties of sweet potatoes this year.  Purple skin white flesh Japanese Marsuki and orange skin orange flesh Hernandez.  Should be a very good crop.

THE GREENHOUSE

It's been a long time since I have posted anything to the blog...

We built a greenhouse next to the garden to extend our growing season with winter lettuce, spinach and such and to nurture seedlings before they go out into the garden.

The greenhouse is 8' x 12'.  The foundation is a 4x6 pressure treated timber frame with a geo-fabric weed proof liner filled with sand and topped with 12"x12" paver blocks.  The construction of the greenhouse is standard 2"x4" stick construction with 8' side walls (more height helps in our hot humid environment).  The covering is a corrugated plastic material (looks sort of like cardboard but milky white HDPE plastic) that lasts 15-20 years, much longer than clear film (3-4 years) and is much less expensive than polycarbonate sheets.  The door is a standard 30"x80" full size storm door.  You can see the 16" exhaust fan (yes there is electricity and water piped in) which can keep the interior temperature tolerable for growing even in the middle of our hot summer temperatures.

 There are automatic louvers at the bottom of the back wall to allow a full interior air exchange every 40 seconds (that's what keeps the interior temperature from climbing to oven like temps in the sun.

Inside there are two 6' benches on each long wall with an aisle down the middle.  Not much in the greenhouse at this time of year.  Those are sage and tarragon plants in 2 quart pots at the end of the bench.  The legs of the benches fold up so they can be stored flat against the walls in the winter when we bring in the tender plants (like rosemary bushes) grown in large pots or 5 gallon buckets.  You can see a bit of the paver block floor in this photo.  In late winter / early spring the benches are covered with 28 standard 1020 nursery flats each holding 48 seedlings for a total of 1344 seedlings for the garden.  Everything we grow - indoors or in the garden is grown organically using no industrial pesticides, herbicides or synthetic fertilizers.