What are the best Beans for Saving to cook with?

[Green Mantis]

Just wanted to know, so I can plant in the spring...

What are the Best Types of Beans, to grow, to save for seed, for cooking with?

Thanks in advance.

[GardenRN]

i have had great luck with kentucky wonder (pole variety). But if you don't like strings, as far as cooking goes I think royal burgundy has a great flavor and unmatched tenderness when cooked. Almost literally melt in your mouth. If the royal burgundys produced more prolifically I would grow them exclusively. But sadly they just don't keep up with the bean demands of 3 kids and 2 adults in the size garden I have.

Kentucky wonder freezes well and retains flavor. I have had luck with saving the KW seeds, haven't tried with the RBs. Good luck!!

[Gary350]

Every gardner has their flavorites. I like beans have NO strings. I want good flavor. I want a good crop. I have tried several different beans and for the past 30 years I have been planting Blue Lake Bush beans.

Bush Beans VS Pole Beans both have advantages and disadvantages. Bush beans produce about 2 times more beans than pole beans. Pole beans need something to climb on so every spring you need to put up poles and in the fall you take down the pole and during the winter you need a place to keep the poles and when poles are bad they need to be replaced and you need to clean dead vines off of the poles. Poles are a lot of work. Picking bush beans is hard of the back lots of bending over to pick beans. A garden chair is great for picking bush beans.

In TN I plant beans about the 1st of May, 3 rows 24 ft long each. First harvest is great, second harvest is about 50% less than the first, third harvest is not worth picking so I mow the bean plants down the with lawn mower. First crop makes about 50 pints and 10 quarts of canned beans in mason jars. Plus we have beans for dinner several times a week for several months.

I till the rows where the beans were and plant new Blue Lake bush beans about 1st of August. First crop is great as before, second crop is about 50% less than the first, third crop is about 90% than the first. I let about 5 ft of one row of beans go to seed. Let the beans dry on the vine in the garden. Put dry beans on a cloth bag and beat the bag against a large tree. Dump the bag and pick out the dry beans.

[gumbo2176]

That is very subjective to personal taste. I love growing Japanese Yard Long beans. They are a pole bean and produce more beans than any I've ever grown. I pick the beans when they are in the 16-22 inch length before the pods get a bit tough if grown longer. They are great cut into 2-3" pieces and smothered down with some onions, garlic, ham or smoke sausage and a bit of chicken stock. I also like to cut them into 6 inch lengths, drizzle a bit of olive oil, sea salt and black pepper then grill them like any other vegetable----my favorite way of eating them. I cut many of them so they'd fit in pint and quart jars and pickled them but they don't come out as well as Kentucky Wonders or other regular green beans fixed that way. I found them a bit tougher when brined.

I've also grown Dragon's Tongue Beans and found the pods to be a bit similar to the Kiwi in texture. They were very productive and the pods get to the 6-8 inch length. My wife doesn't like their texture, so I don't grow them any more.

Kentucky Wonder pole beans are hit and miss for me. The last 2 times I've tried them, I had little success with them. Prior to that, I had tons of them and I'm not sure why that happened.

Right now I have 3 varieties of pole beans going. There's the Japanese Yard Longs, and unfortunately, I can't recall the other two varieties off the top of my head. One is a purple hull bean, the other green hull and they are ready to pick at about 6 inches long. I've already started picking them but have not used them yet. But if going by the flower production, they should be ones I'd plant in the future.


I have grown bush beans in the past but I don't like harvesting them with all the bending over. I do make it a point to grow soy beans for Edamame 2 times a year. Early last spring I planted 1/2 a row---about 20 or so feet worth and got a 5 gallon bucket of them. The good thing about soybeans is they can all be picked in 1 picking. I'll simply pull several of the plants out the row and take the pods off the plant and the foliage gets mulched up and into the compost pile. Right now I have a full 45 ft. row of them and hoping for 10 gallons worth of product.

[Green Mantis]

Thanks for the answers, but looking for some I can save the bean seeds for soups and stews.
I think Gary350 came closest, on that part.
But hearing the kinds to eat is interesting too.

[jal_ut]

I would plant some pinto beans or red kidney beans. and let them all go for dry.

Any of the beans we grow for green beans will make dry beans if you let them mature. Most of the ones I have let mature have a white bean.

I have also grown Scarlet Runner for dry beans. They are good, but not really productive. Pretty vines and flowers.

My son planted close to 100 different beans and let them all go for dry, then shelled them and sold them as "Soup Mix Beans". It was a colorful mix.

Plant what you like to eat!

[applestar]

Being so far up north, you are going to need fast maturing varieties.
I'm just starting to try growing dry soup beans too.

Tried Old Mother Stallard and Christmas Lima beans this year. I need to plant more OMS's and earlier -- they took a long time to germinate. I was only able to harvest about a cupful. I'll probably keep most of them for seed and try again next year. Sometimes, my own saved seeds germinate better. Maybe they do better with more fertilizer as well since these were not very productive.

Christmas Limas took way too long to germinate and to mature -- maybe because these were beans from the bulk section of Whole Foods and not sold for seed beans. Despite being planted in what could be considered my best bean growing spot, About 80% of the pods are still kind of flat and most of the leaves have died due to the one eary frost, although the vine stems are still green, new leaves are starting to grow, and the pods are trying to mature. The Sunset Runner bean leaves on the same trellis are still alive so I can hope that the dozen or so remaining pods will mature before next weekend's frost.

Germination issues may also have been related to the drought we had, though I did try to keep them watered.

Adzuki beans and garbanzo beans (chickpeas) both mature pretty fast. Some chickpeas DTM are longer but RH Shumway had ones listed as 65 days (I think - may need to verify). I need to plant way more chickpeas though -- there were only two peas to a pod. Be warned that Adzuki pods shatter and scatter the beans when mature and dry.

[jal_ut]

Here is one that sounds interesting. Click

80 days to dry beans. Hope you have that much time?

[DoubleDogFarm]

Green Mantis,

http://www.caroldeppe.com/fertilevalley ... index.html
I will be applying for her seed early.

Recommended bean from Carol Deppe.

Gaucho Dry Bean
Carol Deppe: Very early productive bush bean for drying. Not available commercially. My favorite dry bean. Rich distinctive flavor. I’m expecting about 1-2% off types from this year’s crop. Just cull anything that dries down much later than the Gauchos or is a little viney instead of bushy. Give your Gaucho dry beans as much isolation as you can from your green bean types, but don’t worry overly much about purity. Gaucho wasn’t pure when I got it, as is common with heirloom beans, and I didn’t help it any by growing it near Black Mitla, a supposedly different species that it proved to be far friendly with than the species concept suggests is appropriate. I had about 10% off types last year, but rogued well enough so that I would expect only a percent or two of off types this year. If you get a cross or two with your green beans this year, they will show up in the next generation as plants that are much later and/or don’t dry down as early as Gaucho, making them easy to eliminate. (Crosses don’t show up on the bean seeds in the first generation when the cross happens.) Gaucho beans made a good crop on Vancouver Island B.C. Canada in the unusually cold (even for Vancouver) summer of 2011. Gaucho is an heirloom dry bean from Argentina that came to me from the old Abundant Life Seed Foundation.

http://www.mayacreek.org/2012-garden/

Eric

[Green Mantis]

All look very interesting, Jal_ut I "think" I have 80 days, depends entirely on our weird weather?

Am going to try some of the bean seeds mentioned here, next year.

CHARLIE MV There will be a next year! Lol.

Thanks DDF, but they probably only ship in the states?

Think I'm going to try a few and see what happens, worth a try anyway.

[PunkRotten]

Try a few of the bush bean types. I have tried Royal Burgundy, Blue Lake, And Mellow Yellow. All got a pretty good taste, plants are easy to grow and you get a nice amount per plant.

[jal_ut]

I had some pole beans this year and didn't pick them all. They matured and dried so I picked them. I just threshed them yesterday and got about a gallon of dried white beans. Haven't cooked any yet. I also had some Jade Bush beans and they too have a white bean when mature. I saved some of those two years ago as dry beans. They are good in soup.

For your short season, I would certainly look for a quick maturing variety and let them all go for dry.

If you want some green beans I can recommend the Jade. There are also some other good varieties of bush beans. Hope you find something you like.

My experience tells me it is an ongoing search for the best producers in our gardens. Try something new each season and after a while we will find our favorites. That doesn't mean the search is over, we won't live long enough to try everything................

[soil]

I grow lots of beans. My favorite being Cherokee trail of tears black beans. Fast,productive, hardy and flavorful. I planted a crop mid June and harvested a few lbs of dry beans a week ago. Not sure how many days that is but it's pretty quick.

I Also grow many chickpeas. The benefit they have is that they can handle cold andfrost so I put them out way early. This next year I'll plant around 1000 chickpea plants. Pick the pods as they dry so the plant keeps producing.