Just picked the first handful of green beans, slim crisp haricot verts. The half-vining bushes that are clambering up the tomato cages promise many more lovely specimens provided I snag them before they turn fat and leathery, often an overnight phenomenon. Beans (Phaseolus) are one of summer’s delights — bean and beet salad with Dijon-balsamic glaze, crisp dilled beans with cocktails, or for lunch sautéed tender-crisp in olive oil with tomato, garlic, and fresh cardinal basil.
Bean plants also benefit the soil. Like other legumes they fix nitrogen to their roots so they help whatever’s planted in proximity. And because beans go from planted seed to plate fairly quickly (bush beans average 60 days, pole beans from 60-90 days) there’s still plenty of time to grow your own.
I plant both bush beans and pole (climbing) varieties. Bush beans are determinate, which means they grow to full height and produce for a relatively short span, usually 2-3 weeks then quit. But you can tuck them in almost any sunny hole in the garden. Pole beans, usually indeterminate, are like the Energizer Bunny. They keep going and going, provided you keep picking, for weeks and weeks. They need support but can twine up almost anything – trellis, pergola, rustic sapling tripod, iron arch, fence, ladder – and act as a beautiful vertical in the garden since they produce lovely bloom-filled vines. Pollinators love ‘em. For example, Scarlet runners and Painted Lady runner beans, which have bright red and red-and-white blooms, are bee and hummingbird favorites. Bloom color depends on bean variety and ranges from white, yellow and apricot, through lavender, burgundy and bi-color.
If you get tired of picking, eating and preserving fresh pole beans you can abandon them. Let the pods dry on the vines then shell them out for soups, stews and fabulous cassoulet. (Add a lamb or beef shank, plenty of herbs and garlic, red wine and slow-cook for hours). Some local garden centers still have bean seed or you can mailorder from seed companies. Plant them now, they’ll be up in a week, and you’ll have beans from August through fall. Bean innoculant helps to increase the germination rate. Most bush beans are stringless, and so are some but not all pole varieties. If you don’t want to string them, pick the beans very early or plant a stringless variety.
Vermont Bean Seed Company
1.800.349.1071
www.vermontbean.com/
Seeds of Change
1-888-762-7333
www.seedsofchange.com
Burpee
1-800-333-5808
www.burpee.com
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