Shelling Beans

It’s clean up time in the garden. Preparing beds for spring by working in compost, raking leaves into pathways, and collecting spent stalks into piles for next years’ compost are a part of the zen of the season. Communing with nature in the beautiful weather of early fall seems as productive to the psyche as gleaning the last of the produce is to the dinner table. Right now we’re harvesting the last of the purple pole beans.

They’ve served us well this year. It could be either that they grew well, or that we planted lots of them. These were grown from seeds saved from the year before, and there was a large envelope of them. Six tripods and six poles were each planted with three bean seeds per pole. The plants twined their way up the poles, with a few missing the poles entirely and meandering into squash vines from where each of them were found, untangled, and redirected.

The pole beans politely waited until the bush beans finished producing, and then almost suddenly began to appear in clusters. Many of the young beans were picked by handfuls, cooked, and eaten right away. Many others were blanched, and schlepped into the freezer.

Purple pole beans have white seeds

The last of the beans matured and then went ignored for awhile. We have now selected the best and largest of them, splitting open the pods to save seeds for next year. And, left were many, many more over-ripened beans on the vines. How easy it would be to pull up the plants and toss them onto a compost pile! But, why waste a good bean seed? So, we are preparing them as dried beans. After popping open the pods and spilling the seeds out onto pans, they are left to dry. The dried beans will be stored in glass jars.

Purple pole beans are fabulous as dried beans. To cook them, soak overnight along with a piece of kelp, then cook at a low simmer until softened. Enjoy them in chili as we have. Click here for Gil’s Fabulous Beer Garden Chili recipe. -G.H.

A Favorite Plant: Purple Pole Beans

Trust me, we wouldn’t rave about beans unless we really thought them worthy of it. Beans are a mainstay amongst garden veggies and most often don’t attract much thought. They are mostly trouble free, easy to grow, one of the most reliable of the veggies, and there have always been plenty to pick. It would be easy to take them for granted.

Normally we have little debate over which variety to choose from the seed catalog. We simply get Provider Bush Beans, and a yellow, wax bean, also a bush type. The bush beans put out a great crop in the space of a short garden row over several weeks. Then the plants are yanked and stacked on the compost pile. A crop of spinach or other fast grower can be planted in the now-empty row with plenty of time to grow before a frost. Or not, depending on mood, the weather, other commitments, or even whim. It was this way for years.

Then one year, in a mood or on a whim, I decided to try the three sisters; the traditional combo of corn, beans and squash. A new place had to be found for this, since the garden beds are already predestined for their designated crops. The new area started with three separate mounds of composting material (for info on what we compost, and how we do it, see the post on composting here). Onto these went some dirt and composted manure. Over each mound I set up a tripod of three tall poles tied together near the top. Finding poles is easy here. We simply do some thinning in the woods, a benefit to the larger trees.

Next, I planted the seeds. Because I never really trust things to grow anyway (based on some past experiences), I didn’t bother to stagger the plantings. Corn is supposed to be seeded first. The beans and squash are supposed to go in when the corn is off to a good start. The beans can then climb up the corn, while the squash simply gads about around the feet of the other plants. As it turned out, however, the corn grew into feeble foot high stalks and no farther. The beans climbed the poles, and the squash rambled all over the nearby countryside. For squash and beans, the experiment was a success. And, we haven’t continued to plant the third sister, corn. 

The beans happened to be purple pole beans, a seed catalog selection based on something-that-looked-interesting with no practical considerations intended. My preference for the color purple was the only prerequisite for choosing this style of bean. Purple would be fun, a color boost to the garden. And, of course I didn’t expect they would grow and climb the poles and produce beans.

But grow they did, producing a bountiful crop that came in later than the bush beans and kept going way into fall. They are easy to pick; they grow in bunches and you can grab a whole handful at once. Wonderful to eat; they turn deep green when cooked, and are excellent for freezing. Everything you'd want in a bean! 

We have been saving seeds ever since. Saving the seeds is easy. Leave the beans on the vine until the pods turn brown. Pick them, open the pods, and spill the seeds onto a plate. Leave them to dry for a few days, then put them into a paper envelope. Viola, next year’s beans! -jmm