Pole bean recommendation
 

This year I am growing a purple pole bean with only average production(same as last year) and would like to ask for your recommendation for a good tasting, highly productive variety. Suggestion would be very much appreciated.

jon:yes:

Are you looking for string beans or limas? We are growing Christmas Speckled Limas, They are prolific, and delicious. The stink bugs don't bother them either or they haven't in our garden.

[QUOTE=brooksville;419198]Are you looking for string beans or limas? We are growing Christmas Speckled Limas, They are prolific, and delicious. The stink bugs don't bother them either or they haven't in our garden.[/QUOTE]

I prefer stringless beans but I might try some limas.

jon:wait:

I'm a big fan of pole beans, partial to the flat pod Romano type.
Among these great producers I like Algarve and Early Riser (which I believe is aka"Kwintus")
Round podded I enjoy the flavor and production of Cobra.

I'm growing these and trying a couple new to me varieties this year.

Purple Peacock pole beans are prolific, beautiful and tasty!

Linda

You are in the deep south with high heat and humidity. Select varieties that are adapted to your climate. I've grown about 200 varieties to find what works best.

Here are a few that have done exceptionally well for me.

Grandma Roberts Purple Pole - heavy production, heat tolerant, can sow into cool soil in spring. This is the best adapted purple pole bean I have grown. The only weakness and it is a minor one IMO is that the flavor is not quite as sweet as I would like. These are good for fresh eating and canning.

Rattlesnake - The most heat tolerant bean currently available. These are good for fresh eating and canning. The flavor IMO is sub-par compared to others.

Kentucky Wonder - the original brown seed variety is exceptionally well adapted and productive. Flavor is good, canning qualities are excellent. There are no major flaws, but I quibble a bit about the texture and slight strings that develop as the beans mature.

Fortex - This bean is very long at 10 to 12 inches, round, stringless, and soft textured. It is an excellent fresh eating bean but too soft IMO to make the best canned beans. It has serious problems with the heat of summer and is a japanese beetle magnet. I also consider flavor to be a bit weak, but that is because I prefer relatively strong flavored snap beans.

Emerite - This bean is very good flavored, moderately productive, excellent for fresh eating or canning. It is consistent and reliable. The only concern is that production is "moderate" and heat tolerance is a tad less than I would like. Overall, I rate Emerite as a very good bean and a highly recommended variety.

Grandma Roberts Tri-color - This is a bean I got from my grandmother back in 1999. It has seed of 3 separate colors, white, brown, and black. The three color trait is genetic, you can plant any of the three colors and the seed produced will include the three original colors. This is an exceptionally good bean all around for fresh eating and canning. quality is on a par with blue lake types. Heat tolerance is high, not quite as good as Rattlesnake, but much better than most others. Production ranges from heavy to very heavy, it is one of the few that can out-produce Ky Wonder. It is stringless when young, but develops shellies quickly due to the rapid growth. This is typical of highly productive varieties. I pick them every 5 days for best quality.

Turkey Craw - This is the only bean I've grown that can be used as fresh snaps, shellies, dried beans, or leather britches. The only thing it is not so good for is dilly beans. It is vigorous, productive, and heat tolerant. The flaws I've seen are that the beans are relatively short at 5 to 6 inches, and the snapping quality is not as good as others. It also has slight strings and has to be picked young if used as snaps.

Striped Bunch - If you want to make dilly beans, this is the variety to grow. It is a true half-runner that makes nearly round 5 inch beans perfect to tip and tail and drop into a pint jar. Production is good to excellent and flavor is just right for dillys. Just remember that they have strings!




I'm working on a cross of Fortex X Oaxacan 5-1 (PI 207373). Fortex brings long round beans of very good quality while Oaxacan 5-1 is highly disease and heat tolerant. Oaxacan 5-1 is the only bean I've grown that can be compared to cowpeas for heat tolerance. It will take at least 5 more years to see if I can get something that is worth growing. If I were rating them for potential, I'd say this cross can produce a bean with better heat tolerance than Rattlesnake, better bean quality than Fortex, and better flavor than Kentucky Wonder.

I've been trying pole bean varieties here for the past few years to see which ones we like in terms of shape, taste, texture, appearance, earliness, stringiness, production and tolerance to leaf disease.

Already tried (past winners *'d and being grown again this year): Blue Marbut, Blue Lake Pole, Cascade Giant, Early Riser, Emerite*, Fortex*, Garrafal Oro, German Pole, Gigandes, Jeminez, John's Polish Purple, John's Polish Yellow, Kentucky Blue, Kentucky Wonder, Kentucky Wonder Brown, McCaslan, Moonlight, Noreaster, Ralph's Pole Bean, Rattlesnake*, Spanish Musica

New this season: Aunt Mary's Meat, La Vigneronne, Meeks Running, Zelma Zesta

Just a reminder that habitat_gardener has her suggestions and some photos in her yearly bean reviews, too.

I'd still like to try Purple Peacock, Helda and Smeraldo sometime.

kath, I grew Helda several years back.
If memory serves, similar to Early Riser. Great flavor and production.

Fusion Power,

Thanks so much for your excellent post!

I have thought about planting an older, tall corn such as Hickory King to use for making a deep[B] flavored[/B] source of fresh grits and cornmeal, as well as tall stalks. I don't know if there is a corn that would be a dual function variety for fresh eating when young and still usable when dried. I would hope to be using these stalks for the beans to climb,

I would like a tall growing snap bean with delicious, deep flavor that has the beans developed inside and still soft flesh. Thus far, I have found that those with the flat pods have far more flavor than others like Kentucky Wonder. My "go to" bean in the past was Blue Lake, but wonder if something like the Romano or other would be preferable? Probably nothing like these that would also be stringless, but the crispness and flavor is more important.

Your thoughts?

KWINTUS, by far for me--seeds are not easy to find. Park seed did have them but not this year. Kitazawa seed is where I got mine from. I need to start saving my seeds.

I had great success with Trionfo Violetto from Park Seed last year. The bugs (I think it was a Mexican bean beetle) really chewed up my Blue Lake pole beans so I didn't get a good harvest from them. The bunnies ate all of my bush beans. >.<

[QUOTE=mensplace;419219]Fusion Power,

Thanks so much for your excellent post!

I have thought about planting an older, tall corn such as Hickory King to use for making a deep[B] flavored[/B] source of fresh grits and cornmeal, as well as tall stalks. I don't know if there is a corn that would be a dual function variety for fresh eating when young and still usable when dried. I would hope to be using these stalks for the beans to climb,

I would like a tall growing snap bean with delicious, deep flavor that has the beans developed inside and still soft flesh. Thus far, I have found that those with the flat pods have far more flavor than others like Kentucky Wonder. My "go to" bean in the past was Blue Lake, but wonder if something like the Romano or other would be preferable? Probably nothing like these that would also be stringless, but the crispness and flavor is more important.

Your thoughts?[/QUOTE]

Grow greasy beans. They need to be de-stringed, but they are the most tender and flavorful type of bean there is. Your deep south heat may make it a challenge to grow some of them. I'd contact Bill Best and ask him for a recommendation.

Greasy beans are fairly easy to recommend. Striped Hull Greasy Cutshort and Pink Tip Greasy both do very well here in the South. Greasy Back Cornfield is a decent bean for growing on corn. While it is not a greasy bean, I highly recommend trying Tobacco Worm for eating quality. These all have strings!

A good romano type bean to grow on corn is a bit harder to come up with. I'm going to suggest two that are worth looking at but grow them in a small trial before putting a lot of effort toward them. Jeminez is one of the better beans for a romano type. Leona Dillon Creaseback is not technically a romano, but it is a wide flat bean that is adapted to growing in a mixed planting.

A corn variety for supporting beans that can also be eaten as roasting ears is a bit harder to come up with. The problem is that most sweet corns have weak stalks and most corns with strong stalks are poor choices for roasting ears. Avoid corn that gets over 10 feet tall. Texas Honey June is a possiblility. I am working on breeding a sweet corn from Cherokee Squaw that has excellent stalk standability. It is not selected well enough yet to release.

[QUOTE=mensplace;419219]Fusion Power,

Thanks so much for your excellent post!

I have thought about planting an older, tall corn such as Hickory King to use for making a deep[B] flavored[/B] source of fresh grits and cornmeal, as well as tall stalks. I don't know if there is a corn that would be a dual function variety for fresh eating when young and still usable when dried. I would hope to be using these stalks for the beans to climb,

I would like a tall growing snap bean with delicious, deep flavor that has the beans developed inside and still soft flesh. Thus far, I have found that those with the flat pods have far more flavor than others like Kentucky Wonder. My "go to" bean in the past was Blue Lake, but wonder if something like the Romano or other would be preferable? Probably nothing like these that would also be stringless, but the crispness and flavor is more important.

Your thoughts?[/QUOTE]

"Soft flesh" and "crispness", to me, mean opposite things.:?!?:

Rattlesnake, for now, is the benchmark for productivity in the heat. Young pods have better flavor and texture than more mature ones. This variety also has the most variability in flavor of all the beans I've trialed.

Jeminez is the most productive bean I've ever trialed , excluding a VERY hot year. It has long, wide, flat pods of excellent flavor, that are extremely tender, and always stringless.

If you're really looking for something different, do a search for Flamingo pole beans (one of my bean projects).

:roll:I'm waiting for Fusion Power to cross PI 207373 with Supermarconi Cuneo.

Also, there is another forum where beans are discussed.;)

Gary

An added bonus with Rattlesnake is that Japanese beetles don't seem to like it.