On my recent visit to the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines, I was surprised at how large our vegetables looked.
The average bitter gourd was about a foot (25 cm) long. The okras (ladies fingers) were over 6 inches (12 cm) long. But what really surprised me were the long beans. I’d never seen such long long beans before. They were about a yard (almost one meter) long and thick as my thumb! They were called yard-long beans.
I thought the phrase “yard long” was just a nick-name for our large produce until we sat down for a Goducate meeting one night and was told that one of our volunteer agricultural advisors was away in Thailand teaching the Thais how to grow yard-long beans. It was then that I realized that this was a special variety of long beans.
On further research I realized that this was not the usual variety of long beans that I’d seen in most supermarkets but was actually a different variety altogether. It was a variety of cow-pea.
I discovered that it is a fast-grower. In less than 60 days of sowing on our earth-worm produced organic fertilizer, we can pluck and pluck and pluck these beans for the next one year!! These beans can grow several inches per day!
I discovered that it is extremely tasty!! And that it is nutritious – and is full of proteins, which the poor lack.
It is exciting that Goducate can help put veg@tables for Asia’s needy!