Wednesday, November 28, 2012

2012 Garden in Review- Beans

This passed year was a very good year for beans, both pole and bush.

Pole Bean:
Cherokee Trail of Tears- Seed from Granny.  Three plants were grown.  They were planted rather late, at the end of June.  One plant was decapitate early on and started to pod later.  From two plants I was able to harvest 9ozs of dried beans.  From one plant I harvested 7ozs of shell beans.  I consider this a great harvest due to the late planting and the small number of plants grown.  I will be planting again in 2013.

Lazy Wife Greasy- Seed from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.  From 6 plants I Was able to get an enormous harvest of green beans.  the vines are rampant and the pods are small.  The sheer number of them compensates for the small size.  The one caveat is that you have to pick them daily.  skip a day and they from green bean to shell bean.  The fuzz less pod does take some getting used to appearance wise.  I will be planting again in 2013.

Blue Coco- Home saved seed.  Rampant vines that exploded with pods once the temps cooled down.  The pods are a rich purple and average about 7",  A nice texture and good flavor complete the picture.  I will be planting again in 2013.

Cornetto Largo Verde- Home saved seed.  A very hard to find Romano type.  Like Blue Coco, the vines exploded with pods when the temps cooled down.  The pods can grow to 10" and still remain tender.  This is my earliest pole bean, almost rivalling the bush beans.  I will be planting again in 2013.

"Blush Potomac" F2- A natural cross of Potomac and Trionfo Violetto.  It was fascinating to see how the genes shuffled for this generation.  Last year pods were green blushed purple.  This year they sorted out to green, purple, green with purple strops and green blushed purple. Rampant vines and good productivity.  I'll probably be ending this experiment here.  They are just not different enough from their parents.

Cranberry- Seed from Granny.  I only grew one plant.  It was in to much shade and only produced a few pods.  It is worth it to grow for the beauty of the seed alone, buff mottled with cranberry.  in 2013 they will be getting a better location and I will plant a decent number of seed.

Bush Bean:
Greencrop, Cherokee and Velour- All produced well and were of good quality. If I grow bush beans next year, I will plant all of these varieties. While they are earlier, pole beans are much more prolific and are much more versatile.

1 comment:

  1. I go back and forth between bush and pole. Poles do require more effort, but they are just so productive compared to a bush bean.

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