I’ve grown many different varieties of beans over the years. Some are really good while others were unadapted to my climate or disease susceptible or had other problems. Take Fortex for example. It is a wonderful bean for eating, but has terrible heat tolerance, is disease susceptible, and Japanese Beetles love it. To top it off, Fortex never produces more than a third of the crop of better adapted beans.
Rattlesnake is one of the best adapted pole beans for the deep south with heat and disease tolerance and excellent production. Unfortunately, I don’t like the flavor of Rattlesnake.
I have about 20 different bean varieties in the garden this year. Most are to produce fresh seed, but there are enough Blue Marbutt to eat and to can. I have 2 varieties of nuña beans which have not been commercially released. They are prepared to eat similar to popcorn. These nuña beans are a result of a breeding program that transferred the nuña traits to a temperate adapted bush bean.
Beans (Phaseolus Vulgaris) come in 4 different growth habits. There are pole beans, bush beans, half-runners, and sprawlers. Most bean growers have experience with pole and bush beans and some have grown half-runners. Very few have grown sprawlers such as Zuni Red & Gold or Rio Zappe.
Beans are prepared for eating with 4 different methods. There are snap beans, dry beans, shelly beans, and leather britches beans. Turkey Craw is a beautiful bean that can be used all 4 ways. Most other beans are only used one or at most two different ways. Fortex is a pole snap bean. Calypso is a dry bush bean. Goose is a delicious pole shelly bean. Most of the greasy beans make good leather britches. Sicitalian Black Swamp Bean is kind of unique that it can be snapped and frozen for winter with excellent flavor and texture.
Of the beans I’ve grown, I especially enjoy Burpee’s Tenderpod - conditional that you get the original tenderpod! I also enjoy greasy beans such as Striped Hull Greasy Cutshort which is a superb green bean.
What about varieties that just can’t cut it in my climate? Bird Egg #2 and all of the Andes origin Nuña beans are incapable of producing here.
If you get a wild hair and want to learn more about beans, see if you can find a copy of Beans of New York. They show up from time to time on Ebay.
Here are a couple of places to read about beans and order seed.