After growing different varieties of bush green beans over the years, my standby is Derby. It is a good all around bush bean.

So much depends on both your growing conditions and personal taste. Most varieties are reasonable producers but many do have a tendency to get shucky rather fast. The various varities of Blue Lake are at the bottom of my list. Kentucky Dreamer is also not a favorite for the same reason. My standby is the Contender, Kentucky King, and Valentino have been very good. Many others have been satisfactory. Not as reliable a producer, but excellent at hold tenderness is the olf Giant Stringless Greenpod. If you want a bush bean that comes closer to the flavor of a pole bean, Junbo or Mountain Half Runner.

So much depends on both your growing conditions and personal taste. Most varieties are reasonable producers but many do have a tendency to get shucky rather fast. The various varities of Blue Lake are at the bottom of my list. Kentucky Dreamer is also not a favorite for the same reason. My standby is the Contender, Kentucky King, and Valentino have been very good. Many others have been satisfactory. Not as reliable a producer, but excellent at hold tenderness is the olf Giant Stringless Greenpod. If you want a bush bean that comes closer to the flavor of a pole bean, Junbo or Mountain Half Runner.

Thank you Sandy for the report. If you would like to branch out to some snap beans that are eaten when mature with seeds, you might take a look at the link below. You could try a bean like Tobacco Worm and let it mature until it is fat with seeds. They are very fine even after they turn yellow and soften. They do require stringing but it is worth it.

Farmerdill thank you for the information and great photos. - Dick

Here is a link that might be useful: Full beans

I planted the equivalent of 2 30-foot rows, one of bush Blue Lake and the other of Golden Wax, with a couple old mystery seeds thrown in (probably Kentucky Wonder.) Since I'm a little weird, I've counted the harvest, and have picked more than 4,600 beans so far. :)

This was the first year I planted more than two types of bean. My old standby is blue lake bush and I did not grow any this year. This year was slenderette (bush) and fortex (pole) beans. Slenderette, IMO, was great fresh tasting. Fortex, was more nutty (?) flavored and productive. I liked slenderette's taste better but both were good. Both seemed to produce longer into the hot dry weather than I recall blue lake doing (but we had a wet June this year).

Jacob's Cattle (dry bean, 2nd year I grew it) seemed about twice as productive as last year. Looks like they are going to give me another small fall crop on the worn out plants.

And I have some Christmas pole beans (and a few yardlongs just for bragging rights). The Christmas beans are taking their time to produce, very slow. Don't know what they are like yet.

Rattlesnake and Jade are on my to do list. Can't wait for next year!

I planted two teepees of Rattlesnake pole beans in April. The base of the teepees was about 3 feet in diameter. Each and every week from mid June on I picked about 1 1/2 to 2 gallons of beans from those two teepees. This summer was cooler than any I can remember. We have had relatively few days over 90 and our hottest days never topped 93. Still, I have been thrilled with these Rattlesnakes. A few would need stringing each time, but not many. They are utterly delicious and have been totally carefree.

I planted a fresh teepee of Fortex and one of Emerite for fall. They have made their way to the top of the poles now, so I should be picking in about 3 weeks or so. I know we like Fortex for flavor and productivity. Looking forward to trying Emerite.

I grew Rattlesnake pole beans, Derby bush beans and a few yellow wax beans (I think the variety was called Roc d'Or). Also a few yardlongs, but I had them in a weird spot so they didn't produce much. Can't say that I liked the taste of them too much, so maybe it was a good thing I didn't have much of a crop. :)

I grew 11 varieties this year: Emerite, Fortex, Rattlesnake, Orca, Gold Mine, Black Valentine, Blue Jay, Purple Queen, Labrador, Improved Tendergreen and Scarlet Runner.

Emerite and Fortex (suggested to me on this forum because of our short season) have continued to do *SO* well for us here that I'm not planning on growing any green bush beans next year at all. No bush bean I've ever grown has compared to the quality of these two poles. I like Rattlesnake, but they have to be picked young and religiously because they don't hold on the vine at all. I can't comment on the flavour of Orca since this is only my second year growing them and I'm still building stock, replanting all the seed I collect. The young beans are nice green, but nothing to write home about. None of the bush beans I grew this year were really remarkable flavour-wise, in my opinion. Tendergreen and Gold Mine have been my tried-and-true standbys since I started gardening. Tendergreen freezes very well, but the flavour pales in comparison to Fortex. Gold Mine is really prolific for me and although it has a light flavour, it's the texture I appreciate as a break from the other beans. Purple Queen was really nice. It's the only purple bean I've grown (pole or bush) that holds as well on the plant as well as Royal Burgundy (but longer and straighter in shape). Blue Jay didn't do well enough for me to judge. I planted them in a spot that had them at a disadvantage. I'd like to try them again because I like their story and they were from a very local source. Labrador was really early and nice and plump. They held nicely on the plant for a couple of days, but the flavour wasn't anything special. I grew Black Valentine for dry beans; not enough are mature yet, so I can't comment on flavour. The seed is beautiful, though. Runner beans have always done well for me. I usually prefer Painted Lady, but I had some Scarlet Runner seed to use up this year. We eat them fresh only because I don't like their texture from frozen. Well, I think that's it!

Our standard is Blue Lake bush, but this year the GF and I decided to try a pole variety since bending over to pick them is not quite as much fun as it used to be. Since last years bush plants had done so well, we decided to only use a 8x8 trellis we had, and plant both sides. They were planted on about 3" centers, for a total of 28 plants on each side. We chose the " Stringless Blue Lake S-7" from Burgess. The online catalog stated 7', well, they went over the top on both sides. My best guess would be 11'. We had to make an unscheduled trip out of town the weekend we should have started picking, so some of the first picking had gotten a little larger than ideal. We cooked some of the smaller ones (3/8" x 6") and some of the larger ones (1/2" x 7"). We were disappointed in the flavor compared to the bush type. Also, the larger ones were still tough after cooking longer. Since we had them picked and snapped, we decided to pressure can some of each size, to compare. The larger ones were just as good as the smaller ones! Our haul for the season from what amounts to 16' of row was 32 quarts! That was over twice what we averaged last year per foot. About the only strings we encountered were on the ones that had grown a bit too large. We would definitely recommend this variety for someone who pressure cans, but not for picking to cook and eat, or for freezing.