Bountiful beans

I'm posting this in permaculture because I think one of the important aspects of growing in a permaculture way is learning what works in your climate. For me I live in N. California, so we have long hot dry summers.  I used to struggle to grow beans.  By the time the peas were done and the beans were planted they would start to produce, then it would get too hot, and the beans would stop producing. Then in the fall when it would cool enough they would start to produce and aphids would invade. It was a struggle, especially for a veggie I'm not particularly fond of.
Last year, maybe the year before I discovered yard long beans. Man what a game changer.  They do take longer to grow and start producing, but once they get going they produce like crazy.  They don't mind the heat, and last year they didn't attract aphids.  This year I have volunteers coming up in beds I didn't grow them in. I don't mind I just put a bamboo stake in and get more beans
If you have very hot dry summers, and like beans, you may want to give them a try. They are impressive. Everyone seems to enjoy them. To me they taste the same as any green beans.

Up here in Wisconsin, we only are first getting our green bean blossoms! Certainly no beans in sight at this time.
Congrats on your bean bumper crop!  I have my fingers crossed for my own bumper crop. I am growing standard pole beans on an arched ag panel.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:I think one of the important aspects of growing in a permaculture way is learning what works in your climate.

If it isn't a permaculture principal it ought to be! You can certainly make life much easier if you start off with plants that are native, or at least in a similar climate zone to where you are. Here fava beans grow pretty well, although struggle to ripen seed, so I need a short season variety.

fava bean pods in July

Scarlet runner beans like the relative cool summer and damp (although need warmer to germinate) but hate the wind. French beans/common beans tend to rot off. Yard long beans I could try in the polytunnel I expect but that space will be better dedicate to plants which have no analogy here, like tomatoes or grapes.
You can tilt things in your favour by adjusting the growing space - like the polytunnel or heat retaining rocks for example.

Yardlong beans save me: like you mentioned, the season is so short, and normal snap beans seem to succumb to disease in about half an hour. Yard longs take a bit longer to get started but they last much longer. And, IMHO, they taste better, so you kind of can't lose.

I'm pretty sure that yard long beans are the same species as cowpeas, and there are a lot of varieties. Most all that I have grown have the same ability to withstand drought and are seldom bothered by bugs or disease. They are just so much more tolerant, resilient and productive in my summer garden than common beans.  

I grow mostly the bushy varieties, so I don't have to build trellis. With common bush beans it's hard to get nice dry beans or even snaps sometimes because the beans hang down near the soil and tend to get splashed with dirt during a hard rain. Bushy cowpeas hold their pods up in the air on strong stems where they are safe from soil contact and easy to see and pick. The pods of some tend to shatter open if they get too dry so need to be picked while still a little leathery, other than that they have few issues.

Several years of mixing planting in an effort to get natural cross-pollination hasn't worked very well but most all varieties I've tried do well as is.