Suggest Your Favorite: Bean(s)

I haven’t done one of these in far too long. For a refresher on some of the older ones, follow one of the links below.
Carrots
Cucumbers
Peppers

With that out of the way, let’s dive into the subject of the current post. I thought it would be good to try for beans today! There are a lot of varieties out there to pick from and to a beginner, one green bean looks about the same as the next. A few dry beans get hyped up with good publicity, but by and large there’s a lot of confusion what to try going with as a beginner. With that in mind, let’s all suggest the varieties that have become our favorites.

Fresh Eating
For me, the pick among green/wax beans is always the Dragon Tongue bush bean. These have always grown well for me, produced well, and taste wonderful. As a bonus, they are a conversation item due to the pretty nature of the purple and green/yellow splotches. My wife especially fell in love with them when we were only able to grow three small bushes due to space limitations and still ended up with a delicious batch every third meal or so.


Dry Beans
I’m still testing a number of beans for this, but right now my go-to is the Tiger Eye bean. They have always managed to produce for me even in the worst growing situations and they hold their form without being tough, making them ideal for the things I use dry beans in the most often. This is especially true of chili. I’d take these over kidney beans any day of the week.


Bonus Round: Nostalgia
My mother’s side of the family grew Greasy Grits beans for their green beans. I remember having them with almost every dinner there, as they would can hundreds of pints of them every year. I hold memories of pulling the strings and of the blend of slippery green bean and starchy seed on my plates. If we’re being honest, I hated them growing up. That said, they’re a strong memory and I wouldn’t mind growing them again to have that old-homestead feel of my grandparent’s farm once in a while. The variety has become difficult to find in the modern age as most people don’t enjoy having to pull the strings from bushels of them just to process a few jars. All the same, one can’t help but be drawn to their childhood memories.

Thank you for sharing.

For fresh green beans, we usually grow Blue Lake or Kentucky Wonder Beans.

For dry beans, no Texan would be caught without Pinto Beans.

I like to recommend, though I have not grown them: Scarlett Runner Beans because the plants are so pretty.

Anne Miller wrote:Thank you for sharing.

For fresh green beans, we usually grow Blue Lake or Kentucky Wonder Beans.

For dry beans, no Texan would be caught without Pinto Beans.

I like to recommend, though I have not grown them: Scarlett Runner Beans because the plants are so pretty.

I've often considered getting the cross between Blue Lake and Kentucky Wonder known as Kentucky Blue. How do you like either of those two?

We don't have a ton of room to spare on dry beans, but I started growing cowpeas (black-eyed peas) a few years ago and I'm hooked. I only get about a pint jar full of dry beans since I only dedicate one small bed to them, but I get a kick out of it. I do no maintenance or irrigation of any kind, and it's nice to have something growing that doesn't need to be picked constantly, since we're letting them dry on the plant. I plant them 2-4" apart and the plants support eachother.

The variety we grow is called Pinkeye Purple Hull, but I get the impression any cowpea will thrive in the hot, humid summer conditions here in South Carolina, hence their ubiquity in Southern cuisine.

I'm sure this all sounds funny to any veteran bean growers, but it has been a completely novel experience for me, like all gardening "discoveries."

At the end of last season, when we cleared out the patch, I found out about using the fresher pods for "shellies." I'd read about this on Permies, but never ate beans this way in my life. WOW. Words cannot describe. I did a simple recipe, just the beans and a little onion and a pinch of salt.

This year I'm going to be more adventurous. I got my hands on Joseph Lofthouse's Dry Bush Bean and Carol Deppe's Beefy Resilient. I owe those discoveries to Permies, too! Their climates are both very different from mine, but their books have also encouraged me to experiment more so I'll have to report back at the end of the season.

Edit: All this to say, I think beginners should totally grow a small patch of dry beans even if it sounds impractical :)

I don't think of cowpeas aka purple hull peas as dried peas.  They taste too good fresh.  Though it is nice to have some dried ones when the fresh or frozen ones are all gone.

Pinto beans are also great fresh.  We dry some and eat some fresh.  I bet they would be good frozen, too though have not tried that.

Back to the Kentucky Wonder green beans or the Blue Lake green beans, I like the Kentucky Wonder green beans best because they remind me of my childhood when Mom cooked them with potatoes and onions.

Thanks for starting this thread and for the memories.

Anne Miller wrote:I don't think of cowpeas aka purple hull peas as dried peas.  They taste too good fresh.

Cooking them as fresh shellies for the first time opened a new world to me. I finally understood why people had been raving about the flavor, lol! Looking forward to making that dish all summer this year.

Aaron, I can echo everything you are saying about cowpeas! They love abuse, need no care, come ripe outside of ripe bean season, and the green "peas" are absolutely amazing. I'm not a fan of the white-with-black-eye black eye pea and these are smaller, browner, more angular, they work very well for my favorite application (middle eastern ful, cooked beans eaten with condiments). No idea the cultivar, my mother in law gave me a handful saying they were "magic beans". I notice them around the neighborhood in people's yards, and since I planted them last year I have thrown them in all idle corners with poor soil. They take a long time to get moving (I grow year round, and they probably take 9 months to flower) but man, is it worth it. Can't wait to have them again!
edited to add: my husband and I had some great quality time shelling peas, an added bonus. We both spend a lot of time working and it was nice to spend a half day on the back porch shelling peas together and talking about whatever struck our fancy. I'm glad we don't have to do it, but it was a nice way to spend some time together.

I also think it's totally worth growing long beans (asparagus beans, yard-long beans). I find they are more resistant to mildew, which is what kills my green beans every summer. They also take a bit longer to get going but once they start there's no stopping them. I've grown purple ones and green ones, they're all fabulous.

I've only been growing beans for a couple of years.  To be honest beans aren't my favorite veggie.y daughter loves them, and asked me to grow them, so I do.  The first year I grew Kentucky wonder. It didn't go well. They took forever to grow and produce. When they finally did it had a massive aphid infection.  We still got beans, and nothing else was affected by the aphids.  I wasn't sure it was worth the space they took.
No being a quitter I tried again. Last year I tried Snake bean/ yard long bean/asparagus bean, Chinese long bean. A bean known by many names. It seemed to do better in the heat then the other. It grew like crazy covering the whole trellis.  It produced a ton of beans for a long time with little effort.  I liked the fact I could use them from young tender beans through as about 12" to 18" long and still be tasty.  Most veggie you have a pretty short window to pick them before they are past enjoyable. ( We won't talk about how many squash my chickens get because I don't pick often enough). Anyway beans still aren't my favorite, but my daughter loved them, so it will be a staple in my summer garden.

Long beans!

Again I'm so thankful I found long beans for summer. Most green beans don't produce when it gets super hot. But the long beans don't mind.  I grow the French bean in spring because they seem to produce very fast. The long beans take longer to start producing then others, but by the time the French beans stop producing because of the heat the long beans are producing like crazy.  I will replant French beans for another fall harvest. It's a win, win ,win.