Know Your Beans

Kathy Woolsey

   Is Green Bean Casserole on the menu this Thanksgiving at your house? My family serves green beans with a little pork for Thanksgiving and for just about every holiday.  I doubt green bean casserole was on the first Thanksgiving menu; French fried onions were hard to come by back then.  November would have been too late in the season for green beans anyway, but shelled beans were most likely served.  The Wampanoag’s grew many cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris the common bean and shared them with the Pilgrims.  Kidney, Pinto, Navy, Black Turtle, and green beans are just a few of the hundreds of varieties of grown by Native Americans.   Today, the Seed Savers Exchange lists over 4000 cultivars of Phaseolus vulgaris from around the Americas.

     Common Beans can be bush, half-runner, or pole.  They can be eaten young as green beans or fresh shelled or dried.  These beans originated in Central America and quickly spread north and south. The Spanish took them east and west.   Eastern Native Peoples planted corn and beans together on the same mound so the beans could climb the corn stalks.

There are other species of beans native to the Americas, Phaseolus coccineus the Scarlet Runner bean, Phaseolus lunatus the Lima bean and Phaseolus acutifolius, the Tepary bean.

The Tepary bean thrives in the dry Southwestern US. They are rarely grown or seen around here. They are usually eaten fresh shelled or dried very much like the common bean.

The Scarlet Runner bean prefers a cooler climate. It is grown as an ornamental in many gardens for its bright red flowers. The beans can be black or purple. It can be eaten as a green bean and a shelled bean. I have never had much luck growing them around here. 

There has always been a debate about Lima Beans and Butterbeans. The truth is they are both Phaseolus lunatus. Some folks call the big ones Limas and the small ones Butterbeans. They are called Limas because Europeans first saw them in Lima Peru.  ‘Carolina Sieva Pole’ bean is an heirloom variety that thrives in the heat and produces small white butterbeans. ‘Thorogreen’ Bush Lima is the most popular variety in the South, with a good yield of light green colored beans that are wonderful in Okra soup.    

At Farmers Seed we sell about 20 different varieties of green beans Phaseolus vulgaris.  Our favorite is ‘Roma II’, a flat pod with a white bean. The pods are flavorful and always tender and never a string even when the pods were mature. We called them snaps. Every Sunday mother would fill the bottom of a big pressure cooker with snaps and a piece of side meat and place peeled white potatoes on top. This she would cook until the potatoes were soft and the snaps would melt in your mouth.  #beans, #Garden