Well this is the plan, subject to change if I run out of space :).

Pea~
Golden Sweet

Runner~
Insuk's Wang Kong

Bush Beans~
Blue Jay
Little White Rice
Comtesse de Chambord
Ritz Escoffier

Pole Beans~
Barksdale
Uncle Steve's
My Italians
Zelma Zesta
Bosnian Pole
Oregon Giant
Signora Della Campagna
Tennessee Cutshorts

In Greenhouse~
Chinese Red Noodle
Pretzel
Don't know how well these two will do but they've germinated and started to grow.

Annette

My list is still a work in progress. Living where I do, I can't begin planting until nearly June. The silver lining of this is no rush to plan. ;-) Only the bolded varieties are set in stone.

Beans
Atlas - bush, second year seed increase (only one plant last year), trial as shelly
Bird Egg #3 - pole, main crop shelly & seed crop
Bosnian Yellow Pole - pole wax, trial & preservation
Bumblebee - bush, preservation
Kew Blue - pole, trial & preservation
KY Wonder White #191 - pole, main crop snap
Maradan Hill - pole wax, trial & preservation
Soissons Vert - pole, shelly & preservation
Serbian Bush - bush, trial & preservation
Succotash - pole, trial & preservation

Will add at least 2 more beans, probably trial & preservation of pole dry varieties.

Cowpeas/yardlongs
Fagiolino Dolico Veneto - main crop cowpea & seed crop
MN 157 - seed crop
Yardlong, Black Seed - main crop yardlong & seed crop
Yardlong, Chinese Red Noodle - seed crop
Yardlong, Yancheng Bush - seed crop

Limas
Madagascar - pole, trial & preservation
Sieva - pole, main crop lima & seed crop

Peas
Bill Jump - soup pea, seed crop
Green Arrow - main crop shell pea
Gruno Rosyn - soup pea, seed crop
Purple Pod Parsley - shelling pea, breeding project from Peace Seeds, continue to select for all-purple pods
Sugar Lace - main crop snap pea

Runner
Bianco di Spagna - white seeded, trial & preservation
Tetovac - white seeded, trial & preservation

Miscellaneous Legumes
Adzuki, Murasaki - purple seeds, trial & preservation
Adzuki, Takara Early - red seeds, preservation
Chickpea, Brown Popping - preservation
Mung, Black/Kali Gram - preservation

I have collected many more heirloom beans than I am presently able to maintain, some already 5-6 years old & not yet grown. Any experienced seed savers who might be willing to grow one of them, please contact me through my member page.

Annette,
My yellow pod variety is Golden Sweet! lol. I'm looking forward to here about the rice bean comparisons later this year.

Zeedman,
It is good to see you are going to grow Bianco di Spagna finally.
Brown Popping Chick Peas?! I've never heard of such a thing.
Remy

Here's what I'll be planting. Same as with aftermidnight -- this is all depending on available space ;)

Runners: Insuk's Wang Kong
Hestia

Pole Beans: Grandma Nellie's Mushroom Bean
Sultan's Golden Crescent
Fortex
Tarbais (bought a bag of them once and saved a few... this will get knocked off the list 'til next year if I need more room)

Other: Generic "Green Beans" seed packet from Home Depot
Black Turtle Bean
Great Northern Bean
Red Rice Bean
White Rice Bean

"Brown Popping Chick Peas?! I've never heard of such a thing." (Remy)

It's the popping chickpea mentioned in Carol Deppe's book, "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties". She refers to it by its USDA accession number, PI 374085.

I'd carried it in the SSE yearbook for a few years, but had crop losses in two consecutive years (we've had some bad summers here lately). My stock got pretty low, had to stop offering it this year. I actually hope to plant it tomorrow, provided it doesn't rain.... garbanzos need to be planted early here, to harvest good seed before late summer rains cause spoilage.

Same goes for most peas, I had two failures with "Purple Pod Parsley" before I was able to get it in early last year. Hopefully both will do well, they are unique varieties & I would like to be able to share them more widely.

I forgot to mention Broad Windsor favas. They're doing pretty well, so far! This will be my second year growing them.

zeedman, I know what you mean about having to wait until June for planting beans. :P I hate it!

Does the cold not bother your garbanzos as much? Or do you cover them if there's a frost and they've come up?

Thanks :)
Jill

Zeedman, if you do decide to grow Bianco di Spagna, would you like more seed?

I cannot separate runners far enough here so I can only grow one. This year it will be "Bond's Orcas Lima". - Dick

Jill,
Hi neighbor! I've never grown favas. I assumed they were hard to grow here.

Zeedman,
I really need to read her book. A good friend of mine owns a copy. I'll have to get it from her.
I don't have pea problems here except me eating them all!
Remy

ok, just got last years garden journal ... so last year (2009)

yellow bush bean "Golden Teepee" sown April 24th (a gamble as last frost date here is May 18th) , harvested late July (from mid May to mid July we had non stop cold and rainy weather) - yielded 12.8 kilograms on approx 4.5 square meters

green bush bean "Sankt Andreas" sown June 2nd, harvested all through august - yielded 9.9 kg on a similar sized patch

and again "Sankt Andreas", "Golden Teepee" and the purple bush beans "Purple Teepee" all sown on July 14th (thats why the 3 colours :-) ), harvested from mid September to early October. Yields were 11.6 kg for the yellow, 8.8 for the purple and 6.8 for the green ones.

Conclusion: The yellows were the best, highest yield and tasty. "Sankt Andreas" has a long harvest period. July 14th is really late for my area (Saxony in Germany), especially the green ones suffered.

And pole beans: "Blauhilde" sown July 6th (my trellis arrived late from the smith), harvest started around August 20th, but I got 29.7 kg from the 4 square meter patch.

After the success with the beans last year I plan this year:

"Contender" and "Speedy" in a race for first bean. Both went in April 23rd and no frost so far, just cold rainy days. The "Speedy" are in the lead as the first appeared May 3rd.

Other bush beans I plan on growing are the yellow "Rocdor" and the purple "Amethyst" maybe some more "Speedy" if they are really that fast. Like 1 patch every 3 weeks.
For pole beans "Neckargold", "Tamara" and the lovely "Blauhilde".

I really love snap beans: dilly beans, bean salad, bean veggie side dish and a good bean soup. And they freeze nicely.

Fitzer

In the past I have only grown some pole beans just fo flowers and also yard long beans once.

This year I got into it a bit more. Now I have the following:
-- hyacinth,,, very very slow in growth rate.I mainly want it for arch cover and blooms.
-- yard long, better than hyacinth but stil slow.
-- cow peas,, almost carbon copy of yardlong
-- kentuky wonder... doing great
-- Blue lake,,, doing fine
-- yellow wax ,,, is coming along ok.
I think one of them(KW or BL)has flowers.

BTW, my snap peas are still going, but not very strong.

Hi Remy!

They're actually pretty easy (at least last year was...). All I do is direct sow them at the end of March. They take a little while to germinate, but they've all come up both last year and this year. They don't mind frost at all.

I've heard that they can be winter-sown, but I have a terrible vole problem, and I have a feeling they'd disappear by spring if I did. ;)

I didn't keep track last year, but I believe that by the middle to end of June I was harvesting favas, and they kept producing for a long time. I did eventually get an aphid problem, but it didn't seem to affect the plants that much. I pulled them out eventually, as I needed the space and they slowed down in the heat of late summer. I've read that if I had left them in, they'd make a second crop in the fall. Maybe I'll give that a shot this year.

Jill

Like Zeedman I still have a few more weeks before planting and thus I will weed out a couple more beans and cowpeas on the current list.

Beans - Bush
Annelino di Trento
Antea
Biwa Sitter
Cherokee Wax
Dr Wyche's Russian
Empress
Golden Wax
Hutterite
Jacob's Cattle
Roma II
Schwefel - Dry
Vermont Cranberry

Beans - Pole
Bosnian Pole
Bosnian Yellow Pod
Garrafal Oro
Hidatsa Shield Figure
Maslenec rani(Slovenian)
Meraviglia de Venezia
Red Climber
True Red Cranberry
Uncle Walt's Vermont Cranberry

Cowpeas/Yardlongs
Chinese Red Noodle(Long Bean)
Holstein
Mayo Colima
Pigott Family Heirloom
Purple hull
Texas Bigboy
Thai Suranaree(Long Bean)
Yancheng Bush(long Bean)

Peas
Dwarf Gray(Snow)
Laxton's Progress
Sugar Ann(Snow)

So much for reducing my garden size this year. ;)

Dean

Dean,
I was wondering where you were with your list(still waiting on Jimster.) No it doesn't look like your garden will be smaller this year : )

Jill,
Thanks for the info. I'm going to have to give them a try.

Cyrus,
It is funny to think your peas are almost done when mine are only a few inches tall!

Fitzer,
I'm impressed by how Blauhilde did last year!
Remy

I love these threads. They give me naughty ideas for the coming year ;) Here we can't plant beans until June either. It's funny how the volunteers come up so early, but if I try planting when I see the volunteers, the seeds I plant just rot!

Anyway, here's my list. Quite pitiful compared to the exotic lists others are sporting, but I'm rapidly progressing into the madness :)

Blue Marbut
Jiminez
Kentucky Wonder
Neckargold
Rattlesnake
Royalty Purple Pod (bush)
Trionfo Violetto
Windsor (fava) - up about 1"
Super Sugar Snap pea - up about 5"-6"

It isn't much, but it is what it is:

PEAS:
Super Sugar Snap
Tall Telephone
Capucijner - soup
Blue Podded (from SSE)- soup
King Tut - soup
St Hubert - soup
Canadian - soup

BEANS:
Maxibel
Provider
Tricolor mix (from Cooks Garden)
King of the Early (Fedco)-dry
Hutterite (Fedco) - dry
Scarlet Runner Beans

All of my beans are grown for seed.

Alabama #1 - selected seed from 2008 crop because there were a few off types in that years growout.
Grandma Roberts Purple Pole - Very good bean with good flavor and excellent cool soil tolerance.
Dolloff - Want to see if it lives up to the reputation. Plants are already a foot tall.
Striped Bunch - The best dilly bean around.
Comtesse de Chambord - half a row just to find out what this bush bean is like.
Nuna - A bush selection popping bean that I want to have about 5 pounds of seed from.

Big Mama Lima - biggest of the lima beans and a risky crop here because of the heat.
Frosty Lima - pretty as a peacock, looks like it might just taste good too.
Herndon Lima - Pretty plain jane white but tastes good.

Philippine Purple - a yardlong type with unusual elongated seed.
Piggott Family Heirloom - Good flavor and good production in a large cowpea.
White Whipporwill - You don't get much better flavor than these!
Brown Whipporwill - the original small speckled whipporwill pea.
Multicolor Whipporwill - This is the one Glenn Drowns sells as Whipporwill.

I may wind up with some more before it is done.

DarJones

Mrs. B and VTGuitarGirl,
I don't think you lists are bad at all! You've both got some interesting varieties listed.

Dar,
I know you grow for seed, but none for just eating?!
Remy

I eat any and all of the varieties I grow, just not enough to cause problems with the seed crop.

I realized I missed two beans in my list.

Barnes Mountain - An old tender mountain bean from KY. Had spotty germination but finally got a full row.

Goose - a huge shelly bean that makes better than average good eating.

DarJones

zeedman, I would be interested in growing one or maybe two chickpea varieties if you have any to spare. I will contact you by PM. Peas and favas are the only 'cool' legumes we are growing, and I would like to add chickpeas to that, because the winter garden has a little more space than the summer garden (tomatoes are such space hogs!). Last year, I could not find a good commercial seed source for chickpeas, all were out. The year before last I tried the supermarket type but they did not do much for me.

This year is half over almost! We are very lucky we can be 'in legumes' all year long.

Peas. Most are now harvested. I have a few bags of blanched snow peas in the freezer and have been eating lots of them! I am only collecting seed from Oregon trail sweet peas (and still harvesting those). They were supposed to be a pole shelling pea, but are more like bush. I was disappointed with the bush habit, but after tasting them I am very happy. I will plant them again next year but treat them as bush.

Most of my peas mongrelized (mixed), bush/pole, snow pod/sugar snaps. This is why I am not collecting seed from the snap peas, and next year I will start from new seed and plant each variety in its own trellis. One trellis for snow peas, one trellis for sugar snaps, and lots of bush shelling peas in various spots. Less snow peas, more sugar snaps, LOTS more shelling peas. I can recommend the mammoth melting snow peas, vigorous, productive, huge pods that do not get strings until they are enormous. I also like the Oregon trail sweet peas for shelling. I am looking for other recommendations for shelling peas (bush or pole), and I would also like recommendations for POLE sugar snaps.

I can now also recommend planting times for peas in my zone - 9b. Start in October, and plant monthly or every other week until mid January. February is too late, and next year I will stop in early January, unless I have a short DTM variety.

Favas. Harvested most of my Windsor crop, but not the seed crop yet. I am saving seeds for both myself and my dad, because for some reason his seeds did not work out this year. I will purchase other fava seeds varieties, whatever I can find. Planting time for me was mid October, I am changing this to early October. I am dealing with the aphids pretty well, but in May and even April the stink bugs get to them, harder to deal with. I am looking for shorter DTM varieties for this reason. Overall I am very happy with how the favas performed this year. Part of it was that I planted earlier, the other part they were our own saved seeds, which proved a lot more vigorous and pest resistant. The other part is that we are having a really cold long spring.

Runner beans - P. coccineus. Here I screwed up too. I was trying to keep my scarlet runners separated from my white runners. I planted some in trellises far apart, and decided to plant runner cannelinis next to the scarlet runners, thinking they were a P. vulgaris. Well, they are not, they are white runners. I can tell since the cotiledons remain under the earth and also from the shape of the leaves. So now I have the IWK scarlet runners with their beautiful scarlet red-orange flowers, and two types of white runners, one of them too close to the IWK. Some flowers but no beans yet.

Common beans. P. vulgaris.
I dedicated a whole trellis to the soisson verts, which we will eat as shellies. I staggered planted twice already (all out, still no flowers). Others in that species that I planted already: Fortex, Emerite and Lousiana purple pods. I plan to add Kentucky wonder poles to that. Oh, and for the bush P. vulgaris, I got some black valentines growing with the strawberries. They are looking good but no flowers yet. I still need a yellow snap, I have a pole and a bush variety (Gold of bacau and yellow bush KW), will decide which to plant when space becomes available.

Peanuts. I bought seed for Tennessee red peanuts. Have no idea where to put them, and whether I should build a raised bed for them.

Cowpeas. I am waiting for carrots/beets to be done and will put purple hulls in that bed. I also have the long green noodle asian style ones, will put them in a trellis when space becomes available. July is not too late to plant cow peas here.

Soy beans. Have three varieties, including #42 from U of Illinois. Will find spots for them as I harvest the brassicas. Last year they were drama free (and yummy). Will plant June/July.

Limas. Not sure if I will do limas at all this year, last year they were a bust. I might not have enough sun (I garden in a fruit orchard) or maybe I planted them too close together? I have the Christmas limas which were very good and one variety to try from a trade (1884?). The sieva Carolina limas did not produce anything at all for me last year.

I think this covers all the legumes? I will repost if I forgot any.

2010 Bean Plans

Bush beans:
Decker Family Bean, shelly
Giant Red Tarka (USDA PI 507984), shelly. This is my main bush shelly.
Serene, shelly.
Soissons Nain Blanc, shelly.

Runners: I can grow only one per year due to crossing.
Bonds Orcas Lima

Pole Beans:
Borlotta Solista, shelly
Borlotta Stregonta, shelly
Bosnian Pole, shelly
BritaÂs Footlong, snap and shelly
Chester/Flagg, shelly
Cornfield, Striped, snap and shelly
Cutshort Greasy, (eaten when seeds swell, as combination snap/shelly)
Emerite, snap
Fortex, snap
Goose, shelly
Kwintas, snap and shelly
Monteges del Gaxnet, shelly
North Carolina Speckled Long Greasy Cutshort, , (eaten when seeds swell, as combination snap/shelly)
Pink Tip Greasy, (eaten when seeds swell, as combination snap/shelly)
Snowcap, shelly
Tennesee Cutshort, (eaten when seeds swell, as combination snap/shelly)
Tobacco Worm, (eaten when seeds swell, as combination snap/shelly)
Uzice Speckled Wax, wax and shelly

Error detected

in my previous post. The pole beans went in in June, not July! Dumb me. July would be definitely too late for pole beans here in Germany.

Michael, who apologizes.

btw. weather here is bad, not a single day in May at 20°C (=68°F) so far and no end in sight

Fritzer I researched the Tamara pole bean and it sounds good. Have you grown it before?

You said, "I really love snap beans: dilly beans, bean salad, bean veggie side dish and a good bean soup". I wonder if you have some good recipes you could added to the following thread. I have a special interest in German food since it is my heritage and I lived and studied a while in Austria during my college years.

Send me an email sometime a have a couple of questions.

thanks,
Dean

I grew Tall Telephone peas this spring, and they're pretty much finished, since temps are getting into the 90's now.

For pole beans I've got Scarlet Runner, Rattlesnake, Kentucky Wonder, and Blue Coco growing.

For bush snaps so far I've got Dragon's Tounge, Black Valentine, and some freebie "Experiemental Variety" I got with a seed order.

For bush dry beans so far I've planted Dapple Grey, and have a few others to plant here and there once some more of my cool weather crops are out of the way. Not sure which ones I'll plant yet though. I have both common beans and tepary beans in my collection.

I haven't planted any cowpeas yet, but I have Monkey Tail, which is a small brown pea, and Mt. Pima Yori Muni, which is a blackeyed pea from Native Seeds/SEARCH. They're also going in soon once I have more cool weather crops out of the way. I've got garlic, beets, and carrots which are about ready to pull, so I'll replace them with bush beans and cowpeas.

Well, I don't have very exotic beans growing but they're ones we like!

The Fortex beans have reached the top of the 5-foot trellis and are waving about in the air three feet taller than the trellis! They're blooming, vigorous and very healthy.

The cowpeas have just germinated and though they aren't fertilized, they're a dark bright green.

I had trouble with the Gina Italian bush beans I received from Vermont Bean & Seed this year. I planted them twice about three weeks apart and only three germinated, though the soil temps were optimal. I generally think non-germinating beans are my fault, planted too early, not inoculated, or some other human failure, but I think these seeds were just duds. So I contacted VB&S to ask if they could send me Romano Pole beans as a replacement. They were very nice and immediately said yes. The Romanos have a DTM indicator of 70 days while the Ginas listed 55 days, so I'm hoping we'll get a decent crop of the pole beans in August.

And then there are the Willow Leaf Limas that are just germinating.

So, we will have a nice variety of beans for summer eating and freezing for the winter if they all thrive.

I have Sieva Limas and Dixie Speckled Butterpeas, along with Carouby de Maussane Snow pea seeds (huge pods), listed as additions to the garden next year, along with Fortexes, Italian flat podded pole beans, cowpeas, and a lot of Alderman peas, which I MUST plant out since their shelf life is not limitless!

Everyone has such great varieties!

Anney,
I love Romano Pole. It is very vigorous and makes lot of beans. I think you will be happy.

I'm really going to have to try Fortex next year. A lot of people seem to love it.
Remy

Remy

I'm glad to know you like the Romanos. This will be the first time I've grown them though I have grown another pole Italian sold by Park Seeds, Smeraldo. It was excellent, but I ran out of them, their seeds and shipping are too expensive these days, and I'm moving away from really large commercial seed companies who spend WAY too much of their profits on slick catalogues.

In return, I think you'll be really happy with the Fortex beans next year. Mine are really growing to beat the band! Maybe you can see the top of the five-foot tall cattle panel and how the beans are still seeking the sky!

There was also an earlier discussion about how Fortex seeds seem to be able to tolerate cooler soil temps and still germinate. My anxieties were baseless!

little late posting

here is whats growing in my garden patch
pole beans

annettes italians
uncle steve 2 varieties
mr tung
mennonite purple stripe
grandma ginas romas
blue marbut
tennessee greasy
a red eye greasy from tennessee
meraviglia di venezia
maria amazalitei
north carolina speckled long greasy cut short
yard long
tobacco worm

peas

sugar snap
oregon sugar snap

this is the most varieties of pole beans i have grown at one time. used to be the only ones i grew every year were my uncle steves. even with what is growing this year i still have another half dozen or so varieties that will have to wait till next year.

keith

Keith,
Better late than never : ) You've got quite the list. I'm interested in hearing about that red eye greasy later this year. I(or someone else) will need to start a "how your varieties did" thread later this year.
Remy

remy,

i have grown the red eye greasy bean for a few years now. the seeds came from a woman in tennessee via gardenweb, don't remember who it is now. she said they grow them all the time, and are really good. so, with that endorsement, i had to try them, having never grown or heard of greasy beans before. they are a good tasting bean. they also grow well in the U.P. where i was at the time, and it was easy to save seeds. the seeds are white, roundish, about pea sized with a dark red or rust colored eye. the vines are short for a pole bean, about 6 ft or so. the bean is a light green about 4 inches long. i forget if there is a string. i will save seeds and send some your way if you like.

keith

Keith,
Thanks for the offer! I would love some later this year. I'm sure I'll have something you would like as well : )
Remy

Yardlongs- red and asparagus
Dragons tongue- probably too late as I just planted last week
Southern butter pea- bakers creek listed as a Lima but looks like a pea to me
This fall- rattlesnake and some kind of purple pole, Kentucky wonder and favas.
Don't know which peas but that's October so I have time.
What exactly is an English pea? I have no idea what they taste like. In england I had nasty overcooked peas but what are they really like?
I'd love some hyacinth or another blue flower, plus some red flower. My insuks grew and flowered well, planted in January but never set any beans at all.
This is my first year with beans in the south. I really don't understand when to plant which ones. I hope my favas produce as I love favas!
What kind of Lima is in the canned Bush's butterbens and baby butter beans? I'd love to grow some.

Hi Tracy,
English Peas are regular green peas(Pisum sativum.) What you had in England doesn't sound very good. My mother used to overcook peas like that. Well, she over cooked most everything, lol.
I recommend starting a new post about the Lima beans.
Remy

That Giant Red Tarka looks beautiful so I checked USDA, and it looks like they don't offer PI 507984 anymore. At least it did not come up in any searches. You guys may have gotten the last ones? Or do they change numbers?

No, Happy, the numbers for an accession don't change on GRIN once assigned. PI 507984 is out of stock at present... hopefully not because of my efforts to promote it. It will remain that way until they replenish their stock, which could take awhile. I'll contact the repository; provided that I meet their isolation criteria, I'd be more than happy to send them back some seed. Still have several pounds left from my last growout.

"Giant Red Tarka" is an outstanding bush shelly, the best bush cultivar I have grown to date. I hope one of the heirloom seed companies picks it up.

My shelly crop - and my garden in general - will likely be disappointing this year. My main plot (where I grow most of my seed) has been flooded several times, and has never really dried out since mid-June. Much of what I had planned never made it into the ground, including several beans & more than half of my soybeans. After a good start, most of my pole beans are turning yellow & dropping leaves... they don't like muddy feet. Drier weather is finally in the long-term forecast (although it's raining as I type this) so I'm hoping that they will recover once the ground dries out. The yardlongs, though, seem to be thriving. Keeping fingers crossed.

Fortunately, the "Atlas" bush bean has fared better than the pole varieties. Most of the flooding went around it. I'm trying to bring it back from near extinction, and am optimistic that this year's seed crop (45 feet of row) will be successful.

Zeedman, I have USDA seed that was labeled "Atlas" but it must be mislabeled, as the seed is very small. I did not grow it this year for that reason.

What are your isolation criteria?

"What are your isolation criteria?"

In my main plot, a minimum of 30 feet between different P. vulgaris varieties, with other flowering crops between as barriers. Since I began using this technique, the only bean which has shown crossing was "Ma Williams"... and that was only a single plant. On my 2 home plots, I can grow two beans each year with 100 feet of isolation; but I generally plant two varieties on the larger plot, which is 75 feet long (and expanding).

"Atlas" ("Atlas #2"?) flowered much earlier that the pole beans in the main plot, so I have a high degree of confidence that the seed will be pure.

Happy, I believe Carolyn mentioned that there was another bean called "Atlas" - that must be the one you have. I can verify that the one I am growing goes by the same name, since Carolyn sent me the original commercial packet.

Speaking of mislabeled... when I requested PI 507984, I requested another bean as well. Both of them were described as having a high seed weight. When I received the seed, however, the other bean had seeds smaller than "Great Northern"... much smaller than its description. Either they sent me the wrong seed, or the description is in error. Since it was intended as a shelly trial, I never grew the smaller bean.

first beans ready to pick was meraviglia de venezia. i really like this one. its big, its early, there are lots of them, and they taste good. what more could you want. we have had 2 big meals of them, and there are more to pick. i just picked some mr tungs today. uncle steve is loading up, and will be ready to start picking in a few days. annettes italians have a few near picking size, most are still small though. comparing annettes to uncle steves. the coloring is identical, size is close. annettes bean is round, uncle steves is flat. both taste good eaten raw. uncle steves has more crunch to it at this stage.

only other bean near picking stage is the tennessee red eye greasy bean.
the garden has a wall of green on 2 & 1/2 sides. vines are growing all over the place. there are a few pole beans also growing in the tomato patch, a purple pod, and some others, must have been from seeds i discarded because they didn't look good. guess they were good enough to grow.

how is everyones legumes doing so far?

keith

Our first taste of fresh beans this year were the rice beans but they were started early in the greenhouse.

The first good feed of beans we had were my italians two weeks ago, I can pick every couple of days now.

Second to come in were Tennessee Cutshorts which surprised me as they were planted much later.

The next beans we will be sampling will be Oregon Giants.

Uncle Steve's these were planted later then my Italians and are about a week or so away from picking, I agree with Keith they are showing the same color pattern but can't tell about length or shape yet. I'll post a picture of these two later to show the differences if any.

Blue Jay will have some ready for picking in the next day or two, all the rest are trailing behind, some just starting to form beans others just starting to flower.

Annette

Here's my update:
Unknown brown bean from Europe -never sprouted

Snowcap- only one plant survived so I'm letting it grow for seed and not eating any.
Tuscarora Bread Bean bush- Have grown excellent and are more like a half runner in my opinion. There are lots of beans. This variety is grown for dried beans, but I may try a few as a green bean in the next few days.

Waterloo County Mennonite Pole - Is a tasty bean. It is lightly mottled with purple and the plants are quite large.

Uncle Walt's Cranberry Pole - made some green beans, excellent taste, but they are very stringy. Gary commented he didn't care since they tasted so good, but I'll use the rest as shellies and dried.
Snowcap- only one plant survived so I'm letting it grow for seed and not eating any.
Stortino De Trento - only one sprouted so I'm saving all for seeds also.

This spring, my father gave me fresh pods of his favorite cranberry bean from the farmer's market in Florida when he got here. He wrapped them in tinfoil and I forgot about them for a few days. Well, they actually sprouted! So I'm growing those. They are a bush variety.
In turn I gave him seeds of Lingua di Fuoco a cranberry pole from Italy. He is growing them(up here in WNY) and they are growing great. He hasn't tried them yet.

Insuk's Wang Kong Runner- growing all over with pretty red blossoms.

Tohono O'odham "U'us mu:n"(vigna unguiculata) _ the plants have finally started to grow up some. Hopefully I'll get some pods.
Remy

I started a new thread about best beans then find you guys already talking about them here. Here's my grow list. I held off posting till the beans from Purcell Mountain showed if they were pole or bush. I have 30 varieties this year.

Pole
Bird Egg 550090
Bird Egg #3
Bird Egg 550091
Jembo Polish
Bosnian Pole
Tetovac Paslj
Tetovac 184127
Tarbais 518230
King of the Garden Lima
Tobacco Worm
Mennonite Purple Striped Pole
Austrian Soup (half-runner but growing like a pole)
Mangetes del Ganxet
Mr Tung
Annettes Aunti Vi/Italian
Torekeny Vizsz
Soissons Verts
London Horticultural
King Horticultural
Chester
Insuks Wang Kong

Bush
Plentiful 549558
Dixie Butterpea (hasn't vined yet anyway)
Red Ripper Pea (hasn't vined yet anyway)

Pole beans from Purcell
Giant White
Snowcap
Canellini
Runner Canellini
Tarbais (from France, $16 a pound. Extremely poor germination)

Bush from Purcell
Dapple Grey

HappyDay,
Lol, we weren't ignoring you on purpose, I promise : ) Actually this thread though is about all the beans we're growing so your new thread is a good one. I'll have to wait a bit to be able to say what is the best of the year though.
You are growing a lot of beans! At the end of the season, I would love to hear a report on all of them.
I can't believe a $16 a pound for that on bean. I'm too cheap for that, lol.
You are growing Jembo Polish which I just loved last year.
Remy

Remy, that's ok, I posted it before I saw this thread or I'd just have posted here. The Jembo is growing well, too! And the Red Ripper Pea is actually a pole, not bush. It grew about 3 feet in the last two days. We are having record high temps and humidity. The Stewarts Zeebest okra looks like one of those tropical plants you see in jungle movies that a tiger jumps out of. Okra never looked like that in my garden before.
$16 a pound was definately too much for the Purcell Mountain Tarbais. Only two germinated out of about 70-80 tries.

But the biggest surprise this year was the flowering response to spraying with 10-54-10. Two weeks ago, like several other people here, I had good vines but no flowers. I sprayed with 10-54-10 and looking at it today, there are half again as many flowers as just two days ago, maybe a hundred small beans over two inches. It is really amazing.

Update on the above list:

Purcells Giant White is actually a half-runner, making a very large bush with non-twining long runners to 5 feet, and Austrian Soup has grown as a pole bean.

The Jembo Polish and Snowcap make very big shelly beans, to an inch long.

The Purcell Runner Cannellini has an unusual, spicy, flowery, lemony taste as a snap bean.

The Mennonite Purple Stripe Pole will puff up its pods and give a false impression of being ready to pick as a shelly several weeks before it is in fact full grown. Do not pick it till the pods begin to thin and dry.

Bosnian Pole and Austrian Soup are both tasty as a snap green bean, and a little bit similar in taste to each other. Soissions Verts is also good as a snap green bean but distinctly different from the above two.