Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Heirloom Beans and Beans and Beans!!

What gardener doesn't love beans??
But did you know how many thousands and thousands of fabulous beans are out there?
We have bush, pole, runner. Beans to eat fresh, shell beans and dry beans.
There are beans that are yellow and green or purple. But also beans that are striped, curly, super short, super long (yard long).
And they are easy to love because they are easy to grow and a tasty part of any meal in their various forms.
This year I offering a good number of bean seeds for sale, and I love them all.

A few I would like to highlight are Dragon Tongue, a fabulous Dutch heirloom and Bobis Albenga, an Italian charmer.
Dragon Tongue,(aka Dragon Langerie) is a creamy yellow flat bush bean about 6" long , with purple striping. The purple striping becomes more pronounced the more sun the beans are exposed to, so planting the beans a bit further apart than usual to prevent crowding will give you more vividly coloured beans.
This bean is absolutely delicious at any size, and is so juicy and mildly flavoured that it is great just to eat raw. Sadly, it also falls into the category I like to call "magic beans", whereby when cooked it loses it's purple striping, just as purple beans, when cooked, turn green.
Bobis Albenga (Bobis D'Albenga) is a bean I purchased seed for many years ago, and then -ZAP- the seed company was gone and so was the bean! It is very difficult to find seed anywhere for this wonderful bean.
But I did have the instinct to save the seed from it that first year because it was so wonderful. It is a lovely slim bush bean that is green with purple mottling, with just a wonderful green beany flavour. But alas, another magic bean we have here, unless you saute it very lightly for a few minutes, retaining some of the crunch and colour.
Want to see more of the wonderful bean varieties I offer? Please check out my website at
www.treeandtwig.ca I have grown them all-they are all recommended!

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