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cabrita_gw

Soissons vert shellies.......mmmmmmmmmm

cabrita
14 years ago

They are pole beans (P. vulgaris) and I tried a few of them pretty late in the season. A couple of days ago I had enough shellies to make a side dish. I cooked them sauteed in olive oil with some wax snaps, smoked tomatoes, garlic, and a little tony chachareze creole seasoning. Added a little vegetable broth and cooked them for maybe 15 minutes.

I have to say that even though my partner is an avid gardener, I get accused of 'growing too many beans' and 'too many kinds of beans'. Does this sound familiar at all? Yes, I thought so. I only grow a small percentage of what some of you folks grow. So as we were eating the soissons vert shellies, he says: Ah, these are the green ones you have growing by the cherry tomatoes? Ahhhhh. Are you going to grow MORE of them next year? I hope so. I hope so too! the rest of the crop gets saved as seeds.

Big thumbs up on them, and confirmed by someone who is less of a bean lover than myself! No pests or diseases, they took a while but they were pretty drama free. Really easy to shell too. Also, they are still going! I mean, it is December already, maybe they like it a bit cooler than most common beans? I hope I get lots of seed. I think I will plant them again early next year and take advantage of our long springs. Ah, and MORE, I will plant more.

Speaking of more, how many seeds is reasonable to plant to have plenty of shellies for two people? Would you guys say 50 to 60 seeds? Less? more?

Comments (2)

  • zeedman Zone 5 Wisconsin
    14 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    50-60 plants would be plenty; you could eat a lot, and have some to freeze as well.

    "Soissons Vert" is the best-tasting shelly I have eaten... and I grow a lot of different beans as shellies. Certainly not the largest, but the most tender & flavorful. Beautiful too, with that green color. I have really missed growing them the last couple of years, while trialing other varieties. Haven't started planning next year's garden yet, but I would love to grow them large-scale. It's time to renew my seed anyway.

    "I mean, it is December already, maybe they like it a bit cooler than most common beans?"

    Come to think of it, mine started rather late as well. Just sat there for most of the summer, then suddenly took off in late August. I remember thinking at the time that they might be mildly daylength-sensitive, and didn't like my long Midwest summers. But you could be right, Cabrita; it might have been the mid-Summer heat, not the daylength. They still came in as 95 DTM for me (dry) which is not very late for dry beans.

    I'm curious what spacing you used, Cabrita, and how vigorous the vines were in your climate. Mine were grown in partial shade, and much closer together than I usually grow pole beans - 2 or 3 plants per foot of row. All of the original sample sent to me had been planted, and I didn't have the heart to thin them. They still did pretty well, about 3 pounds of dry seed from 10 feet of row.

  • cabrita
    Original Author
    14 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Zeedman, I'll do my best to answer on the soissons verts but I hope you like the statistics of small numbers. We try to maximize overall vegetable yield, so we shamelessly interplant and intensively plant. Also, I do not record plant dates for anything, since we are planting small numbers of something or another every week of the year. We do not plant in 'rows' that you folks talk about. It is more like in-ground beds and raised beds in different shapes, all over the place with either paths or citrus fruits around. Also, I have all sorts of things eating my seeds and plants or disturbing them (dogs, cats) so I lose a % to the resident wild life. If you only have one seed, don't send it to me...:-)

    So I planted I think around mid July, 7 seeds in one bed an 7 in another on a completely different location (well, within a 1/4 acre lot, so not that far, but there is a house in between). The germination rate was not 100% and I did see at least one of the bean baby plants disappear from being eaten by one critter (maybe 2? proof they were tasty early on....). One bed grew 4 plants, one died but produced beans. This is a deep bed (pretty good soil that does get fertilized) which is running south north and accommodates for the slight elevation gain of the property (foothills). It is away from all other P vulgaris so this was going to be for seed (and will be, I already collected some). The three remaining bean plants are about 4-5 inches from one another, on the east side of a trellis which is also supporting 4 very vigorous hybrid sungold tomatoes. 2 1/2 feet wide, very long the north-south way (has other crops on the other end). In any case, the beans and the tomatoes had to compete with each other to some extent. The 3 living bean vines are about 1 foot from one of the 4 cherry tomatoes. The whole bed is irrigated by soaker hose but lately we have been hand watering. The beans did not climb that high on the trellis, so they are a rather compact pole bean. The beans liked to climb the tomato, and the tomatoes liked the trellis that I intended for the beans. The 3 living specimens in that bed produce(ed) quite a few beans and also climbed the tomato. Neither the tomato nor the bean seem to mind the other's presence, the tomatoes are flowering and producing little sungolds abundantly. These have been by far our most productive tomatoes, but most of the others are the OP type, so we can't really compare. Maybe the beans are somewhat hurt by the tomato? not sure. They had to compete for space, soil nutrients and sun. Forgot to mention due to the bed being close to a living fence on the east side of the property, and being smothered by tomatoes, they got only partial sun, but my zone is very sunny as you know.

    On the other bed, 5 lived but they were even later on the production. I lost one without being able to harvest due to recent strong winds knocking down my most unstable trellis, that will be rebuilt for more pole beans. 2 vines are still alive, but 3 were uprooted. I had them growing with Gold of Bacau, which seemed a lot more vigorous but also more stink bug prone. So on a trellis with other beans, the soissons were more 'petit', compact, or whatever you want to call them. I simply planted the soissons on the missing spots, where the other beans (that I had started one month earlier or so) did not germinate or were eaten by something. So they were away from each other, but close to the gold of bacau. Trellis was made from pecan branches and I placed about 3 beans per branch, separated by 1-2 feet from the other branches. So in other words, more space all around, but the 2 varieties were in clusters of 3 beans, only 2 inches apart from each other. The tree beans were less than 2 inches apart though. Better than partial sun, the bed is on the ground, less fluffy but OK fertility overall. No idea if it matters, but there are eggplants on the middle of that bed. So the trellis was more widely spaced, so the sun could get to the eggplants. In retrospect, this was an OK idea, but next time I will only put one bean per pole. I did not weigh anything, but I remember the approximate volume from cooking them. I would say about 3/4 cup from the ones near the tomato (but still producing and I left a few for seed)- so I am guessing 1 cup. The 3 wind damaged ones produced less than 1/4 cup, but one of them was still too young.

    Next year I will give them more respect and put them on their own trellis (well, the one with the potatoes in the middle). It seems that 4-5 inch spacing is good? I am able to space them better on the 'potato trellis'. It has partial sun, but I feel this is OK with them because this year was cooler overall and next year might be a scorcher.

    One more thing. You mentioned them being small? not so small. The husk is very thin and they are flattened, but I measured them, and they averaged 2 cm, and the larger ones 1 inch in their largest stage (full grown shellies that did not dry yet). This year I also grew the purple hull cowpeas and these are much smaller. I also grew the goose beans (or Ma Williams? not sure) and they are a lot larger and fatter, so I guess they are medium? So glad to have them since I have wanted to grow flageolets for a while, since I tasted them purchased from a store. They remind me of them, but the flageolets would have been bush beans. I don't have so much space for bush beans in the summer.

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