Dried Beans UK

[Tim DH]

Thought I'd post these just because they are pretty/fun.


Tried 6 new varieties in the garden this year. Two plants of each. LtoR(grams per plant): Alice Whitis(141g/p), Madeira Maroon(122g/p), Czechoslovakian(128g/p), Tiger Bean(120g/p), Angel(115g/p), Bob&Mary(84g/p).


These are from our own saved seed: Four plants of each. LtoR(grams per plant): St Anthony (279g/p), Bretts(260g/p), Poletschka(200g/p), Purple Runners(141g/p), Red&White(187g/p), Marie Claire(138g/p) Kidney(96g/p)

I've repeated this trial at my other growing site. (Three plants each of the new and six plants each of the old.) On the basis of the combined results I'm intending to drop maybe four cultivars next year.

What I've been doing over the years, is selecting beans which do well in our cool damp climate. 'Doing well' is as much about clean drying as the actual growing!

Perhaps the next step is to cross the ones which do best.

[Ocimum]

Hi, interesting results, thanks!

I however wonder if the productivity per plant is meaningful, as the growth habit of each plant is different. Would it not make more sense to assess the productivity per square meter in a bigger field?

Because with climbing beans, the taller the plant, and the larger the leaves, the more area is exposed to the sun, and therefore it can produce more beans per plant. But if you have a whole field of tall, large leaved plants, you need to space them more, and therefore the productivity is not necessarily higher per area.

[Tim DH]

Hi Ocimum,
   As a general principle I agree with you, yield by area is a good measure. However with climbing beans a significant limiting factor is providing the pole. (Also, to some extent, starting off in small pots etc.) Under the current arrangements I erect 128 poles. I wouldn't want to do any more. I grow the plants mixed, so that, in any one year, if a variety is having a bad season, the others will cover for it. 'French' beans cross so infrequently that this isn't a problem, however I agree that mixing means bigger plants can swamp smaller (but potentially more productive) plants.  Still, on balance, I think for this crop, yield per plant is more useful to me.
     The upshot of this is, that I wouldn't drop a cultivar just for one year's poor results. However I note that 'Kidney', shown above, consistently under performs.

[Cathy A]

In my small plots, producitivity per square unit of area is everything.

I have found that Vermont Cranberry and a Black Turtle beans grow well and produce a fair amount of beans, but it's still hard to justify growing them in my limited space.

Maybe next year I will try using a trellis or tripod to make them grow "up". I am not aware of any true pole bean varieties bred to be used as dry beans, though. Do you know of any?

It's really tough to accept the low yield when you compare it with the pick-and-come-again yield of green bean pods.

[Ocimum]

@Tim: it makes sense to take into account the workload of setting up the poles. What I meant with having a fair comparison: imagine below are tall and broad-leaved (T) and short (s) climbers in a trial, each having its individual pole.

TTT
TsT
TTT

Plant "s" will be disadvantaged if sunlight is the limiting factor and the others (T) are shading it out. This is the reason I suggested making trials in bigger areas, then you can also only measure the ones in the middle.

@Cathy: the "haricot tarbais", from France, is one pole bean variety used as dried beans. It was traditionally cultivated on maize, and still is by some farmers. It was a landrace, but recently one line was selected out of it, "Alaric", reducing the diversity.

[Cathy A]

That sounds like an interesting line of beans. A lot could be done starting from that point.

[Ferdzy]

There are a lot of pole dry beans. After our first year gardening we agreed we would rather spend time and materials trellising than bending down to pick beans, so that is nearly exclusively what we grow.

We're growing quite a bit of Major Cook, which I got on this site as an exchange from England. It is our most productive dry bean, a borlotti type. Kahnewake is not too far behind, and we always grow Dolloff as it is reliably early and cool tolerant.

We are currently growing Alaric; it's a delicious bean but would like to see more productivity. Another good white one is Deseronto Potato Bean, although we find we have to dry it in order to be sure it won't go mouldy - it's so big it has trouble drying down completely, it's also only just a pole bean (grows to about 6 to 8 feet).
 
Anseloni's Bologna is an excellent borlotto type, very productive. We grew True Red Cranberry for a while, and also Hidatsa Shield Figure, but they had to be dropped as they lacked sufficient disease resistance for out garden. Succotash is probably the coolest looking bean ever, and tasty too, but not super productive.

There are so many more... lots and lots of dry pole beans out there.

I will also note that we have almost always been able to increase productivity by 50% or more, by selecting the pods with the most beans from the plants with the most pods. Doubling is not out of the question if the variety has not been well maintained.

[A. Pel]

Maybe next year I will try using a trellis or tripod to make them grow "up". I am not aware of any true pole bean varieties bred to be used as dry beans, though. Do you know of any?

District Nurse is a borlotti pole bean you might wish to try. It is suitable for drying - we use it for soups. We planted it for the first time last year and it outperformed all of the other varieties in our garden this year by a factor of about 3. The beans are brown with black spots and are round-ish slightly smaller than marbles. Vermont Cranberry (a bush type) also seems to do better than every other bush type we have trialled. We grow that every year now but still try other ones as well just to see if what else might work.

We are in the UK with a very wet and cool summer climate.

[reed]

Maybe next year I will try using a trellis or tripod to make them grow "up". I am not aware of any true pole bean varieties bred to be used as dry beans, though. Do you know of any?

I think any bean is fine as dry beans. Those with nasty tough, or stringy pods are only good for dry. Those with tender pods are good in an immature state as snap beans but you can also just let them mature and dry if you want too. I like the ones that are good either way.

[Cathy A]

Vermont Cranberry does well here in Vermont (no surprise), but it's definitely a bush type.

A cross of Vermont Cranberry with a pole bean to produce a "Vermont Cranberry Pole" would be very interesting.