How to enjoy a beanfeast
Planting beans, like planting potatoes, is one of the satisfying bits of gardening...
Take a handful of smooth round seeds, like a child's selection of rainbow patterned pebbles, and feeling the potential of growth contained inside, push each one a thumb down into the gently resisting earth. Each variety of bean seed is different in shape and colour - the round killer whale skewbald of the Pea Bean and the long sleek white ovals of Blue Lake look totally different, but they are both Phaseolus vulgaris, sometimes called the French bean. Phaseolus coccineus, the Scarlet Runner, has fat, dappled seeds, usually of some shade of brownish pink with sepia mottles, although pure black seeded forms exist. Both types of bean are originally from sub tropical South America, and so won't stand frost.
French beans may grow as climbing or dwarf (bush) varieties, and it's impossible to tell by looking at a seed what the plant will become, so find out what it does before you sow it. There is nothing so embarrassing as a row of bare beansticks and thriving, productive bush beans growing knee-high to a rabbit at their base - except perhaps a row of exploding growth, flailing tendrils frantically looking for any support they can find.
Growing beans from seed
It helps to sow beans in pots under cover for extra early production. French beans can be sown directly from mid May up until midsummer, although the last sowings may need protection in autumn to produce a worthwhile crop. Runner beans have a longer growing season and prefer to be started indoors, but in the South you can sow them straight in the garden so long as the soil is warm enough. Plant three seeds to a pole, and pull out the weakest to leave two plants.
Beans can be grown up a wigwam arrangement of anything up to seven poles, which tends to be very stable, or the traditional long double row of crossed poles in an A-frame pattern. In sheltered areas or if poles are scarce, string or netting can be used to support the beans but the autumn gales may find your beans an all-too movable object, acting as a huge green sail.
Varieties to grow
Climbing beans are ornamental as well as useful food plants, and make a quick-growing green summer screen to hide unsightly objects. The flowers are beautiful in themselves – one of the first varieties of runner bean to be imported into this country was Painted Lady, introduced in 1633, with brilliant red and white blossoms, and still available from seed catalogues. A dwarf form with similar attractive flowers is called Hestia.
Other runner beans have the characteristic scarlet flowers which gave them their common name. Lady Di, Desiree and Czar have pure white flowers. The sadly discontinued Sunset, seed of which is no longer legally for sale, has improbable glowing coral pink blooms. Adapted for growing in Canada where the growing season is short, this variety is one of our Heritage Seed Library treasures. One of the earliest runner beans is the non-climbing Hammond's Dwarf Scarlet, which only grows a little larger than a bush bean, reaching about 38cm/20in tall – the pods of this variety are often curved. Kelvedon Marvel is also around ten days earlier in maturity than other varieties.
Fench bean pods can be spotted and striped, mottled or plain – any colour from waxy yellow through deep green to rich pansy purples. Borlotto and Rob Splash are good examples of climbing Dragon's Toungue beans, with marvellous flat pods stippled scarlet. They can be eaten as a green bean or allowed to ripen, when the green of the pods become a beautiful amber gold while the red intensifies in colour - the French call this stage of beans demi-sec - when they can be eaten at once or frozen. These beans are also a popular ingredient in West Indian cooking. Other spectacular climbing beans include the mauve flowered Viola di Cornetti which has purple pods (they turn green when cooked) and the yellow flat-podded climber Marvel of Venice which is somewhat tender.
Bush beans are an excellent crop for the small patch, giving high yields from a small space. In good conditions a double 3m/10ft row will feed a family of three people a serving of pencil-thin beans each four times a week! Plant a range of different cultivars to ensure a long cropping period, and for variety on the plate. Purple Teepee and Royalty are the best known purple-podded bush beans, and they're easy to see amongst the leaves. So are the purple striped pods of Deuil Fin Precoce. You can also try the yellow-podded beans like Mont D'Or Golden Butter, Golddukat or Golden Sands, although personally I prefer the flavour of the green types. Reliable green bush beans include Delinel, Canadian Wonder and Safari.
Dry as a bone beans
Some beans are grown for their dry seeds rather than the fresh pod: this can include climbing or dwarf beans. They prefer a long growing season, as this allows the pods to air-dry on the plant, thus lessening the likelihood of moulds developing. Many of the older beans like this have a triple use – green pods, demi-sec and dried and were once classed simply as "horticultural beans". Their great advantage is that you can go off on last minute holidays and ignore the garden, yet still come back to something worth harvesting.
Don't pick fresh beans off plants you're leaving to dry. They're ready when the pods are leathery and you can hear the beans rattle inside the pods when you shake them.
Horsehead (bush variety, dark maroon beans) was bred specially for the UK climate, but other good varieties are Coquette (bush variety, white round beans) and Brown Dutch (bush variety, pale brown beans.) Of the climbers, all the Borlotto types, Blue Lake and Pea Beans can all be eaten in this way. Leaving all the pods on the plants to dry gives a very fruitful air to the garden, rather like a perpetual harvest festival, which looks deeply gratifying and proof of your hard work – especially good when you have visitors.
How to avoid has-beans
Runner beans are sometimes reluctant to "set" or produce beans – there are several reasons for this.
Sometimes the air around the flowers is too dry, or too warm. Mist around the flowers with lukewarm water in the evening to lower the temperature around the flowers. They aren't adapted well to night temperatures above 13-24°C / 55-57° F, which can cause them to abort.
Sparrows occasionally develop a craze for eating bean flowers, or pecking the poor things to death, just as they do with crocuses. Bird scarers sometimes work.
Another reason for beans failing to set is over-enthusiastic bumble bees, who are too tubby to enter the flower the normal way, so they bite the backs of the flowers to get at the nectar, damaging the stamens in the process. If this is happening to your beans the flowers look very moth eaten. You may find little scarlet heaps of chewed petals at the base of the plants. There isn't much you can do to stop the bees, except to make sure there are plenty of other blooms as sources of food for them in the garden.
Whatever type of beans you grow in the garden this summer, take time to admire their colours as they change from flower to pod, before you enjoy that first taste of your own harvest.
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