Happy, so glad the Mr. Tung's are growing well for you. I'll have to grow them again next year if only for seed I need to beef up my seed stash which is pretty low. Mr. Tung's pole beans are said to be more flavorful where summers are warmer than here on Vancouver Island.
This bean almost became extinct but through the efforts of a few it looks like it's going to survive. For those who don't know the history of this bean without going into all the details a Mr. Tung brought this bean seed with him from China when he immigrated to Canada over 100 years ago.

The few seeds of Tennessee Cutshorts I planted have outdone themselves, I'm really impressed with the amount of beans the few seeds I planted have produced. Nice and tender when young, have yet to try them when they have filled the pods.

I only planted 6 seeds of Insuk Wang kong, was going to leave them all for seed but they are really producing so will pick a few to french and steam.

My Italians/Aunti Vi are producing well, this is my main crop for eating this year but my seed supply has dwindled so will be leaving a lot for seed. I separated the almost solid colored seed out of my italians and am growing them separately but in the same location to see if they produce mostly colored or speckled/streaked seed. Other than the sight differences in the color pattern of these italian bean seeds they all seem to produce the same bean.

Uncle Steve's were planted later than my italians so the beans are very small but they also look like they are going to be another good producer. I'm really itching to see how Keith's Uncle Steve's and my Italians compare, both of these italian beans arrived in North America about the same time but from different locations.

More to come but that's the scoop on what's going on right now.

Annette

Maxibels are very productive - can't keep up!

French Horticultural & Kidney seem to be doing well.

Hutterite & King of the Early were damaged by a bacterial blight, although I think I will still get a harvest.

Actually, my soup peas have been the best this year!

I only have Purple Pod Pole and Cherokee Trail of Tears for "green" beans, I planted a few Gold of Bacau for wax but the bugs ate them to the ground. I only have 2 PPP, and they are easily keeping up with the dozen CTT plants, and we prefer the texture of the PPP pods.

I have Golden Lima bean (not really a lima) to try as a shelly. The description in the SSE catalog describes it as a good dry bean. I'll be trying it at the shelly stage any day now.

And finally I have Scarlet Runner and Jack and the Beanstalk Runner to try. I've never eaten runner beans, just grew them for the flowers in the past. So far the SR have tiny little beans, and the JatB runner has big, fat pods developing already. I don't know about flavor, but it's clear which one will eventually win on productivity.

Catherine

I didn't have a very good bean year this time around. Dragon's Tounge did best for me. None of my pole beans seemed to do well, not even Rattlesnake.

I found out that runner beans are just not worth growing in my area. Lots and lots of flowers, but only one pod, and then they died once it got hot.

Next year I want to try limas and teparies. They're supposed to like heat. I had some tepary seeds already, but just didn't get around to planting them.

First time growing Tennessee Cutshorts and unless one or two of the beans I'm growing this year we haven't tasted yet can beat them, it looks like Tennessee Cutshorts win hands down. Not only were they tasty and tender when the beans filled the pods they grew well in the less then ideal conditions we had this year.

Annette

neohippie, it may be that your soil doesn't have the right nutrients.

Not a great bean year for me either, so I guess "best" is a question of perspective. Most of the pole beans I planted this year are either dead or severely stunted. "Kew Blue" did pretty well, as did the pole wax "Maradan Hill". Both are seed crops, though, so I couldn't eat many.

The bush bean "Atlas" is the best-performing common bean this year. It is a seed crop also, but I took two meals of shellies, which were very good. Probably the only shellies I'll get this year, since the shelly beans were the biggest losers. :-(

But the biggest winner this year was the dwarf yardlong "Yancheng Bush". After the nearly total bust for yardlongs last year (when I grew other varieties) I grew it again this year in two locations, one for seed, one for harvest. It matures very quickly, and did not disappoint. "Yancheng Bush" will be added to my short list of annual "must grows". Thanks again to Newgardener for the great trade!

Didn't get all of the soybeans in that I had planned; but those I did get in are doing spectacularly well. Good news, after two really bad years. I'll have to console myself over the loss of my shellies by settling for extra helpings of edamame instead (lol).

So far Tennessee Cutshort has been my best p. vulgaris bean for 2010. Beside this one I planted Frank Barnett, Ruth Bible, Tennessee Cornfield, Black Greasy, Long Cut Old Timey White Greasy, Barksdale Wax and Cherokee Striped Cornhill. It's been a bad year for for beans. Tennessee Cutshort wins because it produced something. None of the others have succeeded at this point. Frank Barnett and Barksdale still look promising... if we can get some rain soon. Most others gave up after 6 weeks of 100+ F temps and no rain. Not even watering could save some.

Oh! Georgia Long, a yard long (cowpea) beat Tennessee Cutshort for production. It seems to thrive on the heat, as long as it receives some water. But the wife only sighs, when I bring them in, and says, "Still no Tennessee Cutshorts?" Tennessee Cutshort produced before the heat wave, and has only survived (no new production) since it hit.

George
Tahlequah, OK (where the grass crunches underfoot)

Much like Zeedman I have not had a very good year. The old timers around say this is the worst season they have every seen. At my house we have had almost 30" of rain in June & July alone, which drowned and stunted most of my beans. With 60' of Pole and 80' of bush snap beans you would think I could get more than 4 small meals, but not this season. My dry bush beans were doing well and then got attacked by grasshopper or katyidids, pretty much sticks now, but the bush cowpeas have been left untouched.

The yardlongs are looking good, Red Noodle(Pole) and "Yancheng Bush" and "Thai Suranaree"(bush) are all starting to produce with the dry weather and some heat in the past two weeks.

My best snaps this season were 8' of Blue Coco(pole), which I was able to get a meal out of, and they started producing early at 60 days. :) My Garrafal Oro are finally starting to produce, but I am leaving most of them for seed saving.

• I guess like zeedman I am going to need to plant some soybeans next season to have some edamame.
• Because of George's wifes fondness to "Tennessee Cutshort", I have added them to my next years grow list as well. George I will let you know how they do up North.
• I might have to look into the "Mr. Tung's" as well.

Looking forward to next year already.

Dean

Our first 75 degree day was weeks later here than ever before recorded so this is not looking anything like last year.

The Fortex and Emerite are both doing well. Tennessee
Cutshort are also looking good. I am hoping to be able to save seed.

The bush shelly Giant Red Tarka may be my most successful shelly. I am hoping that some of the Goose pods will fill out too.

Dean, I know that Tennessee Cutshort grows well at your latitude. I've grown them myself in northern Indiana and Central NJ.

I have seed for Mr. Tung's from Anita. Didn't get them in the ground this year. But next year, I will make a point of doing at least a tripod of them.

George

The last couple of nights I had a chance to try both Chinese Red Noodle and Insuk's Wang Kong for dinner.
This is the first time I've tasted yardlong beans and the CRN's were delicious, almost makes me want to move to a warmer climate, I said almost :).
I only had nine seeds of IWK's to start with, planted 6 one didn't make it so planted another. I left most of the first ones for seed which I have enough of now so we're going to eat the rest. I steamed a batch for dinner last night, it's been quite awhile since I've eaten runner beans but this bean is a real winner, very tasty and oh so tender. If we had a fall like last year we'd be eating this bean well into october but I don't think we're going to luck out this year. My IWK's are really producing now so if the weather holds for a bit we should get one or two more feeds.

Annette

It's been a fabulous year for beans here. We had hot weather without letup starting early. The beans and cowpeas and my neighbor's soy beans loved it. I only wish I had planted more different varieties this year.

I planted Steele's Whippoorwill Cowpea primarily to rejuvenate my seed, since it is an uncommon family heirloom. With the heat and irrigation, it grew rampantly . The vines are several times as large as I recall from the previous time I grew it. It started producing early and I have had a hard time keeping up with it, harvesting both shellies and dry seed. Eating quality is good IMO.

Calico Crowder has grown equally well, but started producing much later, only a couple of weeks ago. Whereas the whippoorwills are tiny, Calico Crowder peas are larger than average. I've had only one meal of them so far, so I haven't formed an opinion about flavor.

Red Noodle long bean has been a massive producer of beautiful pods. I've been eating it and giving it away like crazy. Lots of pods got past their prime before I could harvest them and will be used for seed.

Tiger Eye is a beautiful looking dry bush bean. Production was sparse though. SSE touts it as being good for frijoles refritos. I haven't cooked any yet.

Jim

I would have to say my Uncle Walt's Vermont Cranberry Pole performed the best this year, lots of beans. My Tuscarora Bread Bean did well for a bush/half-runner.
Remy

Some people including Jim reported that this was a great summer for gardening. For George it was difficult due to excess heat and for Dean and presumably for Zeedman it was difficult due to huge amounts of rain.

For me it was an ideal summer to find out what would produce a crop in poor conditions. Our weather people kept calling June "Junuary" and they said that Seattle was the coldest major city in the world this spring. Siberia and Alaska were warmer, according to them. Our first 75 degree day on June 23rd was a couple months later than usual and two weeks later than the all time record. The end of May found me planting out peat pots and sprouted seeds in the cold mud. They stayed pretty much dormant until the last part of June. Some bumblebees appeared in May but either froze or drowned. They appeared again in August making it hard to grow runner beans.

So a lot of varieties that have always done well are doing poorly.

On the positive side, the Tennessee Cutshort, Tobacco Worm and North Carolina Speckled Long Cutshort Greasy started in peat pots did well and are producing mature seed. All are very fine snaps that require stringing at mature stage when they are a snap and shelly combination.

Striped Cornfield was a very pleasant surprise with its large shellies and early maturity.

Emerite and Fortex did fine and I have mature seed on the Emerite vines.

Full report to follow. - Dick

Once again, Jeminez did the best, for me. Almost everything else did poorly.

As an example, "Terry's North Carolina to Massachusetts via Ohio Speckled Long Greasy Cutshort Variant" had more letters in its name, than seed produced. :)

Gary

I picked a couple buckets of Giant Red Tarka this afternoon. This is a bush shelly with very large and tasty red and white seeds. This continues to be our best bush shelly and it does well here. - Dick

The year started with Favas and peas. Windsor favas did much better than last year. The edible pea pods I had got mixed, but we loved the Oregon trail shelling peas. They are supposed to be a climber but seemed bush in our garden. I guess a short pole? We are planting lots more of them (already have!).

Next were the runner beans. This year I planted some of the white one, sweet white runners and runner canelinis. They produced enough green snaps to make it again into the pickle jar, and we got two pots of chili out of the seeds. The sweet white runners were inter-planted with chayotes and they are giving us a fall crop! They are full of white flowers so we expect more as the weather cools down a little. The brown runners (red scarlet runners) seem dead, but I know they are dormant and the root it still OK.

P. vulgaris were not sufficiently represented this year, will do more next spring. The black valentines did great (bush) and produced a nice crop of green snaps in a hurry. The Lousiana purple pods gave us quite a few beans, they tasted OK but not great, still looking for a good variety of purple. Tried Cherokee wax bush beans and they were OK, not as good as Gold of Bacau, so far still my favorite gold snap. The Fortex failed miserably and did not even give us any beans. Second year in a row, so we are done with Fortex. I tried a few Emerite, got enough for some seed, not many beans. I planted a few late Gold of Bacau, not sure if they will make it before frost. They should, since we rarely get frost before late December. Next year I need to plant a lot more common beans. Tennesee cutshorts sound very appealing, I also want to try my unnamed Catalan beans and the monjetes del ganxet.

Oh, how could I forget?! The soissont verts gave us a nice crop and we are still in love with them. Plant even more of them next year.

I tried a few soybeans and they did not do well. I suppose I crowded them. We also tried yard long beans, got a few and realized we are not so wild about the flavor, whatever they do to them at Chinese restaurants makes them taste great, can't reproduce it at home though. We also got some pink eye purple hulls, they are moping, limping along and so far have produced one flower and two beans. Next year we will not do cow peas at all and instead try our luck with limas (Gigandes and black jungle butter beans)

Full cycle and we are back to favas and peas. Sowed more Windsor, Sansimonia (Italian) and some favas I brought from Spain. Don't ask me the variety name, I will call them Catalan favas. I planted more Oregon trail shelling peas, and got myself a pisoli rampicante from Grow Italian that is a snow pea with the flavor of a sugar snap. Can't wait!

I also planted a few chickpeas (forget the variety but it is the one sold by Grow italian) Some have sprouted already. I am only growing a few, just to check out the plant cycle and see what it does and how we like them.

Cabrita,

Yard longs x Chinese restaurants + m = taste great

m = MSG?

Like Jim, this has been a fantastic year here for me in Massachusetts, not just for beans but for just about everything. Like an Indian friend of mine said, it was like we could have grown anyting, even mangoes.I'm sadder than usual to see the season coming to an end. I'm sorry I passed on an offer to borrow some additional land from a nearby farm that I support.
All the beans I grew this year were truly amazing. One of the new discoveries for me this year was Gold of Bacau. It's a yellow wax-type romano pole bean. It has to be one of the most productive pole beans I've ever grown and the flavor is excellent, even when allowed accidentally to get really big. I'm still picking them today. Probably will have enough for three more meals.
Another that I grew for the first time was mongetes del ganxet, that highly-prized Catalonian pole bean. I planted culinary beans that I got through the mail from Spain. I'd say I had nearly 100% germination. I would say they're sort of average productive, but worth the effort. I haven't tried the dried beans yet, but the shellies are truly wonderful. I've tried them plain, in a spicy tomato sauce and in salads with a garlicky vinaigrete - all excellent. They may be even a little better than Tarbais which has been my favorite white shelly.
The red noodle beans did extremely well for me too. Just tons of beans. You could almost see them growing on a warm day. We like them sauteed in olive oil with garlic and chopped or dry red chiles. No MSG needed!
One of my favorites that I'm hoping to keep available is Berta Talaska that did very well as usual. The snaps are really good, but for me it's the shellies that make them worth growing.
I have a lot of sympathy for you folks out west. We've had our share of lousy growing years recently so I know how dissapointing it can be.
Lou

Ciao all-

I'm so glad to hear that Mr. Tung's are doing so well. A gardening friend from BC sent me some, but I have yet to grow them. It looks like next year is the year.

Cabrita, your white runner beans sound lovely. Is that the actual variety name-Sweet White Runner? I'll have to look out for that one.

My best fresh-eating green bean was Musica, a long Romano-type from Spain, very early and super productive. These beans grow up to a foot long without getting tough or rubbery.

My best dry soup bush bean was Mayflower, said to have come over to America with the pilgrims. It's a cutshort bean, white and red speckled. The beans are small-seeded but filled with an average of 7 beans. I grew them in a Three Sisters Bed onto Triple Play corn. Next time, I'll use a taller, sturdier corn variety for this as the Triple Play only got to an average of 5 ft and the stalks leaned over quite easily. I think Hopi Blue would do nicely for this. I also grew Hidatsa Shield Figure and Lingua di Fuoco in that bed, but those varieties did not produce well. To be fair, I sowed them several weeks after the Mayflowers so perhaps given an earlier start, they would have done better.

My best ornamental beans, grown for flowers were the Sunset Runner and White Hyacinth beans. I grew them on the trellis with the Musica Romanos for a salmon pink and white fairy princess kind of look. I was very pleased.

I would love to grow the Asian long beans again, but they just don't seem to get going in time with our short season up here.

Who here has grown Asparagus beans? How did they taste and how did they perform for you?

sorellina, to answer your question the white runners were called 'sweet white runner beans' from Purcell. They are sold for eating but many of us are buying them for seed. I ate 3/4 of the package (as I do with all the Purcell packages) and decide if we like them well enough to plant. The beans (seeds) were really delicious, and the snaps are just the same flavor/texture as the red scarlet runners IWK.

I failed too many times with any attempt at 3 sister garden (I can only get 2 out of the 3 to produce) but I did grow Hopi blue a couple of years back and really liked it. We plant to grow a little patch of it again in 2011.

Has anybody here registered at CORNELL UNIVERSITY'S VEGETABLE VARIETIES FOR GARDENERS site? A lot of people go there to find the best varieties for their garden. I'm just asking because a lot of the varieties people love here have no ratings at all there.

Here is a link that might be useful: CORNELL UNIVERSITY'S VEGETABLE VARIETIES FOR GARDENERS

Did a lot of evaluations on the Cornell site several years ago, but haven't been back since; I'll have to make a point of checking back. Thanks for the reminder, and the link... I lost all my bookmarks when my computer crashed in October.

Some heirlooms will not be listed. To be rated on the Cornell site, a variety must be commercially available.