Beans

redser7

Working on a planting plan for next year and obviously beans are popular to grow. But apart from the baked variety in tomato sauce :-) I've never tasted a fresh bean in my life! And I never seem to see them in the supermarkets.
Anyone care to extol the virtues of the different types of beans? Taste, how you use them, do they take up much space?

Thanks a lot

Cardinal Richelieu

redser7 wrote: »

Working on a planting plan for next year and obviously beans are popular to grow. But apart from the baked variety in tomato sauce :-) I've never tasted a fresh bean in my life! And I never seem to see them in the supermarkets.
Anyone care to extol the virtues of the different types of beans? Taste, how you use them, do they take up much space?

Thanks a lot

Grown them for years, prob one of the easiest and most productive crops you can grow in the garden and you get the added bonus of nitrogen fixing and colourful small flowers.

French(Haricots) Beans- can be used in salads or boiled/steamed. Best for eating if you select a stringless variety. The bean pods dry out as you allow the beans inside the pods to form so best to keep harvesting the plant before the beans in the pods form. Grow on crossed canes 6-7 feet high with a crossbar support. Near the end of the season allow some pods to go to seed and harvest the seed for next years crop.

Runner Beans- grow as above

Broad Beans- shorter growing and less productive. You allow pods to fully develop beans and then shell like peas and remove the outer membrance from each bean. Very strong Iron taste IMHO,


Food Forum here is usually a very good resource for some unusual recipes after you grow bored with the standard recipes for beans.

A tip with beans if you use the dwarf varieties is to recycle the cut off canes from your fruit bushes as support. I use my blackcurrent prunnings. Works well for pea crops too. The pic below gives the general idea.

redser7

Great reply, thanks very much. I'll certainly give them a try based on this.