hot weather beans

What are the best beans to grown in a dry, hot climate?

Sherry, welcome to the forum.

Lima beans, butterbeans, and pinto beans work well in the heat.

I am looking forward to hearing the other suggestions.

I'm in zone 8a, high desert of southern NM and AZ.  It hit 117 last year, and was above 100 quite a bit of the summer.

My favorite regular green bean here is Rattlesnake pole. Everyone who tries this one fresh lights up.  It tastes better than any other green bean I've grown and tolerates heat and accidentally drying out.  Heat above 100 is tough for most regular beans, and there is some stress at times, but Rattlesnake still produces the most sweet, tender string-free green beans I've eaten anywhere.
Rattlesnake pole bean from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Friends with a west facing nursery in Oregon also highly recommend Cherokee Trail of Tears pole bean. They say the same things about it I feel about Rattlesnake, except that it's also the most productive bean they've grown.  I haven't tried growing it down in the desert. Their site is extremely hot for Oregon, and so I think that bean does sound like a real winner.  You can get it from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds.

I also grow cowpeas and long beans - these actually like intense heat.  There are lots of varieties.  This year I'm growing "Liana" a long bean, last year I did Thai Soldier. A long bean is like a longer podded cowpea, essentially. They are also called yard-long beans, Chinese noodle beans, and asparagus beans. Lots of names for basically the same thing. They have their own flavor.

Long Beans/ Asparagus/ Chinese Noodle/Yard-long beans from SESE

For cowpeas, I grew Bisbee Red, an incredibly productive cowpea I've grown before.  The leaves of cowpeas are also edible and basically taste like the bean pod, and they can also be used for animal forage.  The bean tastes like a long bean, but is shorter usually. The dried cowpeas themselves are basically like "black eyed peas". This plant is so productive that I got over 4 cups of seed off only 8 plants last year. I think a very close equivalent would be the Big Red Ripper cowpea from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Southern Peas/Cowpeas from SESE

Many varieties of Dry beans do great in extremely hot climates.  Also tepary beans are said to be the lowest water use.  They are eaten like a dry bean. Native Seed SEARCH is one of the best place to get arid-adapted seed varieties of many types. I grew blue-speckled teparies last year. They are a smaller plant and have specific requirements. You harvest the dry beans. https://www.nativeseeds.org/collections/tepary-beans

I haven't ventured into lima bean territory yet, but I see they are mentioned already. I also grow runner beans. They have to get growing early in the season as they don't like much heat, but they are a bit cold tolerant. This makes them fill an earlier window than other beans.  Favas are very cold tolerant and can be grown through the winter in many areas, but to me, they are not palatable!

I can't say enough good things about Southern Exposure Seed Exchange for their hot weather-tolerant seed selection, their seed quality and quantity, and pricing.  Check them out above if you are trying to get a garden going in a region with very hot summers.  

Another very good desert/hot climate seed source is the company Terrior Seeds out of Arizona.  You will see that they also carry rattlesnake pole bean... :-)  For good reason. They carry a variety of things that are hard to find other places.
Terrior seeds - heirloom seeds particularly good for hot regions

If you are an adventurous eater, try out some of the Asian varieties of beans. Hyacinth beans love high heat. The beans are only edible at a young stage, and cooked.  There are varieties bred more for eating, versus flowers. I have not ordered from this company, but I've watched and learned a lot from their videos online. This lady carries the biggest selection of long beans and hyacinth beans, and all sorts of traditional Asian veggies of anyone I've seen.  So many beans and gourds and unusual (for Americans) vegetables! She even has a way to search for plants that do well in hot weather:

Asian Garden 2 Table -  Hot weather tolerant vegetables
Hyacinth bean "Early Meaty'

Here are two more tips - if you have very hot weather to deal with, you also probably have high evaporation rates. Going with the shortest maturity plants will gain you a lot of success over longer maturing plants.  So like with the Rattlesnake pole bean - it's one of the shortest maturity pole beans, very close to a bush bean. Just a few days longer in my experience.

With shorter maturity, you get a crop faster and you use less water to produce that crop.

Happy gardening!

I'm relieved to find out lima beans and butter beans are the same plant.  I was worried I missed an obvious crop to try.  

Sherry, I am overly excited about Christmas Lima beans this year because they turn out to be perennial here. They produce more than I plant every with little to no watering in the Central Texas summer. https://permies.com/t/178744/Christmas-lima-beans-year-limas. I expect then to do better this year because they are coming up with an already mature root system. By the time summer arrives it will be even better prepared for drought.   You don't show your general location or growing zone, but if you're warm enough for the roots not to freeze then I would think these in particular would be a great contender.

There's also a link someone posted early in this thread https://permies.com/t/179443/Eating-beans-sick that as well includes country of origin in the info on different bean families.  If you are in any of these countries or have similar growing conditions then that might be a good bean to try.  

I have so many Chinese yard long beans from 2x4, 1 per square foot, that I don't know what to do with. They grow extremely well in FL heat. I added a makeshift taller trellis because it was growing so fast but I think it could use an even taller  third one!

So far my yellow Hopi beans are doing very well. Scarlett runners get a bit limp during high noon if there's no water, but they're also new and still getting roots going. I think the only bean I'd add to my current goings besides more Native experimentation is one of my standard favorites, black eyed peas!

Any bean they grow in Mexico will fit your criteria quite well...

There are perennial dry-land beans called P. ritensis and P. maculatus.

If there's a decently experienced dry-land grower, I'll mail you the beans if you'll mail me back some of your seeds from the grow out.

Here in Central Texas, where it's been too hot for other beans for at least a month, my black-eyed peas and yard-long beans are very doing well. The black-eyed peas are a joy to see; beautiful, vigorous, dark green plants with lots of beans and flowers. Its been in the high 90s for at least the last few weeks, sometimes breaking 100 degrees, and the black-eyed peas couldn't be happier. The long beans are also doing well, though I only planted a few, and need to plant more of them.  They are not as vigorous as the black-eyed peas, but they also don't have as nice a planting spot.

None of the many other bean varieties that I planted did much of anything, to my great disappointment. We LOVED the few dragon-tongue beans that we got, but they just basically dying at this point. It went from too-cold-to-plant-things, to quite hot very quickly this year and I'd say the beans are the group that has fared the worst because of this. I think all my other varieties would have done better with a long, warm spring. If I remember right, those beans were scarlet runner beans, yellow wax beans, various green beans that I don't remember the exact names of, Christmas lima beans, good mother stallard beans, black beans, painted pony beans, calypso beans, probably others... all of those were a bust this year due to hot, dry spring.

Lila Stevens wrote:Here in Central Texas, where it's been too hot for other beans for at least a month, my black-eyed peas and yard-long beans are very doing well. The black-eyed peas are a joy to see; beautiful, vigorous, dark green plants with lots of beans and flowers. Its been in the high 90s for at least the last few weeks, sometimes breaking 100 degrees, and the black-eyed peas couldn't be happier. The long beans are also doing well, though I only planted a few, and need to plant more of them.  They are not as vigorous as the black-eyed peas, but they also don't have as nice a planting spot.

None of the many other bean varieties that I planted did much of anything, to my great disappointment. We LOVED the few dragon-tongue beans that we got, but they just basically dying at this point. It went from too-cold-to-plant-things, to quite hot very quickly this year and I'd say the beans are the group that has fared the worst because of this. I think all my other varieties would have done better with a long, warm spring. If I remember right, those beans were scarlet runner beans, yellow wax beans, various green beans that I don't remember the exact names of, Christmas lima beans, good mother stallard beans, black beans, painted pony beans, calypso beans, probably others... all of those were a bust this year due to hot, dry spring.

Lila, do you live in a semi-arid part of Texas?

It sounds like you have good experience growing beans. Do you?

Would you like to try growing out and saving seeds from my perennial dryland beans?

R. Beaty wrote:

Lila Stevens wrote:Here in Central Texas, where it's been too hot for other beans for at least a month, my black-eyed peas and yard-long beans are very doing well. The black-eyed peas are a joy to see; beautiful, vigorous, dark green plants with lots of beans and flowers. Its been in the high 90s for at least the last few weeks, sometimes breaking 100 degrees, and the black-eyed peas couldn't be happier. The long beans are also doing well, though I only planted a few, and need to plant more of them.  They are not as vigorous as the black-eyed peas, but they also don't have as nice a planting spot.

None of the many other bean varieties that I planted did much of anything, to my great disappointment. We LOVED the few dragon-tongue beans that we got, but they just basically dying at this point. It went from too-cold-to-plant-things, to quite hot very quickly this year and I'd say the beans are the group that has fared the worst because of this. I think all my other varieties would have done better with a long, warm spring. If I remember right, those beans were scarlet runner beans, yellow wax beans, various green beans that I don't remember the exact names of, Christmas lima beans, good mother stallard beans, black beans, painted pony beans, calypso beans, probably others... all of those were a bust this year due to hot, dry spring.

Lila, do you live in a semi-arid part of Texas?

It sounds like you have good experience growing beans. Do you?

Would you like to try growing out and saving seeds from my perennial dryland beans?

I'm an hour east of Austin, which is usually quite humid in the warm months. This spring has been very dry, rain-wise, but still pretty humid (68% humidity today). I think that is due to our relative proximity to the Gulf Coast. But anyway, I chose this place partially because it does usually get a decent amount of rain.

So, I don't know if this climate is what you are aiming for, but I am always game to try new seeds. In this area, people plant fall gardens in late summer, since frost doesn't usually come until December. I can't say I have a huge amount of experience growing beans. I've been gardening pretty obsessively for the last decade or so, but in  a very different climate (super-rainy Hawaii) and I only grew a few different kinds of pole beans there, and none were for drying, since things just didn't ever really DRY there, more like rotted.

@Lila - Since it's pretty humid where you are, I'll see if I can find someone else on the forum who lives in a more semi-arid climate. I've heard they are susceptible to disease if it's humid. Thank you!

Tepary beans are a winner,  I was sent a link by Christopher Weeks to a bean collector when I asked for a source for a cold weather bean he has an incredible number of beans: https://www.abeancollectorswindow.com/index.html

R. Beaty wrote:@Lila - Since it's pretty humid where you are, I'll see if I can find someone else on the forum who lives in a more semi-arid climate. I've heard they are susceptible to disease if it's humid. Thank you!

Sounds good!

Just wanted to update that we've been getting pretty consistent highs of over 100 degrees, and have been for weeks, and the black-eyed peas are still going strong. They stopped making beans for a bit, but are now starting up again. They have a really nice, compost-ful planting bed, a dripline for water, and are interplanted with watermelons. The beans and the watermelon form a nice, thick, leafy cover over the soil, keeping it super shaded. They also have a little bit of afternoon shade, thrown by the tall sunn hemp on the next row over. All 3 of those plants are quite happy despite the heat.

Robert Ray wrote:Tepary beans are a winner,  I was sent a link by Christopher Weeks to a bean collector when I asked for a source for a cold weather bean he has an incredible number of beans: https://www.abeancollectorswindow.com/index.html

Thank you, @Robert Ray! I actually reached out to him last year, but I never heard back. Idk if the email address is no good, or if my message got overlooked. Have you had success reaching him?

The variety I was looking for is all out to a grower so, no I did not try and contact him
yet.