Gardening : For a Vegetable With Snap, Try Green Beans : It’s time to plant your garden for harvest of tasty pole and bush varieties in late spring.
One of the great moments in my vegetable garden is repeated yearly in the late spring.
It is the first harvest of green beans, and I eagerly count the days waiting for the plants to set sufficient pods for my first green bean feast of the season. Cooked until barely tender, with a little salt, butter and pepper, they are truly ambrosia; the taste of spring itself.
Green beans, also called snap beans, are the home gardener’s second favorite vegetable right behind tomatoes. And with good reason; there’s simply no comparison between the limp product sold in the supermarket and its fresh counterpart from the garden.
Give green beans the snap test. A truly fresh green bean will snap in two with aplomb and with a spurt of juice, while its supermarket cousin will bend considerably before breaking.
In addition to green beans, the home gardener can grow an array of other beans, including fresh lima beans, which are almost impossible to find at the market. Here is a rundown of some of the beans that will produce well locally.
GREEN BEANS: Being easy to grow and providing a bountiful harvest are just two of the reasons behind the popularity of green beans.
Green beans used to be known as string beans. However, plant breeders have made the modern varieties stringless. Green beans are divided into two types, the bush varieties and the pole varieties.
Bush-type green beans are the easiest and earliest to grow, but pole beans are more productive, and you might include both in your garden.
The favorite variety among home gardeners is still the old-time Kentucky Wonder. I prefer the Blue Lake, as it is earlier, more productive and of higher quality. Pole green beans require about 65 days from planting to reach maturity.
Bush green beans are earlier than pole beans, but require more space to get the same yield. Rows of bush beans should be planted at two-week intervals to assure continuous production.
Good varieties of bush snap beans include Bush Blue Lake, Tenderpod, Venture and Tendercrop.
Gourmet cooks may want to try their hand at growing French filet (haricot vert ) beans, those ultra slender green beans utilized in classic French cooking. The seeds are becoming more available in this country. Burpee lists three French filet varieties in its 1989 catalogue.
YELLOW WAX BEANS: Wax beans are often sold at a premium price in the market, yet they are as easy as green beans to grow. Many people feel that wax beans have a richer flavor than green beans.
Like green beans, yellow wax beans come in both bush and pole varieties. The bush varieties grow rapidly and reach harvest stage about 50 days after planting. The pole wax beans take longer to mature, but they also produce over a longer period.
Good bush wax bean varieties include Goldcrop, Pencil Pod, Burpee Brittle and Surcrop Stringless. Two good pole varieties are Burpee Golden and Kentucky Wonder Wax.
LIMA BEANS: Fresh lima beans are almost impossible to obtain anymore unless you grow them yourself. Most commercially grown limas are sold to processing plants for freezing. Although many frozen limas are of good quality, there is still no comparison with the rich, nut-like flavor of limas fresh from the garden.
There are quite a few bush lima varieties. My favorite bush lima is Burpee’s Improved. It has very large flavorful beans, which are produced on 20-inch plants in profuse quantities. Fordhook No. 242 is a good variety in the warmer inland areas of Southern California as it is heat-resistant.
Lima beans also are available in climbing varieties and are called pole limas. Pole limas mature later than bush varieties and need the support of trellises or poles. However, they produce more beans per square foot of garden space.
I grow my pole limas on a 6-foot-high trellis of chicken wire, stretched between two-by-four posts. They may also be trained along a fence that receives full sun. As for pole lima varieties, I feel the old favorite, King of the Garden, is still the best variety.
GARBANZO BEANS: Botanically speaking, garbanzos are not really beans, but are closely related. Garbanzos, also called chickpeas, are best known in this country as interesting additions to bean salad. However, in some areas of the world, garbanzos are the most important source of protein, and in others they are indispensable ingredients in a variety of dishes.
Garbanzos are attractive items in the home garden. The unusual plants have fern-like foliage. The leaves are composed of many hairy oval leaflets. The beans are produced inside small pods and are light brown in color with a rich nut-like flavor.
Garbanzos have similar cultural requirements as beans, and the instructions that follow are fine for garbanzos.
The usual method of harvesting garbanzos is to let the pods fully mature on the plants and then cut the plants and dry the beans.
CULTURAL REQUIREMENTS: Beans are a warm-season vegetable and may be planted any time from early spring to midsummer in most areas of the Southland.
Beans, as do other vegetables, respond to organic material in the soil. Add compost, peat moss, well-aged manures or other such amendments and a vegetable fertilizer. Water thoroughly and allow the soil to settle for a few days before sowing the seed.
Follow the planting instructions on the seed packets, paying careful attention to spacing and thinning. If you have prepared your soil, you will not have to fertilize beans during their growing period.
Keep beans watered on a regular basis--at least once a week. Avoid overhead watering, as this promotes diseases.
After planting beans, I cover the soil with a mulch of newspapers that I keep damp to prevent the soil from crusting over. This practice results in a higher germination rate. You must check under the newspapers daily and remove them immediately when the plants have emerged through the soil.
Beans are best grown in rows. They are not a good container crop because many plants are necessary for a good harvest.
