Don’t count your beans before they hatch
There are beans a yard long. There are two-inch beans with wings. Beans are yellow, purple, speckled scarlet and just plain green. Nutritionists love beans, and Dollar General sells seed packets for 25 cents. You can spend more for other varieties, but I’m just saying eat your beans.
I grew a variety of purple beans which grew beyond the trellis and grabbed onto a nearby peach tree. I picked purple beans from a peach tree.
Yellow wax beans grow on bushy plants, and a gardener can freeze several pints for winter dinners from only eight or ten plants. The plants just keep producing, and that’s not much garden space for a respectable return.
Some beans have soft shells and folks call them snap beans because you can snap them, steam and serve them just like that. Other varieties have tough pods and must be shelled to get the beans inside. I grew up with relatives in southern Arkansas who apparently were excellent bean growers because many summer afternoons of my youth were spent shelling in the shade. Beans are easy to freeze and can be canned and dried.
Beans are not the first crop you plant in spring, but maybe in the next wave. There are bush and pole varieties, so you can pick which kind fits your space. Maybe both. Once expected frosts are past, cultivate a spot and plant your beans.
Regarding snap beans, not dried, a clever strategy is to grow pole beans for freezing and bush beans for eating, but, of, course that plan falls apart when it’s dinner time and you eat what is ready. Pick snap beans before they get too big because the pods get too tough and freezing doesn’t soften them. You’ll figure it out. Besides, the more you pick, the more they yield.
Back in the day, I worked at a Green Giant pea and bean cannery in southeastern Washington. My job one summer was to push carts loaded with several layers of canned beans into a long tube called a retort where they were cooked with steam. Maybe you ate some of those beans.
One of the best parts of browsing catalogs for bean seeds is the names given to different varieties like Beurre de Rocquencourt and Good Mother Stallard. Black Turtle beans are small and black. Jacob’s Cattle beans are ivory with maroon splotches.
Navy beans are white, originated in Peru and are popular for soups. Everyone knows, but Wikipedia reminds us anyway, “White beans are the most abundant plant-based source of phosphatidylserine yet known.” They are called navy beans because they were regular fare for American sailors starting mid-19th century. They are especially nutritious and good for your cholesterol.
The bean named Ojo de Cabra, meaning eye of the goat, is pale with artistic brown stripes resembling its namesake. I’ve grown Cobra and Rattlesnake beans, neither of which resemble their namesakes, but they were prolific and tasty.
Lima beans were so named because the capital of Peru was where the invading Europeans first found them. Remains of pottery there from 5000 years ago have designs of lima beans with faces, legs and feet representing famous locals.
Fava beans, also called broad beans, are another ancient crop but they originated in the Mideast. Soybeans came from southeast Asia and arrived in pre-revolution Georgia by mid-18th century. It was early 20th century when American chemist George Washington Carver convinced farmers of the benefits of crop rotation using soybeans and peanuts to replenish the nitrogen and minerals in soil.
Edamame refers to prepared immature soybeans, and Mulberry, Arkansas, is the edamame capital of the U.S.
And there are mung beans, runner beans, kidney beans, hyacinth beans and lentils… beans of many colors from everywhere nourishing hungry humans for millennia. And, as every 11-year old in my hometown knew, “Beans, beans, good for the heart. The more you eat, the more you etc.”