Pole Green Bean Recommendations/Request for Recommendations
 

Pole Green Bean Recommendations:

Fortex and Rattlesnake are in a league of their own. In my garden they are the absolute best tasting varieties. Of the two we (my wife and I) prefer Fortex. My friend and his wife prefer Rattlesnake. Both are excellent and good producers. The Rattlesnake is interesting because of the purple streaks, but they disappear when cooked. It is cool looking though.

A bean that deserves honorable mention is the Turkey Craw. This bean tastes very good. However you must pick them young or they get stringy and if there is one thing that I don't like in a green bean it's stringiness (is that a word?). If you don't pick them young then let them go a little bit and use them as a shelly bean. They are excellent as a shelly bean, one of the best if not the best.

Of the Kentuckys, Kentucky Blue is the favorite. Kentucky Wonder is probably the least well flavored of the Kentuckys, but it is productive.

So there you have it, my recommendations for Pole Green Beans.


Request for Recommendations:

I would like to know what is the best tasting Brocolli, Cauliflower, and pole lima beans.


Thanks,
Randy

I have never grown pole beans before, but I got some Emerite to try this year. I got them because they were mentioned in one of the books I read--maybe Ed Smith's or Eliot Coleman's--I don't remember.

Anyway, have you grown Emerite, and if so, how were they?

Matt

For a pole lima, I like Willow Leaf White. Small, green/white beans with excellent flavor.

I am still searching for my dream snap pole bean.

Off the beans I have grown I really liked Rattlesnake as well. I have heard good things about Emerite, Garafal Oro, Jeminez, Romano pole beans, but I have not gone any of those, though I do plan to grow Garafal Oro this coming season.

I am growing the following for the first time this coming season:[LIST][*]Blue Coco[*]Bosnian Yellow Pod[*]Garafal Oro - (Sword shape)[*]Hidatsa Shield Figure[*]Maria Amazilitei's[*]Meraviglia de Venezia[*]True Red Cranberry[*]Uncle Walt's Vermont Cranberry[/LIST]
Dean

mvan:
I haven't grown Emerite before, but I've heard some good things about it. And some negative things when it comes to productivity. If I come accross it in one of my seed catalogs I plan to order it and give it a try.

shelleybean:
Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep an eye open for Willow Leaf White.

Randy

Randy, you can get Willow Leaf from Southern Exposure or Victory.

I've been wanting to try willow leaf, too.
Haven't tried emerite or fortex yet, but rattlesnake is pretty good.
Probably the best in my garden so far are sieva butterbean (small lima) and McCaslen pole.

Willow Leaf is supposed to be a sport of Sieva so you may like it, puttgirl.

McCaslin and Rattle snake for southeast with R. S. more productive and holds better w/o strings= better shellybeans. um um Bill

I grew RS and McCaslin in the same year-I loved them both, but the McCaslin outproduced the RS by far.

I grew the RS and McCaslin in the same year-I loved them both, but the McCaslin outproduced the RS by far.
Shelleybean-thanks for the info, do you know where I can get willow leaf?

Willow Leaf is available from Southern Exposure and Victory.

I only grew Rattlesnake once, so I probably need to try it again. I grow Fortex every year. It's a neat looking bean and has very good flavor and no strings. The Japanese Beetles like it as well, the leaves that is.

Dean, you will like the Hidatsa Shield Figure beans. They are nice and meaty and tasty, but I swear, I'd grow them just to look at them and play with them with my hands.

I'll have to try the Willow Leaf limas. I grew Sieva this year and they did really well, considering the deer ate them down to nothing three times.

I have tried most of the common pole beans and settled on Fortex, too. The flavor is wonderful and they're very prolific. My only problem is keeping up with them; I have some lo-o-o-ong beans in the freezer! Another very good bean is Trionfo de Violetto (or something like that; I don't have the catalogues in front of me.) As the name states, it's purple, but loses its color when blanched. As with Fortex, it has an excellent flavor and also stays stringless even when mature.

As a side note, for several years I have frozen my beans without blanching. This year I blanched just to see the difference, and there isn't much. We tend to cook frozen beans for a longer time than fresh, with some bacon drippings or other meat fats and some onions or garlic, so if blanching had a major impact we probably wouldn't notice, anyway. There may have been a slight advantage to blanching for beans that we just sautéed quickly in a little butter, like the Fingourmet or Fin de Bagnols (bush varieties). The Pelandron bush beans are better cooked longer.

I'm in the middle of my bean cropping season now and the types I grow would have have been of European or American origin originally .The best I grow are Blue Lake Climber closely followed by Giant of Stuttgart ,and then Heavenly Gold ,a large yellow bean we call a butter bean . I blanch them in boiling water , refresh in iced water ,then freeze in plastic zip lock bags for later use .Must have 20 kg in the freezer now .