For some reason beans don’t tend to stir as much excitement as our other garden foods like tomatoes and broccoli. Between all the value in nutrition, taste, beauty, pollinator power and ease of use in the garden, they are a wonderful addition to any anyones home and pantry. As the old saying goes “Beans are a poor man’s gold”.

-From a nutrition standpoint they are a powerhouse, including fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants!

-Because they’re a direct sow, there’s minimal work involved with starting seedlings and hardening off. This makes them a great beginner crop for new gardeners and for introducing your kids to the garden. Mine love to plant, harvest and shell beans throughout the season.

-Beans, like all legumes, have nitrogen fixing properties so they are wonderful for interplanting/companion planting. While not all nitrogen fixing rhizomes are created equal and much of the nitrogen is used for the beans themselves, some nitrogen can “leak” into the surrounding soil for other plants, especially when the plant starts to die (NMState, 2015). So, if you practice “no-till” gardening you can snip plants when they are done producing, leaving the rhizomes and bacteria to decompose in the soil. Beyond that you should be sure to compost the nutrient rich foliage for more returns to your garden.

-They are wonderful for succession planting and give you a bountiful harvest throughout the summer. Bush beans tend to produce for 2-3 weeks, so keep planting them up to 4 weeks before your first frost. Poles beans will continue to produce throughout the season, and can grow to be quite tall. Even with bush beans, you want to harvest regularly for good production. Check your varieties for more specific guides, but I have had a ton of luck with continual bean harvests if I stay on top of regularly picking them. If you are saving beans for dry bean storage, allow them to grow all season, dry on the vine and harvest before the first frost, this is great to do with your black turtle beans and sunset runner beans. Both have beautiful flowers and even more beautiful beans.

-The varieties are seemingly endless with pole beans, bush beans, runner beans, shelling beans, lima beans, and soy beans. The color varieties are also spectacular, some with scarlet and peach flowers that grow lavender speckled beans. I love growing green (and purple) bush beans for fresh eating and dry beans for storage. I use the scarlet and sunset runner beans as an ornamental around the garden to attract pollinators, while also becoming a useful edible food.

-Dependent on the variety you can eat them fresh, can them, dry them or freeze them. They are a great addition to your food supply beyond the summer months. I find bush beans to be one of the easiest foods to freeze for summer months and I usually get so many I need to do something with them. As far as the varieties you can grow as dry beans (black turtle beans, Jacobs cattle beans, kidney beans, cannellini beans,ect. ) I love the simplicity of planting, letting grow & die, then simply harvesting and as long as their fully dry they go right in the pantry.

-Bush beans self-pollinate so it is easy to save seeds, as long as you keep different varieties 10-20ft apart. Lima beans and runner beans are harder and require 160-500ft. Seed Savers Exchange has a great chartfor pollination distances as well as other resources for seed saving practices. I struggle with seed saving because I love growing a wide variety of beans.

With all of these benefits these little gems go beyond their  weight in gold.

Resources:

Title of homepage. Date. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher; [updated date; accessed date]. URL

Example: PDRHealth. 2010. Montvale (NJ): PDRHealth; [accessed 2019 Jan 24]. http://www.pdrhealth.com/.

Seed Savers Exchange. 2023. Decorah, Iowa. [accessed 2023 May 15]. https://www.seedsavers.org/seed-saving-chart

New Mexico State University. 2015. Las Cruces, NM. [accessed 2023 May 15]. https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_a/A129/