I’m going to post some information about beans in general and specifcs about some green snap beans. This is intended to provide information to help with seed selection when growing snap beans.
There are 4 different growth habits with beans.
1 - pole beans with runners that climb, Kentucky Wonder
2 - Bush type that stay about 3 feet tall or less, Tenderpod
3 - Half-runner where the plants climb 5 to 6 feet, Dixie Half Runner
4 - Western Sprawlers where the plants produce runners but are incapable of climbing, Zuni Red
There are several different pod types in beans.
1 - hard fibrous pods typical of most dry beans and many shellies, Pinto and Goose being examples
2 - Stringless even when the bean seed are in advanced development, Fortex is an example
3 - String beans that have tender pods but with significant strings on the edges, Kentucky Wonder is an example
4 - Stringless when young but develop strings as they age, usually as the seed develops, Grandma Roberts Purple
5 - Stringless and low fiber when young, but develops a lot of fiber in the pod as the seed develop, Helda Romano
And there are several different ways to use beans
1 - As snap green beans, Musica
2 - As dry beans, Pinto and Yellow Eye
3 - As shelly beans which are harvested mature but prior to drying, then shelled and cooked/canned/frozen, Goose
4. As leather britches where the bean pods are dried, Turkey Craw
First and foremost, I grow beans for flavor. Most of the modern beans I’ve grown are downright insipid. I have no problem pulling strings on beans so long as they taste good and don’t have a bunch of needle fibers when cooked. Over the last 100 years, breeders mucked up some really good beans in the process of adding disease and pest tolerance to the variety. This usually shows up as odd traits in the beans such as fibers in a snap bean.
I grew a 20 foot section of row of Helda Romano beans this year to try them out. Overall, they are an excellent bean growing raipdly and producing an abundance of wide flat beans. But they have one overriding bad trait. They MUST be picked when 1/2 inche wide or less. If let grow larger and to the point the bean seed develop in the pod, they produce heavy fiber in the pods. This is typical of beans developed over the last 50 years where crosses were made in an effort to produce stringless beans. The result is stringless beans, but the strings moved into the pod such that they have heavy chewy fiber if they get anywhere close to mature. These beans are “stringless when young” meaning they don’t have strings at the edges, but the strings develop inside the bean pod as they age. So what would I recommend re Helda? Grow them only if you can harvest when 1/2 inch wide or less so the fiber is minimized.
I listed Turkey Craw above as a bean for Leather Britches. However, it is a general purpose bean that can be used all 4 ways, as snaps, dry, as green shellies, and as leather britches. If you want to experiment with beans, grow Turkey Craw. They are not “superb” for any of the 4 uses, but they are the only bean I grow and enjoy that can be eaten 4 different ways.
The former would mean I might actually get to try them on a trip to Alabama, along with that citrumelo-like fruit from the tree in Birmingham you write about!
