Favorite bush bean for the south?

[chickencrazymamahen]

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We have been getting ours from Vermont Bean and Seed but Schrumways have them also. Good luck!

 

[Blue Ridge Hillbilly]

If you want to learn about growing some of the best beans available to the home gardener go to www.heirloom.org. A great gentleman named Bill Best ([email protected]) is the top gun at Sustainable Mountain Agriculture at Berea KY. Bill has spent a large part of his life propogating the very best bean seed you can immagine. You will learn from Bill that seed producers over the years have hybridized the best gardening beans and have introduced a toughening gene to the commercial seed that you buy today. Main reason was to extend the market life of the beans so the commercial growers could make a profit on these varieties while sacrificing tenderness and taste. Bill has brought back the old heirloom varieties and has continued to improve them. Order you a sample packet of his NT (non-tough) half-runners beans and you will be hooked. I have raised Blue Lake, Derby, Eagle and a host of others over the years. Contact heirloom.org and you will have a new experience raising beans.

 

[NanaKat]

Thank you everyone for the sources of derby beans.
Several years ago I purchased a collection of heirloom seeds for 10 different varieties of shell beans. Several of those were touted as being good to eat when tender as a green bean. While they had to be stringed, they were a real treat. I have saved seed each year.

I agree with Blue Ridge Hillbilly about the GMOs...very little flavor any more. Agricultural farmers really are beginning to take a second look at them as not as cost effective as first predicted. Maybe the tide will begin to turn.

 

[KenK]

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What do you put up (or plant) for your pole beans to grow on?


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This post has me thinking about trying some running beans again next spring.

I am dead serious when I say that I would pay $100 dollars right now for a quart of the beans my grandmother canned.

 

[wekiva bird]

The bush beans that we like are the Romas Flat bean.

 

[mississippifarmboy]

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What do you put up (or plant) for your pole beans to grow on?


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This post has me thinking about trying some running beans again next spring.

I am dead serious when I say that I would pay $100 dollars right now for a quart of the beans my grandmother canned.

We usually plant two 100' rows and when they start running we put steel "T" posts 8' apart down the center of the middle and tie cattle panels to them about a foot off the ground. That way one row of panels supports two rows of beans.

I'm at work right now, but I'll try and post a picture when I get home tonight.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

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That's how we did peas this year. I double planted about 12" apart down a row and put some old welded wire fencing on t-posts down the center.

 

[darkmatter]

I've tried bush beans, several neighbors grow them cause they ripen all at once for canning a lot at one time. The bush varieties of beans don't taste as good to me as pole beans, pole beans will keep setting more and more pods as you keep picking them. Yummy, fresh beans for supper all summer/fall long, and I plant a long enough row to get plenty extra for canning. You just have to can only a few quarts at a time each week rather then a marathon canning session.
So, to answer the OP question, I don't have a favorite bush bean, I prefer pole beans. The last few years I've planted a cross of the blue lake/kentucky wonder that is stringless-------I like the favor over all other green bean types I've tried.