A picture would speak volumes.....

I was thinking of fava beans, and garbanzo beans aka chick peas, which when cooked, pureed, and mixed with garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, cumin, cayenne, and tahini, make healthy, delicious dips, like hummus. I'd think you could use your runner shellies similarly. And if you grow mint, mush some in glasses with lime juice and simple syrup and make Mojitos or Mint Juleps to go with the dip. Another option: freezing the shellies (for dips and cocktails?) to enjoy during the coming winter....

....just a few suggestions....

I do two things with them (assuming they are green bean shellies, if they are specific for dried beans, I use as dried beans),

1. If they are pole beans I save them for seed - best germination and healthiest pole beans have come from the seeds I collected. Makes sense, they are already naturally selected for my garden!

2. Save enough of them and when I have a cup or so I add it to vegetable soup, chili, minestrone, you name it....

Thanks for the suggestions. cabrita - I do save my own seed - these beans come from last years seed. But there are so many beans that I will have ample for seed at the end of the season. These are still soft beans, not yet ripe for drying but hummus might work.

What I did last night was boil a panful up and then toss them in olive oil and parsley and served as a hot vegetable with pork chops. I did not think they tasted of much except the oil and parsley. My son didn't think they were great either but reckoned they were better than spinach and courgettes (zucchini) which are the other two glut veggies he's been force fed for the last 6 weeks. (Apart from green runners) My husband thought they were as good as favas. So I'll keep experimenting. I think they would be better slipped out of their skins but I'm too lazy to do it. They tasted a bit like edamame and might be good salted.

These are runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) not French beans (P vulgaris). If you keep picking, each plant crops for several months, usually from about mid July to first frost. Maybe mid October. My P vulgaris by contrast have produced about two handfuls of beans from 24 plants and hate this weather. They have been ravaged by snails and slugs and are pretty nearly over.

What color are your shellies?

And what size?

Are they all the same runner-bean variety?

They started out as Painted Lady. Last year I also planted a few red flowered runners of unknown name. They are growing on an allotment so there are other runner beans all around, mostly red flowered. Since I save my own seed I really don't know what you would call the variety/ies now. Most still have the red and white flowers of PL but some have plain red flowers. The beans are still immature when I shell them at the moment so I don't know their final coloration. They are mostly creamy white with pinkish patterns which I think, when ripe, will be pink with burgundy patterns. But some are a bright cerise with no patterns. One pod had pure white beans. Who knows where those genes came from?! If I get myself organised I will try and post some pictures.

I always enjoy your lottie reports and would love to see some pictures of your garden there. We rarely have allotment type gardens here but it is a fine way of providing garden space and a good way meet other gardeners too. We probably have fewer gardeners here than you have there.

I live near Seattle and the climate is said to be similar to parts of the UK.

Shelly beans are a favorite of mine and I am trialing several runner and common varieties. One of the runner beans this summer is called Bond's Orcas Lima. It is an early variety with white blossoms and white seeds which seem to be thin skinned and better eating quality than some other runner seeds. They actually turn green like a fresh lima when cooked if the pods are still mostly green. Another white seeded runner that looked idental was much more chewy. Almost crunchy. Both varieties were picked as the pods were turning yellow.

Unfortunately I did not know how badly runners cross and may not end up with good seed.

If they take the flavor you give them, that is not necessarily bad. I suggest you shell and freeze them all, they will taste wonderful in February when nothing else is available.

Plus they are nutritious. if your kid likes them better than zucchini, which are sugar water nutritionally speaking, you are killing two birds with one stone.

I think I will freeze them as you suggest. They are rather fiddly to pod, tougher than peas or favas. They don't seem to want to 'unzip' without a struggle but I dare say I could muster the energy. Today I picked more but managed to get to them before they had grown past the green bean stage. I'm still picking courgettes and chard too. In February over here we will be eating several fresh things from outdoors, especially brassicas. I grow purple sprouting broccolli, curly kale , red Russian kale and Tuscan black kale. I leave brussels sprouts, cabbages and cauliflower to my local market gardener as he grows them much better than I can. There will also be parsnips and leeks still in the garden.

Flora, there is another bean called "Bianco di Spagna" that I trialed this year. The dry seeds in the packet were truly enormous and the sprouted seeds were huge also. The people at gourmetseed.com say the crop is ready in 65 days.

None of the companies that sell this seed seem to mention that it is a runner bean. I did not know for sure until the true leaves emerged first and the huge seeds stayed in the ground. The pods look like a cross between limas (which do not grow here) and runners.

Like most everything else here this year they were planted late. At the 65 days point there may have been small snaps but I did not take notes on that because I was waiting for the "finest soup bean in existence" to develop shellies.

The plants were loaded with white blossoms but did not bear heavily. The pods are fairly short and are now plumping up with 2-3 huge beans per pod. A few pods have started to turn yellow and I pick then while still green or just starting to turn.

Last night I picked several pods to mix in with other vegetables. One seed was 1-3/4 inches long. (Do you remember inches?) (smile). They turn light green when steamed and with butter, salt and pepper they are delicious. The skins are not tough and chewy like other runners. My wife exclaimed about how she liked them.

I do not know if I can harvest dry seed before a hard frost or if the seed would be worth planting due to crossing. It has crossed my mind to try a cross with "Bond's Orcas Lima".

Not to hijack the thread, but I have to challenge the zuccini is "sugar-water" assertion. What I have read indicates that zuke in particular and summer squash in general is a high-quality food. High in protein as veggies go.

pnbrown
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Drloyd, runner beans (especially the white-seeded ones) are often misrepresented, or sold as something other than runner beans. Of the seeds I've grown which proved to be other than the species reported, the majority were runner beans which turned out not to be, or "limas" which turned out to be runners. "Greek Giant Lima" and "Pole Cannellini" are just two examples. Note that the "Bond's", too, is labeled as a lima.

"Bianco di Spagna", though, sounds interesting. If you have seen my thread on runner beans, you know that I was looking for a good runner bean shelly, with not much success. The skins were always too tough, even after extended cooking times. I'll have to give "Bianco di Spagna" a try.

Good point, Zeedman.

I have been picking "Bianco di Spagna" when the pods are still green but very plump. It is not clear yet if I can harvest any dry seeds. They are slower to mature than some. In any case, they would probably be badly crossed and I plan to buy commercial seed for next year.

Over at the shelly thread I requested your recipe for freezing shellies.

Well, after some experimentation, I think that I've found a good technique for runner bean shellies. The pods need to be picked young, as Drloyd suggested above. They are still very fleshy at this point, so the seeds are difficult to shell out.

However, I recently froze a lot of edamame soybeans, which are steamed in the pod before eating/freezing. Soybeans are also very difficult to shell; but after steaming for 5 minutes, you can pop them out easily with just a squeeze. There are a lot of fat pods still hanging on my "Tucomares Chocolate" vines that survived the frost, so I thought that I would try steaming them like soybeans, to see if the seeds would be easier to remove from the pods.

Success!!! Once the pods had been cooked for 5 minutes & cooled under running water, the seeds shelled out easily. I then steamed the seeds until they were fully cooked. I didn't care for the flavor of "Tucomares Chocolate", but the skin of the young beans was tender, so I will be trying this method with other varieties.

This is "Bianco di Spagna", a runner bean with huge seeds and good eating qualities. This seed is nearly 1 3/4 inches long. I took a picture of a bigger one a couple weeks back but I discovered when it was too late that it was blurred. Alas, the subject had been eaten.

Drloyd, Gourmetseed intl says that Pole Bean di Spagna Bianco is a phaseolus vulgaris. Thats where you got it from, right? Seeds from Italy has the same named bean but does not say the variety.

IIRC, my King of the Garden limas might have sprouted with the first true leaves too, leaving the cotyledons underground. Is that for sure an exclusively runner bean trait?

One other way to check might be to plant it beside a known vulgaris and runner, and see which, if any, it crosses with.

A chilly morning here and I don't have to go into work just yet, so here are a few bean-related pictures for you. All show Painted Lady runners at various points in their lives.

Dean, I've grown "King of the Garden" limas - and the cotyledons emerged. They did sometimes break off underground, though, due to their large size. After several years of failure, I had given up on KOG; but that was direct seeded. This year, with transplants, I hope to have better luck.

Flora, "Painted Lady" is very similar in flower to "Tucomares Chocolate"... only instead of the white petals, those of TC are a light salmon pink. I have been trying to eliminate a white-seeded cross from my TC (which is solid brown), some of the dry beans were nearly identical to the PL seed in your photo. Perhaps they are closely related.

Winter here stinks, even your green grass looks good right now (lol).

Zeedman, they might have broken off underground. Good point, I hadn't thought of that. Probably the constant early rains compacted the soil too much for them to emerge. My KOG struggled and failed last summer, though the year before they matured a few pods.

So is it for sure then that di Spagna Bianco is a runner, or could its cotyledons also have broken off? Drloyd did you notice any tuberous roots had formed? I'm surprised a seed company could make that kind of mistake.

flora,
Pic. of runner beans flowers look really pretty.

"I'm surprised a seed company could make that kind of mistake. -Dean (regarding Bianco di Spagna)

Don't be. I have often lamented that white-seeded runner beans are frequently misrepresented as limas or P. vulgaris, even from commercial sources. "Pole Cannellini" and "Greek Giant Lima" are two others.

Well, ok then, but who is Dean?

Flora are those really some recent photos? You are so lucky! We have been under snow and ice for at least 2 months with 2 months at least more to go. Looks like you have some chard and lettuce or kale growing there too. What kind of poppy do you have?

The beans in flower are from July 2008. The poppy is a self sown opium poppy. The dried pods and vines are from just before Christmas 2008. There is no lettuce out there now but there is chard, purple sprouting broccoli, Tuscan black kale and Red Russian kale. And of course there are some baby favas out there now - at least they were there last time I looked a couple of weeks ago. Sorry about the bad focus on some. The link shows photos taken on December 20th.

Here is a link that might be useful: The garden in December

"Well, ok then, but who is Dean?"

Oops... :-0 Sorry, Happy, had you confused with another poster.

Flora, trust your taste buds. I don't like runner beans as shellies, either, and I doubt any recipe will change my opinion. They have lovely blossoms, and I grow a few for the hummingbirds now and then, but any pod that doesn't get picked young goes into the worm bin.

Great photos, thank you.

Happyday, so far it appears that all really big white seeded beans that I have found were either runners or limas (which do not grow for me here). The "Bianco di Spagna" were from the late Harvest Moon Seed Company. None of the colyledons emerged and the plants looked very much like other runners. The pods looked the same as other runners that I trialed last year. It is currently both dark out and muddy in the garden but I will see if I can dig up a tuber soon to help verify the species. The plan was to dig them up and store them for next year, but it did not happen.

The flavor and texture of Bianco di Spagna were much better than most runner seeds though. So far, I have found four white runners with seeds with good eating qualities: "Bond's Orcas Lima" is a very early white runner with smaller thin-skinned good flavored seeds. We also liked "Cannellini Gigante" and "Delucci Cannellini" both of which are long season white seeded runners.

The plan for this year is to grow Bianco di Spagna as the only runner to avoid crosses. Some will be sown in peat pots for an early start.

By the way, we are currently harvesting potatoes, beets, cabbage, carrots and Brussels sprouts and our grass is green!

Happyday,

I had someone help with garden cleanup and it appears that they pulled the Bianco di Spagna vines instead of cutting them off. So that clue is not available.

Still everything about the vines, pods and seeds look like runners.

I tried a little experiment to try and figure out the correct species label for "Bianco di Spagna." A single seed was sown in a pot. As expected, the sprout appeared without cotyledons.

So I removed enough potting mix to see if the cotyledons had broken off. They had not. Both the sprout and the root come out of and are attached to the cotyledons.

So it looks very much like a runner. The seed came from Gourmet Seeds.

There are a number of Italian sites that describe Bianco di Spagna as a runner or as P. coccineus. One site comments that this bean will not make seed well in very hot weather. Another runner trait.

I hope someone else will try this "Italian butter bean". Assuming that it will tolerate cool soil as do other runners, I plan to plant it mid-March, two weeks earlier than common beans.

The peas are up, the onions are in, I just dug the last of last year's carrots. After the coldest March in decades, spring is arriving!

Dick

Oops. That should be mid-May as a goal for sowing runner beans.

I put the potting mix back in the pot and left the pot outdoors to see how it would do.

By May 9, there had been three 31F frosts and the plant looks fine and continues to grow. That is another clue that it may be a runner

I have had very good luck with Runner beans but I have replanted them every year as I didn't realize that they were perennial. What is the proper procedure for preparing the old crop for the following year? Should I just leave them as is, cut them off a couple inches above the ground or other?

We do not get hard freezing weather here. I live near San Francisco with weather extremes from +25F to 100F. I think Runners are a fantastic addition to a tiny back yard.

You can see the 2008 crop at the link.

Thanks for the help - Arlen

Here is a link that might be useful: Scarlet Runner Beans

We get to minus 30C. I'll be really surprised if my scarlet runners sprout.