Snap and runner beans are one of the easiest and most generous crops of all. Planted in the warm soil they love, they quickly outgrow weeds, their flowers are pretty and with daily watering the harvest is long and bountiful.
Another bonus is the ease of seed-saving. Carrots, beets, onions and most other vegetables are biennial which means the plant must stay in the garden for a second year while it produces flowers and seed.
But bean seeds begins drying almost immediately while in pods on the plant. Meanwhile the harvest of its young, green siblings can continue. To ensure sustained production and for genetic diversity, it's best to select only one pod for drying on any individual plant.
More care is needed in saving seeds of dwarf beans since any pod that touches the ground tends to rot at the end due to rain or watering or the morning dew of late summer.
Once the pods are fairly dry and yellow, it's safe to pick them and finish the drying indoors.
I usually leave the seeds in the pod for a couple of weeks before shelling them and spreading them out on an old cookie sheet. Glass jars in a refrigerator are the ideal storage setup (but label them "seed" to protect them from cooks).
Dwarf beans have one major advantage for raised bed gardeners-they can be planted in a block of several close rows or even scattered randomly throughout.
The advantages of pole beans are mainly ease of picking, less risk of fungal diseases and their decorative potential on arbors or use as privacy fences.
Runner beans have the most spectacular flowers: red, or white or bi-coloured in the cultivar "Painted Lady." Humming birds love the red blooms. Many runner beans are now extra tender and stringless: such as "Scarlet Empire" from thompsonmorgan.ca. Others include "Butler," "Lady Di," and "Desiree," from chilternseeds. co.uk.
It's almost worth growing clumping bamboo for the harvest of bean poles and garden stakes. But there's a trap. Pole beans climb as high as their supports-and bean poles 16 feet tall can produce beans far too high to be pickable.
This is especially frustrating with runner beans, because the best production is at upper levels. Runner beans need pollination and they're very visible to bees up there. Snap or French beans are self-fertile.
Later, pole bean vines head down towards the ground producing beans as they go. Tidy gardeners cut out the growth points. Many others let them keep going till frost.
The "Three Sisters" method of mixing beans, corn and squash is an indigenous tradition on this continent. The beans provide nitrogen to enrich the soil, the corn is a support for the beans to climb and the squash keeps the soil shaded and moist for optimum growth.
When I tried, the beans ascended the corn, but the squash headed directly for the sunlight on the outside of the patch. Next time I'll use stakes to control it.
Some gardeners grow a few heritage beans for drying. "Midnight Black Turtle" is one of those. It's delicious in soup and bears nice pink flowers. Like many heritage dry beans, it is a sprawler: not a dwarf, but about three or four feet long and weakstemmed.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden questions. Send them to her via [email protected]
