Growing Green Beans can be a fun and delicious addition to your garden. To ensure success you will want to be certain that you pick the correct seeds that are heirloom variety and disease resistant as well as selecting and maintaining proper soil conditions to help the plants thrive. Bush beans, in particular are easy to grow, require little space and are heavy producers for their size.

In New Castle County, Delaware, on average by October 24th you have a 50% chance of seeing frost. As of July 19th, that gives the Delaware vegetable gardener 96 days (76 days if you want Zero chance of frost, but where is the fun in that?) in which they can still plant and harvest a vegetable from seed. In short, it is not too late! You will however, have to plan what crops you plant with the growing season that remains in mind as well as the fact that they may have some frost to contend with.

First introduced to the world in 1949, the Contender Valentine Bush Bean boast heavy production, a short harvest time (40-50 days) and delicious moist green bean pods that are great to eat right out of the garden.

The Contender Valentine Bush Bean does well in heat and will generally keep producing all summer long, though production will go down after a few harvest. They produce crescent moon shaped, thick pods and should be picked before the seeds begin to swell the shape of the pod.

A new feature on Delaware Vegetables, Vegetable and Fruit Profiles. In these profiles we will focus on one particular Fruit or Vegetable. For our inaugural profile I have chosen the Cucumber. The cucumber plant deserves a place in every summer garden. These vining plants are attractive and quite easy to grow if given favorable conditions.

Sprouts can be grown almost anywhere with very little experience. Only a few basic supplies are necessary. Growing sprouts is also easy and fun! They taste good and provide an easy source of natural vitamins.

Beans, peas, corn, grain or almost any vegetable can be used. Mung beans are the most common but lentils, chickpeas and soybeans also give excellent results.

Nothing is ever as hard or simple as it seems at the time. Container gardening can be a hobby that provides stress relief or it can be one of the major contributors of stress. Below are a few simple rules that can help ensure that your container garden does not lead to un-necessary stress in your life. Follow these simple Do's and Do Not's and you should be just fine.

DO's

Do keep plants at the recommended temperature, each plant has its own unique ideal conditions. It is your job to know what these are and provide them to your plant.

Every single part of a plant (the leaf, the stem, the flower, etc...) has a function which enables the whole plant to continue living. This article is a brief introduction to plant biology. When you understand how a plant works, meeting it's needs becomes clear and intuitive. Put simply, this should help you take better care of your plants and produce healthy, nutrient rich food.

If you want to have a productive vegetable garden, then there is no way around it. You have to select a site to compliment your plants individual needs. If you don't your garden may provide extremely small yields, if anything at all.

Composting is both simple and complex. It is simple in the fact that if you treat your compost pile right, it will work efficiently, without you knowing or even caring about the finer details of how or why.

It is complex in the fact that you could spend years experimenting and perfecting your compost for the different plants you wish to use it on. Many college theses have been written on just that subject.

Delaware is famous for many things. Returns day, our pristine beaches, and if you knew it or not our watermelons.

Delaware has a climate that is perfect for growing watermelons and our loose, sandy, nutrient rich soil is a great medium that the roots of the watermelon simply love! The result is a unique, sweet taste you can't find in a watermelon from any other region in the world. Furthermore, our produce is within one day's hauling distance to markets as south as Florida and as North as Canada, so word has certainly spread.