How to Grow Organic Dragon Tongue Beans

Dragon Tongue beans are some of the easiest veggies to grow, which makes them ideal for beginners and beloved by any veggie gardeners. They grow with little care, produce an abundance of pods and can add nitrogen to the garden soil, making them ideal plants for organic vegetable gardens. They are open-pollinated. This means you can allow the beans to mature on the vine and save some seeds to plant next year. Dragon Tongue beans are a great bean variety for home gardeners, known for their productive, high yields and incredible flavor. These kind of beans are quite productive, and continued producing pods as long as you kept picking them. One of the advantages of growing Dragon Tongue beans is that they can be used as either fresh beans with edible pods, if picked young, or as dried beans if they are allowed to mature on the plant. This famous Dutch heirloom bean has an incomparable flavor!How to Grow Organic Dragon Tongue Beans

These beans are so delicious! Their pods taste sweet like peas. My kids love snacking on them straight from the garden.

Unfortunately, very few of my bean plants are doing great this year, so we haven't gotten many beans. The weather here in central Texas went from freezing to very hot in a very short time and I think maybe it's too hot for most beans to thrive. Mostof my beans are kinda pale green and not making many beans. I do have one variety of beans doing well; vigorous and dark green, but I plant all my bean varieties mixed together so I won't know what it is until it fruits. I suspect it is black-eyed peas.

I will definitely try again with the dragon tongue when it starts cooling a little in the fall. They are by far my favorite for flavor, and I love watching my kids pick them and gobble them up! Hopefully we get a nice, long autumn this year to grow some of the things that didn't work out this spring.

If you plan to save seeds from this variety, be aware that the pods are definite "soakers". In the drying-down stage they will absorb water like a sponge, and hold it for an impressively long time. This increases the risk of sprouting and mold. If you're in an area with damp autumns, you'll probably need to pick pods as soon as they mature, and bring them inside to finish drying.

I suspect that this trait could be useful in dry areas. Instead of shelling the pods meant for seed, clip them into 1-seed sections and plant them like that. The pod will soak up any water and act as a tiny reservoir. You could probably even crush the empty pods and add them to the soil near other kinds of seeds to get the same effect.

We grew Dragon Tongue last year! Tastiest beans I’ve ever had. Sautés with butter and salt they were phenomenal. I didn’t find them terribly productive, but hoping for better things this year.